The Times They Are A-Changin’ ...

When the British press start running stories like “B52 bomber crashes on moon”, everyone heads for the beaches. The silly season has arrived. This year, for some reason, Britain’s greatest media institution has packed its bags early.

On June 18, a factually inaccurate, emotional eulogy to whales, entitled “Sleep of the Deep”, somehow slipped past the usually vigilant eye of the senior editorial staff at The Times.

Although the Times makes no pretense to support whaling, it has maintained a generally high level of objectivity and fairness in covering the convoluted and emotionally charged whaling debate. Indeed, an editorial on June 30, 1992, entitled “How Not to Save Whales”, so accurately described attempts by anti-whaling nations to derail the IWC that photocopies are still found in the press packages of pro-whaling interests four years later.

Total Misreading
“Sleep of the Deep” will not be so honoured, and here are some of the reasons why:

Totally misreading developments in South Africa (see “RSA Commissioner ...”), the Times concluded that wads of whalers’ money had persuaded South Africa to resume its own whale hunt:

“South Africa is likely to argue for a return to commercial whaling. Pressed by Japan, which helps to fund South African development, and Norway, always a staunch ally of the ANC, Pretoria looks set to end its 1982 ban on whaling within territorial waters.”

In presenting its vision of “modern” whaling, the Times took a trip down memory lane, and tossed in some fantasy for good measure: “The modern whaling vessel... is a self-sufficient factory ship able to flense, butcher and pressure-cook an ocean leviathan in less than an hour. Inspectors awaiting the vessels in port may find it extremely difficult to determine the number and species of the cetaceans slaughtered.”

No factory ships are currently operational. Pressure cookers are no longer needed as there is no whale oil market. And inspectors do not await vessels in port. They are on board both Norwegian and Japanese vessels, and know exactly how many whales of what species are slaughtered.

After more factual inaccuracies, the editorial drifts into vacuous statements like “Japanese have learnt to eat beef with no apparent loss of identity”, before ending on a defiant note of total blether.

“It is in the whale’s very mystery that its greatest glory lies. ... A fabulous leviathan of the deep, the whale need no longer, like Tennyson’s Kraken, be but once by man and angels seen before ‘in roaring it shall rise and on the surface die’. Instead, it must be left to its ‘ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep’.”

... For the Worse

From The Times, June 30, 1992

• “Iceland and Norway are entitled to accuse the anti-whaling majority of nations in the International Whaling Commission of changing the rules half way through the game.”

• “Iceland’s attitude, and now Norway’s, shows what happens when the world community starts to act with less than total good faith. In the end such tactics do whales no favours, and risk discrediting other worthwhile international efforts at the conservation of endangered species.”

• “... animal cruelty is not something which it is appropriate to ban by international agreements, particularly when drawn up for other purposes. The IWC’s mistake has been to present the moratorium on minke harvesting as an issue of preservation, needing international co-operation. It is not. Norway and Iceland have at least taught the world a lesson in candour.”