“But the tuna companies are taking a stand on principle.”
The National Fisheries Institute’s Gavin Gibbons writes at the Daily Caller:
On the surface it is easy to regard campaigns by the global environmental activist group Greenpeace as amusingly irreverent or, as PR Week, the trade magazine for public relations professionals, described one such recent attack against the toymaker Mattel, “compelling.” But if any news outlets would ever take a hard, scrutinizing look inside Greenpeace’s media relations tactics, they’d find a method rife with irresponsible harassment, inaccurate claims, and wildly unrealistic demands.
It turns out, for instance, that the broadside against Mattel was based entirely on Greenpeace’s misrepresentation of lab results that the activists claimed “show that packaging used by leading toy brands regularly contains Indonesian rainforest fibre.” But following that Greenpeace declaration and the fawning media coverage that resulted, the very lab that Greenpeace had enlisted denounced them as frauds. “We have not and are unable to identify country of origin of the samples,” the CEO of Integrated Paper Services, Bruce R. Shafer, said publicly. “We are unable to comment on the credibility of the statements Greenpeace has made regarding country of origin”…
Many moons ago, when I worked for an industry that was one of Greenpea¢e’s favorite punching bags, the industry’s reluctance to sue Greenpea¢e was mostly due to concerns about what might come out in discovery. This, despite the righteousness of the industry’s cause. Too few corporate execs and/or their communications counselors are willing to “put up their dukes” when it comes to defending their products, policies or processes. Instead, most of them subscribe to the Rodney King method.
The primary item is libel/slander. This is VERY difficult to prove. You have to prove that they knew it was a pack of lies and willfully ignored that out of a desire to harm. As for the rest, the actual harassers aren’t employees of greenpeace
I wish more people would follow the Heartland Institute’s lead and take legal action against these people. I find it hard to believe that they aren’t breaking some law, either civil or criminal….or both. Which brings me to another issue? Why aren’t Greenpeace’s ships treated as pirates? They lost their Canadian registration and fly the flag of indian ‘nations’, which as far as I can tell have no standing internationally. I have been under the impression that this is the rule under international maritime law. Perhaps someone would comment?