How The Media Can Be Dangerous While Serving Injustice

I am “the media” so don’t think that I’m excluding myself here. But I’m also proud to exclaim I am not the so-called Main Stream Media, which is working its way toward extinction. I recently heard Bernard Goldberg on the Sean Hannity show refer to the media (main stream) as a political activist organization now, having moved beyond simple bias.

We all have our own biases and opinions about the media. I’m sure most influenced to some degree in how we have been treated. The question exists as to what drives the media to report what they report the way they do. Is it activism? Is it agenda driven? Is it personal bias? Might it be ignorance? Or is it mostly what sells copies? It might be some or a lot of any and all of the above.

I would like to share with readers an example of how main stream media reporting ends in dangerous injustice. I would also like to point out that this is not an isolated case.

Recently I brought you three articles (here, here and here) that pertained to a column that appeared in the online version of Newsweek. The article, “Survival of the Weak and Scrawny”, related information from a study (Coltman et al 2003) done on Ram Mountain in Canada that supposedly proved that hunting “trophy” big horn sheep resulted in a weakening of the gene pool leaving the survival of the species at risk.

One of the dangers of the article was the way it was presented. It was incomplete and one sided. Was this intentional? Did the author have an agenda? Was it poor journalism? Or did Newsweek editors decide this article written in this fashion would sell more copies of their magazine? We may never know for sure.

The article refers to only one portion of the study, a portion described by Dr. Valerius Geist, Professional Biologist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary, as a necessary study to prove what the scientists involved believed to be already true. What they needed to prove as part of the complete study was that if you deliberately target the dominate male sheep and remove it from the reproductive cycle, the horn size, body size and overall physical strength of the controlled group of sheep would diminish.

The results of this one lone study gets grabbed up by the main stream media. Nature, Newsweek and hosts of other media outlets begin what almost resembles and orchestrated effort to discredit the practice of hunting because hunters are leaving our game species “weak and scrawny”. It gets worse.

One of the scientists involved in the Coltman, et al 2003 study was Marco Festa-Bianchet. Bianchet did his doctoral dissertation with Dr. Valerius Geist at the University of Calgary, Canada. Dr. Geist describes Bianchet as “brilliant and highly capable”.

If you are an anti-hunter or one who espouses to the theory that hunting so-called trophy game is dumbing down the genes, you might find Marco Fest-Bianchet a hero. On the other hand, if you’re a hunter or someone who believes proper management of game is producing positive results, you might think Bianchet to be something not worth repeating here.

Mr. Bianchet is neither hero or enemy of the hunter. He is a scientist being exploited by the media.

There’s more. Beth MacCullum did her Masters of Environmental Design Project also with Dr. Valerius Geist at the University of Calgary. He has only wonderful and positive things to say about her. Here is her accomplishments as part of that project. She convinced industry people and the government to allow her to take an abandoned strip mine in Hinton, Alberta and transform it into a mecca for big horn sheep. Her results were nothing short of amazing as are described by Dr. Geist.

Her design is to generate a custom built bighorn habitat from the moon-landscape left behind by the mining process. It is totally novel and original. It has never been done before. It is a real test of our collective knowledge of sheep ecology. Can we build habitat so good for bighorns that they will thrive? The bighorns respond quickly with a massive increase in lamb production and survival. The population shoots upward! The females double in body size. The rams grow increasingly larger in body and horn-size, soon breaking all North American records. Bighorns from Jasper National Park visit this new sheep habitat – and remain. That is, in this study not only is horn size increased beyond any expectation, but the genetic base of the population – the holy grail – is enhanced by visiting sheep from neighboring populations coming and staying.

Once anyone seeking the truth searches to find it, they will discover that in the Ram Mountain survey, the end result was that what was having the most negative effect on big horn sheep was poor habitat. Clearly the two events had opposite results and for one thing it showed us that mistakes made by man from poor game management and lousy habitat can be reversed. In this case by taking an abandoned strip mine and converting it into a wildlife Shangri-la.

The media injustice comes from not one mention of Beth MacCullum’s work. Dr. Geist describes this journalistic injustice this way.

Marco Festa-Bianchet is a successful man, a University professor. Beth MacCallum is a successful private consultant. They are both complete people in their public and private lives. The news media fawn over the man’s success, and totally ignore the woman. So does her Alma Mater! Her brilliant, farsighted work receives no awards, no praise. Extreme environmentalists denigrate her work because it makes industry look good. In the meantime her restoration work becomes far more than a test of our knowledge of mountain sheep ecology. Elk, mule deer, grizzly bear, wolverine flock in. More and more bird species take hold and the number of nesting birds rises steadily. What was once waste is transformed into an oasis of life. Local people support and fight to retain this miracle of transformation; bureaucrats are apparently now fixed on destroying it.

Even though some of the American people are catching on to the media’s tricks, danger lurks for those who blindly consume the incomplete written word. Those in the know understand that it is the money coughed up by hunters that have funded a lot of wildlife research that has resulted in this country having bountiful game and wildlife. Hunting is only a small but vital part of this conservation effort.

To hand select parts and pieces of studies to support agendas and biases is a sin. To ignore what man is capable of achieving for political gain is a travesty.

Tom Remington