Alex Hershaft, the national chair of Animal Rights 2001, recently penned a letter to The Washington Post claiming that the newspaper’s coverage of his event was biased. For once I agree with Hershaft — The Post‘s coverage was far too sympathetic to the animal rights activists.
Hershaft was angry because The Post‘s editors chose to include a photo taken of an animal rights protest at a nearby Wendy’s in which several people, including actor James Cromwell were arrested when they blocked the restaurant’s front counter.
In his letter, Hershaft whines that “the action was neither organized nor authorized by the conference organizers.” Yeah, who would think that animal rights activists would ever protest at a restaurant? (Guest Choice Network has a page of pictures of the protest).
Of course the protest was carried out by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and, completely by coincidence I guess, Hershaft sent an e-mail out to animal rights news lists cheerfully announcing the election of PETA co-founder Alex Pacheco to the “U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame,” noting that Ingrid Newkirk was made a member last year. Maybe Hershaft thought that it was some other Alex Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk who engage in outrageous protests that tend to alienate non-believers.
Anyway, if anything The Post’s coverage was a bit on the kid gloves side. In an e-mail after the event, Hershaft touted all of the wonderful accomplishments of the conference including a screening of “Igniting a Revolution: An Introduction to the Earth Liberation Front” which was produced by the North American Earth Liberation Front Office and “discuss[es] the ideology of the ELF, and the
logic and necessity of using covert direct action to protect life on earth.”
Now a more accurate way of portraying Animal Rights 2001 would have been to take a frame of a burning building from that video and place it smack dab in the middle of the story as a representation of what the animal rights has become — even Hershaft, who tells the Post that he feels maligned at being associated with PETA’s protest, considers the screening of a documentary defending terrorism to be of enough importance to include in his after-the-fact self-congratulatory e-mail (which is a common tactic — tell the press one thing, the activists another).
In The Post‘s story, however, you have to scroll down to almost the very end to hear No Compromise‘s Jake Conroy tell the reporter, “Property damage, in my opinion, is not a violent act.”
Sources:
Animal Rights Backers Converge in Va.; National Gathering Includes Seminars, Protests, Booths. Abhi Raghunathan, Washington Post, July 5, 2001.
Animal Rights 2001: Best and Biggest Ever! Alex Hershaft, E-mail communication, July 6, 2001.
AR2001: Letter to the Wash Post. Alex Hershaft, E-mail communication, July 5, 2001.
Five activists inducted into U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame. Alex Hershaft, Email communication, July 6, 2001.