A Lesson In Activism

 By Eccentric Vegan on October 22nd, 2009 Print This Post Print This Post

Here is a lesson in activism: mainstream media makers are generally lazy. Creative message-makers can capitalize on that.

The lesson comes from FARM. Here is a newspaper’s account of events:

A Lothrop Street, Beverly resident who has supposedly written dozens of letters to the editor supporting being a vegan and opposing eating meat doesn’t exist.
And the Beverly address he was using as his home address is also phony.
A man named Matthew Warden has written at least 24 letters to the Citizen since 2004, according to a search of the paper’s archives. In the letters, Warden often wrote opposing eating meat.

Note:

  • No mention of the newspaper’s missing fact-checking department.
  • No apology for publishing letters that weren’t local.
  • No explanation for a letters-to-the-editor policy that requires a local address yet waits 5 years to verify that address.

I think it’s all pretty funny.

Remember kids, the world is run by those who show up. SHOW UP.

Sections: Vegan Activism
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3 Responses to A Lesson In Activism

  1.  Tracy commented on Oct 22nd, 2009 at 11:33 am

    Regarding bullet #1: Unless it’s a very large paper, newspapers generally don’t have fact checkers.

    Also, an administrative assistant or the opinions editor only verifies the phone numbers of letter writers — and sometimes they don’t even do that.

    All the facts of this case haven’t been made public yet, though.
    Tracy´s last blog ..Animal Agribusiness vs. the Environment My ComLuv Profile

  2.  Eccentric Vegan commented on Oct 22nd, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    “All the facts of this case haven’t been made public yet, though.”

    What a tease! Now I’m super curious.

  3.  Miss Magoo commented on Oct 26th, 2009 at 11:36 am

    The newspaper that ran the story mentioned above did verify the letters. They called the phone number they were given by the letter-writer to verify and it checked out. But, then several things led the staff to be suspicious.

    Why should the newspaper apologize? The organization that unlawfully used a Beverly resident’s address to write letters to the editor owes that resident an apology.

    I totally support veganism. However, I think that using tactics such as making up names and addresses to write letters to the editor discredits the movement. No organization should use such tactics.

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