Sea Shepherd: “Don’t Be Rude”

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Sea Shepherd loves the limelight. Its daily operations are fodder for Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars” and it just acquired a flashy new boat, the Gojira, named after the Tokyo-stomping monster Godzilla. Most recently, Sea Shepherd has been seen shadowing dolphin fishermen in the Japanese town of Taiji (made infamous by the documentary The Cove). Sea Shepherd members have been living in the small town (pop. 3,500) for some time and file daily reports on the Cove Guardians blog.

Sea Shepherd’s attitude toward self-promotion took a step backward this week when Japan’s Fuji TV network followed its activists around for a day. Sea Shepherd’s Scott West tells the a Fuji TV reporter, “Don’t be rude” and “Please leave” (8:49) in the video below after he gets tired of the relentless press presence. JapanProbe summarizes the reporter-West interaction well: “The reporter responds by asking why its wrong for him to film Sea Shepherd members, when West apparently thinks it is okay for Sea Shepherd to follow around Japanese fishermen and film them without permission. Instead of answering that question, West declares that he won’t speak to them anymore.” It’s a bit rich for West to tell the Japanese reporter not to “be rude” when West himself calls Taiji fishermen “greedy molesters” on the Cove Guardian blog on a daily basis. 

Despite the rift between Japanese media and Sea Shepherd, there was one nice moment in the video when a Japanese crew member advises West’s vegetarian daughter that the instant ramen she was about to purchase contains fish.


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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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