Shark Week -- Demonizing Sharks for Profits
Since 1987, Discovery Channel, owned by Discovery Communications,
has presented 'Shark Week' each summer. The week long series of shows
promotes these endangered marine animals as man eating monsters,
facilitating their mass slaughter with almost no public sympathy, nor
protest.
The company has so effectively convinced their millions of viewers
that sharks deserve to be hated, that many people think that sharks
should be hunted to extinction. It has created a wave of fear of the
sea, in people who grew up watching Shark Week.
Discovery executives know exactly what they are doing, and call it
'shark pornography,' while they rake in billions of dollars. They
excuse themselves by claiming they are only giving the public what it
wants, but the public's love of horror shows has nothing to do with
Discovery's responsibility for having made sharks the subject of that
horror.
Through their dishonest use of sharks for profit in horror shows,
Discovery is responsible for erecting a virtually impenetrable
barrier to the protection of sharks from being massacred to
extinction.
Until recently, even the dangers to sharks from overfishing was
covered up by Discovery, because they considered conservation to be
an unpopular subject.
Scientists who's work has been used for Discovery's Shark Week
have found it twisted and misrepresented by the company. Shark Week
is nothing more than tabloid journalism, and does not reflect modern
scientific knowledge.
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