A piece in the British paper Guardian about our litigation begins with a significant error. None of the publishers that Greenpeace has attempted to harass has used the word “dangerous” to describe our position in the matter, as the headline falsely indicates.
Instead, that’s a characterization cribbed from Greenpeace’s own publicity material which the reporter, Danuta Kean, parroted without any skepticism. Had she reviewed Greenpeace’s actual legal filings, Kean would have learned that Greenpeace admits that its public statements about Resolute are “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion [and] not intended to be taken literally.”
Public statements from those same publishers in recent days that support Resolute’s “right to defend one’s reputation,” as one put it, was also withheld from readers. So too was the fact that more than one publishing house complained that Greenpeace had misrepresented their views. An article in Publishers Weekly (that preceded the Guardian on the story by a week) took note of those points.
Also ignored in the Guardian’s article are the many thousands of citizens across Canada’s Boreal region that have reached out to Greenpeace, asking for a halt to the misinformation that is threatening the livelihoods of their communities. Those people who work and live in the Boreal have expressed their concerns by phone, on social media, during large public demonstrations, as well as through direct letters. While Greenpeace spent its resources traveling cross-country to harass book publishers, how did the group respond to the avalanche of heartfelt appeals about the real harm they have caused? Had Danuta Kean reached out, she would have heard the simple answer: Greenpeace has ignored them.
Readers would be right to wonder therefore why the Guardian repackaged dated news, hiding facts from readers, and borrowing so obviously from Greenpeace publicity material.