Reporting on whale meat theft
Last month, Greenpeace held a press conference in Japan announcing that its members had entered a delivery company’s distribution center in Tokyo on April 15th and intentionally walked out of the center with a package that did not belong to them. There’s a word for this in English: stealing.
Those involved in the theft were arrested yesterday for the crime they told the world they committed. The Japan Times/The Guardian reported their arrest with the following headline:
The use of single quotation marks implies that the Greenpeace members may have been arrested for something that was not a theft. Why? Greenpeace claims it grabbed the packages because they contained whale meat that Japanese whalers had embezzled and stolen.
Japanese authorities have investigated the matter and determined that they cannot prove the whalers did anything illegal. The whaling ship captain claims the meat was given to crew members as a souvenir, and apparently such an activity is legal in Japan. Stealing packages from delivery centers, however, is not legal in Japan.
Some people may think that the Greenpeace members justly stole the package to bring attention to the unjust killing of whales and sale of whale meat. That’s fine, but theft in the name of justice is still theft, and they shouldn’t be surprised if people who freely confess to taking things that don’t belong to them are arrested and charged with theft. Greenpeace does not have the legal authority to seize property it believes is stolen.
Why can’t the Japan Times clearly report a theft as a theft?
{note: News sites such as Earthtimes & the Yomiuri Shinbun have not used single quotes in their headlines.]
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News sources always put quotation marks around words describing alleged criminal activity when the alleged perpetrator has not yet been sentenced. It’s CYA against libel.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I often see, ‘murder’ in a headline. And the post clearly says other newspapers didn’t use quotes… so that shoots down your ‘always put quotation marks’ theory.
Two things.
1. You can put ‘murder’ or any other crime in a headline without quotation marks, provided you don’t identify a non-convicted individual as the perpetrator. Generally speaking, when referring to a particular individual, news sources will either use the quotation mark approach, include a direct quotation from a government source, or use words like “alleged” or “accused.”
2. They don’t actually have to do this, of course. Like I said, it’s a CYA against libel. If the threat of a libel action doesn’t spook the proprietor of a news outlet, they’re free to print whatever they want–at least in the United States. I’m not familiar with Japanese defamation law.
I’m going to hazard a guess as to the use of quotes in the headline – isn’t it a fairly standard journalistic practice? I mean that, for crimes and charges that have not reached a verdict in court, media and press generally don’t report the particulars of the case as 100% fact. At least that’s my impression. The article uses phrases like “on suspicion of stealing” to hedge away from making absolute claims about what did or did not happen. I agree that taking something that is not your property is theft and publicly touting it is boneheaded, but I think in this case JT is just presenting allegations the way most outlets would report allegations. I don’t know any of this for sure, but thought it might be worth mentioning.
I’d understand such a use for other cases in which suspects have not confessed, but in this case Greenpeace freely admitted to taking packages that did not belong to them.
The fact that the word ‘stole’ is in quotes may not have anything to do with guilt or innocence. It may be because the intent of Greenpeace was not really to take the whale meat in order to use it for their own profit, as in stealing a car, or stealing money, etc. (although I see that they did eat it..), but they simply wanted to make a point and gain attention. That is, the act was definitely stealing, but they’re goals were very different from that of your typical thief. So, the newspaper chose to interepret the act in this way by putting quotes around the word stole.
Have a good ‘day.’
“Greenpeace said a four-month investigation found that crew members of the whaler smuggled the meat ashore in personal luggage and passed it on to traders to be sold illegally.”
I think they’ve been watching a little too much Detective Conan. Even if they had legal jurisdiction to conduct a criminal investigation, they were definitely not issued a warrant to seize property, which is theft, and breaking and entering on top of that.
The most hilarious part of this incident is that the Greenpeace members ate the whale meat that they stole. The following is from an interview to a Greenpeace member that was aired on a Japanese TV show.
http://image.blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/imgs/3/d/3dd949c8.jpg
Greenpeace member: Since we had to eat (the whale meat) for investigation, we ate it.
Q: Was it tasty?
Greenpeace member: Yes, it was tasty.
And they must have easten it before as well. Otherwise, you can’t tell if the meat tastes whale or not.
hahaha, actually that photo is bogus. I saw the original video, and they did ask him whether he ate whale or not, and he said “for this investigation it was necessary for us to eat whale, so we did”, the journalist then asked “was it good”, but in response Sato-yougisha said with a big smile “I’m not commenting about that”.
It’s not clear which meat he ate though. Maybe he ate it in a restaurant some place as part of his “investigation” in to the “embezzlement scandal”.
David, thank you for clarification. I was hoaxed. The following video has a segment from the original one.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=IxFfj4Az0iU
As you wrote, he replied “I’m not commenting about that”, when he was asked if the taste of the whale meat was good.
Whale meat must be delicious, if anti-whale eaters are stealing it.
John Stossel told me greenpeace was nothing more than terrorists and I believe that.
Like you said, stealing is stealing. I can’t kill someone on the street just because they deserve it.
Greenpeace is nothing but cults or terrorists like Aum Shinrikyo or Al Qaeda. They do anything for the sake of their beliefs, legal or illegal. Japanese government should put them under surveillance under the 1952 Subversive Activities Prevention Law before they commit murder!
I’m not sure if this is the case in Japan but I have been told that in Britain it is legal to commit a smaller crime to expose a greater one.
Thus if you obstruct traffic to highlight the illegal (in all probabilty) Iraq war then you can invoke this right.
Even if such a thing was legal in Japan, authorities here have determined that Greenpeace stole the whale meat to expose something that was not actually a crime.
Really? That is so `Robin Hoody´. You, know, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, or stickin’ it to the Man for the greater good. Britain must really be in tune with its folkloric culture…
Maybe they were hungry. Just give them the whale meat.