The Vegan Society's response to a poor piece of journalism elicited a rare published apology, and blueprint for our supporters to follow.
Overtly one-sided reporting has the ability to both frustrate and infuriate, especially in ‘quality’ national newspapers. When an article contains inaccuracies and omissions so glaring that they substantially mislead its readership on an issue of fundamental importance like animal rights, the tendency is to want to react with an immediate, impassioned response in which emotion overrides rational thought resulting in a rant that is typically ignored. Such reactions, however, rarely achieve the desired aim of informing and influencing the writer’s future work.
Earlier this month The Independent ran an article on the sexing of chicks; the latest in a series of similar stories across a number of media outlets. The assertion in the opening paragraph, that identifying the sex determines whether a chick lives as a rooster or egg-layer, was plain wrong. Male chicks are in fact usually killed within seconds of being identified. This error set the tone for an unbalanced article, in which the realities of the egg industry were ignored completely.
The Vegan Society's considered approach was three-fold: writing to the Editor of The Independent setting out the article’s many flaws; adding comments under the online version of the piece; and complaining to the newspaper through its official channels, citing its code of conduct – “It is our primary endeavour to publish information that is accurate and will not mislead readers. You must take care not to distort information either by disingenuous phrasing or by omission.”
It worked. A public apology followed in The Independent on Sunday in the column of the Deputy Managing Editor. We encourage everyone to do the same on future issues.
