Straight from the home page of the Real Fish Fight SORC - "Have pasted this from the trusty Fishing news group - In light of the disastrous news about the quota cut for cod stocks, here lies a glimmer of hope and at least a battle won for the industry's paper. Have pasted this from the trusty Fishing News group and it's editor, Cormac Burke.
As a taster to the lead story in this week's Fishing News (which goes to print tomorrow) I thought people might like to see the Editor's comment in this week's edition:
Smoke and mirrors
Fishing News this week has come out against what is considered ‘a final straw’ as Greenpeace tries push its self-perceived ‘powers’ onto the editorial policies of a newspaper that has represented the fishing industry for over 100 years.
In a chain of emails that began politely but soon showed true Greenpeace form when making a veiled threat to report me to the Press Complaints Commission, it would appear that the green group certainly don’t like when they aren’t given page space to defend any bad press they receive – but don’t seem to mind that the fishing industry never gets a right to reply to the Greenpeace articles that regularly appear in the national press.
I am well aware that several hundred NUTFA members support Greenpeace involvement in the fishing industry and that is their right and the opinion they are entitled to. However, several hundred out of 12,000 fishermen and up to 20,000 people in onshore related fishing industry jobs is a far cry from the level of support that Greenpeace are trying to claim that they have.
Greenpeace recently got 110,000 members of the public to sign a petition – and then issued a press release along the lines of “we have the support of the UK’s inshore fishermen and we have 110,000 signatures”, thereby attempting to fool the public into thinking that somehow they have the backing of 110,000 fishermen.
Much of the Greenpeace fight is about the NFFO and how that body manages its operations. But the NFFO have offered to sit down and talk to Greenpeace several times – all of which were rejected by Greenpeace. Therefore I think that if Greenpeace are unwilling to talk to NFFO man to man, why should they be allowed do it through Fishing News? But I do think Greenpeace should be answerable to the industry through the proposed (and also rejected) offer for Greenpeace to face questions from fishermen.
Perhaps the majority of fishermen in the UK do actually want Greenpeace to have a voice in how our industry operates. I hope this Comment, and the article on page 2, will prompt fishermen to voice their opinions.
Anyone in the fishing industry who would like their comments published, please email Cormac Burke - editor@fishingnews.co.uk
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