Shark Week is an annual, week long programming extravaganza on the Discovery Channel that premiered in 1988. It has grown in popularity and Since 2010, it has been the longest-running cable television programming event in history.
Clearly, as the programming is popular among regular Americans, it must be targeted by the woke mob. So a team team of researchers examined hundreds of “Shark Week” episodes that aired between 1988 and 2020 and published a study published last month by the Public Library of Science accusing the programs of using too many white experts and spreading misinformation about sharks.
The Washington Post did not disappoint in its full embrace of the racialist take on this popular entertainment event.
The programming featured more White experts and commentators named “Mike” than women, said David Shiffman, a conservationist at Arizona State University who was a co-author of the study.“When there are hundreds of people of color interested who work in this field, [and] when my field is more than half women, maybe it’s not an accident anymore that they’re only featuring White men,” Shiffman said.Discovery did not respond to a request for comment on the study’s findings. The company told NBC Boston that it wouldn’t comment on a study “that has yet to pass any scientific approvals” after a preliminary version was presented 2021. It has since undergone a scientific review, [Allegheny College biology professor Lisa] Whitenack said.
Though Discovery did not comment, the Washington Post did locate another race-focused group to comment.
The piece quoted Minorities in Shark Sciences co-founder and biologist Carlee Bohannon, who praised the study for “putting numbers to her and her colleagues’ long-standing concerns about diversity in both the media and shark science.”Bohannon stated, “We all grew up seeing one type of person on TV. ‘Shark Week’ was really the biggest thing, and it was always filled with White men.”
The article began with a sob story about Whitenack’s experience growing up, apparently not seeing enough white women ias “role models”. She was this lead research for this inanity.
The social media responses to her retweet of the piece reflect what many of us are feeling, I am sure.
Perhaps if Whitenack and her posse were truly interested in protecting sharks, her team might spend more time attacking the Chinese Fishing Fleet rather than a group of entertainers and credential scientists (white and otherwise) who want to make science just a little more fascinating using drama and special effects.
Last week, a Mongabay investigation revealed a massive illegal shark finning operation across the fleet of Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), which has claimed to be China’s largest supplier of sashimi-grade tuna to Japan, a top consumer. According to dozens of interviews with men who worked for the company between 2018 and 2020, its boats used banned gear to deliberately catch and illegally cut the fins off huge numbers of sharks on the high seas even as it caught tuna destined for Japan. The article followed an earlier exposé of widespread labor abuses across the same fleet.Since DOF’s inception in 2000, the buyer of most of its tuna had been Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation and its seafood arm, Toyo Reizo Co. Ltd. Mitsubishi said it suspended that relationship in mid-2020, when the deaths of four Indonesian deckhands from one of DOF’s boats made international headlines. However, the Japanese firm’s two decades as DOF’s most important business partner were critical to the rapid expansion of a fishing company that, former workers said, grew into a major human rights abuser and environmental criminal.
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