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Daily Maverick – So, I cancelled my subscription

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The Daily Maverick and the validity of its public commitment:

“To tell the Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”

This begs the question: How do the editors of the Daily Maverick know what they are publishing is the truth – or is not the truth? One man’s meat, after all, is another man’s poison!

Donald Trump surprised the whole world when he became president of the United States, by sending out countless ‘tweets’ on social media to get across his good-governance points of view to the American people. And why did he do that? He did that because he could not rely on the American media to tell the truth ‘about anything’. And I can understand his frustration.

Here, in sunny South Africa, we are in much the same predicament. We are running the proverbial gauntlet trying to impress upon the public that sustainable-use wildlife-management is the way to save our wildlife heritage from extinction. And running right alongside us is a bunch of do-gooder animal rightists whose purpose in life is ‘to abolish all animal uses by man’. The ideologies of both these opposing forces claim that their objectives are the right ones. Who, therefore, does the Daily Maverick quote? Which one is telling the truth? I believe the Daily Maverick editors can’t answer either of these two questions because they are not equipped to make a judgment call one way or the other. So, in this case, the Daily Maverick – in stating that they will forever tell ‘the truth’ – is actually blowing smoke up all our trousers. And it suggests that the Daily Maverick has an animal rights doctrine bias.

I actually subscribed to the Daily Maverick and paid my dues as a “Maverick Insider” and I wrote an article in rebuttal of statements made by one, Don Pinnock, an arch animal rightist who is forever having his animal rightist propaganda published in that newspaper. I complained and I was told by the editor that nowhere does he guarantee that my articles would ever be published. That happened a second time. So, I cancelled my subscription and, like Donald Trump did, I started to issue tweets to the public to get my TRUE conservation message across. I was, and am, totally unprepared to pay the Daily Maverick my good money, to keep that newspaper afloat for the purpose of providing a media platform for ‘the enemy’ – the animal rights brigade – to publish its “conservation lies”.

It seems that in South Africa today, there are very few newspapers that are prepared to publish articles that contradict untrue statements made by the animal rightists; or that are prepared to publish statements that support hunting and the sustainable-use of our wildlife. The BEELD is another miscreant.

This is a sorry indictment on the state of free speech in South Africa today. And it does not bode well for the future of our wildlife industry.

So, guys and dolls, let’s abandon the Daily Maverick and the BEELD, and:

“Let’s Tweet Again,

Like we did last summer!”

 

Ron Thomson. CEO- TGA

Ron Thomson

I am NOT a ‘trophy hunter’ - and never have been. I am not involved in the trophy hunting safari business. I am also not a game rancher. But I have ‘administratively controlled’ professional hunters and safari outfitters in my capacity as a government game warden. I am an 80 year old ex-game warden with 60 years of continuous experience in hands-on wildlife management, and national park management, in Africa (1959 to 2019). In breakdown, I have 24 years experience in the management of national parks in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe - and in the management of the wild animal populations that lived inside those national parks; one year as the Chief Nature Conservation of the Ciskei in South Africa; three years as Director of the Bophuthatswana National Parks Board in South Africa; and I worked for three years as a professional hunter in the South African Great Karoo (taking foreign hunters on quests for plains game trophies). I discovered, however, that professional hunting was not my forte. I worked as an investigative wildlife journalist for 30 years in South Africa. I have written fifteen books and hundreds of magazine articles on the subject of wildlife management and big game hunting in Africa. Five of my books are university-level text books on wildlife management. I am a university-trained ecologist; was a member of the Institute of Biology (London) for 20 years; and was a registered chartered biologist for the European Union for 20 years. I have VAST experience in the “management hunting” of elephants, buffaloes, lions, leopards and hippos (as part of my official national park work in the control of problem animals); and I pioneered the capture of black rhino in Zimbabwe’s Zambezi Valley (1964 - 1970). My university thesis was entitled: “The Factors Affecting the Survival and Distribution of Black Rhinos in Rhodesia”. Look at my personal website if you want any further details about my experience: www.ronthomsonshuntingbooks.co.za.

Ron Thomson has 280 posts and counting. See all posts by Ron Thomson

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