Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 18:40:49 -0400
Reply-To: [p--t--n] at [utdallas.edu]
From: [p--t--n] at [utdallas.edu]
Subject: (fwd) ABC Trash Journalism-Unabomber and Earth First!?? (fwd)

I love it the left gets a tase of the media the same as the Milita=guns=crime
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <[e--e] at [envirolink.org]>
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 20:43:01 -0800
>From: EARTHFIRST! <[earthfir s t] at [igc.apc.org]>
To: [e--c] at [envirolink.org]
Subject: emergency posting

-------------------

An Open Letter to ABC Network News from the Earth First!
Journal

 On Friday, April 5, the ABC news program World News Tonight
with Peter Jennings aired a report linking the non-violent
environmental group Earth First! with Theodore Kaczynski, the
alleged Unabomber. The piece was riddled with distortions and
inaccuracies, and can only be described as a hit piece on
Earth First! and the environmental movement. ABC's
sensationalistic coverage has done serious damage to the
reputation of the Earth First! movement, based on the word of
Barry Clausen, an individual employed by the timber industry.

The ABC hit piece begins with footage of an Earth First!
protest circa 1988. A group of people are shown in the midst
of a chaotic scene of violence; fists are flying, people are
screaming. The imagery, which sets the stage for the rest of
the piece, is clear: these people are violent, crazed
extremists. The real story behind this footage, however,
provides quite a different context. That day, two protestors,
in an act of civil disobedience, had locked themselves by the
neck to a logging road gate. In the moments just prior to the
footage aired, these activists had been attacked by loggers,
and were dragged by their necks in an attempt to open the
gate. The decontextualized footage aired by ABC showed other
activists attempting to intervene in order to protect their
friends. The person throwing punches was one of the loggers,
although ABC does not mention this.

ABC bases its allegation of a Unabomber-Earth First! link on
two flimsy pieces of information. The first is Kaczynski's
alleged presence at, as ABC calls it, "a meeting which top
level members of Earth First! attended, at the University of
Montana." In fact, this "meeting" was actually an
environmental conference sponsored by the Native Forest
Network, a grassroots environmental group working to protect
temperate forests worldwide. Over four hundred people
attended, including environmentalists from Poland, Scotland,
England, Chile, Mexico, Canada and Australia. Even
representatives from the US Forest Service attended the
conference. Activists associated with Earth First! also
attended the event, but had no role in the conference
proceedings. Kacyznski's alleged presence at the conference
(his name does not appear on the conference registration list)
links him to Earth First! no more than it links him to the US
Forest Service.

(The most interesting fact presented in the story, completely
glossed over by ABC, was news of an FBI list of conference
attendees. Is attending environmental conferences an activity
now considered suspicious by our government? The November,
1994, conference occurred before excerpts of the Unabomber
manifesto were released which linked the Unabomber to
environmentalism.)

The second piece of information is ABC's contention that two
of the Unabomber's victims were on "Eco-Fuckers Hit List"
published by, in ABC's words, "a radical environmental
journal." (This is the motto in the masthead of the Earth
First! Journal.) A quick shot of the hit-list page was
followed by a quote from Leslie Hemstreet, a member of the
editorial staff of the Earth First! Journal. In the quote,
Hemstreet says something like "We cannot be held responsible
for what Theodore Kaczynsky may have done with any information
he may have gotten from us, because if he had read our journal
thoroughly, he would've seen that we are completely dedicated
to non-violence."

The inference could not be clearer: The Earth First! Journal
published the hit list. Yet this is false, and ABC knew that
it was false. (An underground anarchist/environmental
publication called Live Wild Or Die actually printed the hit
list.) Roxanne Bezjian, the freelance reporter who interviewed
Hemstreet for ABC, told the Journal after complaints about the
coverage that she made it very clear to Brian Ross and Dave
Rommel, the correspondent and producer of the piece,
respectively, that the Journal had not printed the hit list.
And while ABC never directly says the Earth First! Journal
printed the list, the inference was strong enough to provoke
phone calls to the Earth First! Journal office with people
screaming that we are terrorists directly responsible for the
Unabomber's actions.

ABC further distorted the story by claiming that both of the
victims appeared on the hit-list roster. The two corporations
that ABC is referring to as appearing on the list (the list
was composed of corporations) are the California Forestry
Association and Exxon. Thomas Mosier, one of the Unabomber's
victims that ABC cites as being part of the hit list, worked
not for Exxon, but for the public relations firm
Burson-Marstellar. ABC claims that Mosier was connected to
Exxon because Exxon was a client of Burson-Marstellar.
However, Burson-Marstellar, one of the largest public
relations firms in the world, has numerous clients. Whether
Mosier ever worked on anything related to Exxon is unclear.

Perhaps the most outrageous aspect of the hit piece is ABC's
source of information, Barry Clausen, who appears in the
piece. Clausen is a paid informant of the timber industry
whose livelihood depends on an audience interested in Earth
First!. Clausen has made a cottage industry for himself
travelling to rural areas on speaking engagements paid for by
"wise use" groups and the timber industry. The subject of his
speeches is his claimed infiltration of Earth First!, and how
Earth First! "terrorists" are attempting to destroy jobs, the
economy and the whole of civilization.

Barry Clausen is not a credible source. He is a wannabe
informant who has been rejected as unreliable by every law
enforcement agency he has tried to work with. These include
the Sheriffs of both Park County and Madison County in
Montana, the US Forest Service in Montana, Washington and
California, the US Marshall and the FBI. Clausen has also
been rejected by private agencies including a private
investigator in Seattle, Washington, and the securtity
department of McDonald's hamburger chain.

FBI agent Horace Newborn, in charge of the Domestic Terrorism
Unit at the FBI's headquarters in Washington DC, also
characterizes Clausen as unreliable. In a sworn deposition
Newborn stated about Clausen, "I think what we did is we did
some other agency checks with Clausen. His name came up in
other places, and we did some other agency checks, and they
said he was not reliable."

This rejection (except Newborn's) is documented in Clausen's
own book, Walking on the Edge: How I Infiltrated Earth First!,
published by the Washington Contract Loggers Association,
either in the form of direct conversations or by the agencies'
refusal to grant Clausen and his partner Joanne immunity.

ABC's portrayal of Earth First! as violent is totally
contradicted by the history of Earth First! activism. In the
sixteen years since Earth First!'s formation the only people
to have been injured as a result of Earth First! activities
have been Earth First!ers themselves. Earth First! activists
have all too often been the victims of violence. Activists
have had their houses burned down, been shot at, and beaten
up. In 1990, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were bombed in their
car while organizing for Redwood Summer, an Earth First!
campaign to protect California's redwoods. (Their lawsuit
against the FBI for wrongful prosecution and harrassment is
still pending.) ABC's irresponsible portrayal of Earth First!
as violent terrorists legitimates such heinous attacks.

The damage done by ABC's hit piece on Earth First! is
tremendous. Hard working environmental activists, who
regularly place their bodies on the line to protect the earth,
should not be subjected to such blather. This is especially
true in light of the "logging without laws" timber salvage
rider, which makes salvage logging operations above the law
on US public lands. We have better things to do with our time
than respond to such outrageous allegations.

The Earth First! Journal is asking for people to call Rhonda
Schwartz, Senior Producer of World News Tonight, to complain
about ABC's irresponsible, sensationalistic reporting. You may
reach her at (404) 874-0380.


---
"To realize that you do not understand is a virtue;
Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect."
 Lao-Tzu _Tao Teh Ching_

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