How to Identify "Fake News"

A story that appeared to report a terrible incident in which 16 members of a Japanese whaling crew were eaten alive by orcas (killer whales) was published in the satirical website "World News Daily Report.” Although most people visiting the site and seeing this story probably could recognize it as satire, when it was retweeted and posted on various social media sites it was mistaken by many people as a true story.

World Daily News Report (2014, May 7). Japanese Whaling Crew Eaten Alive By Killer Whales, 16 dead. Retrieved June 30, 2018, from https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/japanese-whaling-crew-eaten-alive-by-killer-whales-16-dead/

Using the excellent list of criteria for how to evaluate sources, from New Mexico State University Library (http://nmsu.libguides.com/c.php?g=381561&p=2585271), we can see that the most important question for quickly assessing the truthfulness of the killer whale story comes under the heading “Scope, Coverage & Relevance”: Who is the intended audience? Fortunately, the reader can find the answer to this question easily by scrolling to the bottom of the page where it says “World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content.” This tells us that the content is meant to amuse and entertain. After we know the purpose of the website questions about “authority” (i.e., the credentials of the author), the timeliness of the content, and issues related to bias, accuracy and quality are all irrelevant.

What may have led some people who read the article quickly to be fooled by it was that there was plenty of factual information about Japan’s whaling operations mentioned. Just to name a few, the factory ship was identified as the Nisshin Maru (which is accurate), and it was also correctly noted that Japan had lost a ruling in the international court forcing them to stop whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

If one did a Google search for information about killer whales eating members of a Japanese whaling crew, an article would be found from the fairly respectable British newspaper, Independent, with the headline “Japanese whaling crew 'eaten alive by killer whales, 16 dead' story definitely a hoax.” This shows the importance of checking outside sources. The Independent article points out how unlikely it would be for a representative of Greenpeace to say the following: "It seems that Japan just doesn’t give a damn about international law. The waste of life is always a shame, but the whales are not to blame here, they were only doing what they are born to do: kill for food." There were also spelling and grammatical errors in the article that should have hinted that something was wrong.

Below is a reference to the article in the Independent identifying the article as a hoax:

Eleftheriou-Smith, L. (2014, July 31). Japanese whaling crew 'eaten alive by killer whales, 16 dead' story definitely a hoax. Independent.co.jp. Retrieved June 30, 2018, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/japanese-whaling-crew-eaten-alive-by-killer-whales-16-dead-story-definitely-a-hoax-9639959.html

Disturbingly, some of those who had believed the story after seeing it reposted on Facebook or retweeted on Twitter thought that the Japanese whalers got what they deserved and rejoiced.

Using the Corpus "COCA" For Insights about Whaling

I searched on COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English—https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/) for the occurrences, —within 4 spots of each other—of when the word “Japanese" collocates with “whaling.” In total 41 such collocations were found. Thirty in academic contexts, five in news, and three in spoken English, while only one was found in fiction. This was a fairly low occurrence rate in a corpus comprised of more than half a billion words.

It was discovered that all of the ones from academic contexts were found in either of two articles that were published in the years 2000 and 2002. Some further research revealed that the articles came from two issues of the same academic journal, one that is based in America but focuses on Asian affairs. These are the citations of the articles:

BAILEY, J; MCKAY, B. Are Japanese Attitudes Toward Whaling America-Bashing? A Response to Tanno and Hamazaki. Asian Affairs: An American Review. 29, 3, 148, Sept. 2002. ISSN: 00927678.

TANNO, D; HAMAZAKI, T. Is American Opposition to Whaling Anti-Japanese?. Asian Affairs: An American Review. 27, 2, 81, June 2000. ISSN: 00927678.

The article by the Japanese co-authors contends that American ethnocentrism and an anti-Japanese bias led to negative  feelings by Americans toward Japanese whaling operations. They also claim that Japan was singled out for its whaling activities even though Iceland and Norway also conducted their own annual whaling expeditions. Tanno and Hamazaki charge that environmental groups such as Greenpeace tend to focus their protests on Japan instead of the Western countries that also engage in whaling, which they believe amounts to Japan bashing.

In response to the Tanno and Hamazaki article, Bailey and McKay convincingly counter that Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and other environmental NGOs have extensively protested against the whaling of Western countries such as Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. They assert that Japan was not exclusively targeted. In fact, Sea Shepherd sunk the Norwegian whaling vessel Willassen Senior in 2007, something it never did to a Japanese whaling vessel. Not to justify their actions, but this is evidence that the pressure put on Japan’s whaling was not evidence of any sort of racism or “Japan bashing.”

The news stories that were found in COCA ranging from 2010 to 2014, concerned the threatened legal measures taken by Australia against Japan to halt Japan’s Antarctic whaling program, which Japan was claiming to be necessary for scientific purposes. When Japan did not respond to the pressure put on it by Australia, the Australian government sued Japan in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. In 2014, a decision was made against Japan in the court. It was found that “Japan’s program failed to justify the large number of minke whales it takes under its [then] current Antarctic program.”

Because the academic articles that the COCA samples came from fell on both sides of the whaling issue, they were balanced in their stances. Only a few of them showed some bias:

* Sympathetic toward the Japanese (in the face of aggression tactics by the conservation group Sea Shepherd (3)

* Expresses opinion that environmental NPOs are more likely to target Japanese whaling operations than Norwegian ones. (2)

* Siding with environmentalists or with countries opposing whaling (pointing out that the Japanese whaling industry is heavily subsidized and “scientific whaling” a guise for commercial whaling) (3)

Iceland and Norway are in the company of Japan in terms of Whaling

Four days ago, the whaling season opened for Icelandic whaling operations. Authorities in Iceland granted a quota of 161 fin whales (one species of large whales) to whalers in 2018. Since they didn’t reach their quota last year they are allowed to kill as many as 191 fin whales, which are an endangered species. They consider it economically worthwhile to hunt whales because Japan has loosened up its restrictions on imports of whale meat from Iceland. This is a strange decision on Japan’s part because Japanese consumers cannot even eat all the whale meat that is the result of Japan’s whaling industry (disguised as “scientific whaling”).

Fin whales are huge whales that are much bigger than the minke whales that make up the majority of the ones Japanese whaling ships kill in the Southern Ocean. The diagram I’m attaching to this posting shows the relative size of the various species of whales, dolphins, and other Cetaceans.



The article in the Guardian reveals that it is mostly curious tourists in Iceland who eat whale meat at restaurants and only 35.4% of Icelanders said they supported the fin whale hunt in a poll taken in October of 2017.  Just like in Japan, environmental and animal rights groups in Iceland insist that the decision to kill whales isn’t based on “real market needs” and doesn’t reflect public opinion on whaling. It seems to be done just to keep a dying industry alive and for reasons of nostalgia. To kill harmless creatures for such reasons is senseless and cruel.

Boffey, D. (2018, April 18). Iceland sets target of 191 kills as country resumes whaling. Retrieved June 14, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/18/iceland-sets-target-of-191-kills-as-country-resumes-whaling

Japan continues to violate the 2014 ruling of the International Court of Justice

This is a summary of two stories about the 2017 Whale Hunt by Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean. One of them was a Reuters wire service story that ran in the Japan Times online paper just after the Japanese whaling fleet set off from Shimonoseki (in November). It reported how the Australian Prime Minister was “deeply disappointed” in Japan’s continued whaling operations. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull brought up the issue with Shinzo Abe when they met in Sydney during a January 2017 meeting. The Australian Environment Minister, Josh Frydenberg, reminded everyone that Japan’s pretext for its continued whaling was fraudulent because “It is not necessary to kill whales in order to study them.”

Reuters. (2017, January 16). Australia disappointed by Japan’s whale hunt in Southern Ocean. Japan Times. Retrieved June 8, 2017, from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/16/national/politics-diplomacy/australia-disappointed-japans-whale-hunt-southern-ocean/#.WTjFrsklGRs

The second article came from a French wire service called Agence France-Presse. It reported on the return of the Japanese whaling fleet from the Southern Ocean to Shimonoseki after it caught 333 minke whales which was in violation of a worldwide moratorium (since 1986) on catching whales and was strongly opposed by Australia and New Zealand.

Agence France-Presse. (2017, March 31). Japan kills more than 300 whales in annual Antarctic hunt. The Guardian. Retrieved June 8, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/31/japan-kills-whales-annual-antarctic-hunt

MacArthur encouraged Japanese to do large-scale whaling

Wingfield-Hayes, R. (2016, February 8). Japan and the whale. Retrieved June 01, 2016, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35397749

This BBC article by Wingfield-Hayes is excellent in that it puts Japanese whaling in historical and cultural perspective, but it also brings up some interesting facts which few people are aware of. One thing I learned from the article was that although Japan had done small scale COASTAL whaling for centuries, it was General Douglas MacAuthur who, after the 2nd World War, encouraged Japan to transform two gigantic US Navy tankers into factory ships that were capable of sailing to the Southern Ocean to catch whales. From the end of the war until the mid 1960s whale meat was the main source of meat that was eaten in Japan. According to the article at “its peak in 1964 Japan killed more than 24,000 whales in one year.”

So, whaling did play an important role in feeding a hungry Japan after the War. The problem is that these days whaling does not provide any economic or nutritional benefit to Japan. On the contrary, the Japanese taxpayer subsidies almost the full cost of the so-called research whaling that continues to be done. Unlike the coastal whaling that is truly traditional in Japan and goes back hundreds of years, the minke and fin whales caught in the Southern Ocean (Antartica) is done in a very non-traditional way…using factory ships and harpoon cannons mounted on the bows. Some of the whales caught, such as the fin whale, are on CITES endangered species list of animals that are banned for hunting and commerce.

Way does Japan continue to send ships half-way around the world to slaughter whales? The article provides interesting insight into this question. Politicians representing local areas in Japan that are still involved in whaling, such as Ishinomaki and Taiji, try to protect their local industries in order to get votes. In addition, there are government bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries whose job it is to promote whaling and make research and expedition plans. They do not want to lose their budget or personnel. So, whaling is continuing not mainly for patriotic or cultural reasons, but for political and boring bureaucratic ones.

Questions about whaling

For homework, I asked you and your partner to come up with 30 questions about your controversial issue. Here are some questions that I came up with about my issue:

• How far back does whaling go in Japan? Is it really a part of the Japanese "cultural fabric"
• Do some communities in the world need to do whaling in order to survive?
• If countries such as the US and Portugal have abandoned whaling, despite having done it for hundreds of years, why has Japan found it so difficult to stop whaling?
• Historically, which countries in the world have engaged in whaling?
• Have whales always been caught as a food source or for other reasons?
• Is whale meat fit for human consumption or is it contaminated with mercury, as some scientists claim?
• Does the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries really believe that it's necessary to kill whales in order to know how many of them there are?
• What is the International Whaling Commission and what is its function?
• How many kinds of whales are there in the world? Which ones are threatened or endanger of extinction?
• Is the claim of the Japanese government that whales are partly responsible for the falling catches of fish (because the whales are eating them) justified?
• Is killing whales for food the same as killing cows for food?
• Is it economically profitable to catch whales?
• How much damage to Japan's image, and to the economy, has its whaling program caused?
• What sort of PR has the Japanese government (esp. the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) done to justify their insistence to continue whaling?
• Australia is especially adamant that Japan stop its "research whaling" in the southern ocean. Why is that?
• What sort of actions have environmental (or animal rights) groups taken against countries that still engage in whaling?
• Are extreme actions, such as those by the group Sea Shepherd against Japanese whaling vessels, ever justified?
• Is it hypocritical to eat meat but object to the slaughter (harvesting?) of whales?
• Which whale species have become extinct and did commercial whaling cause their extinction?
• Besides whaling, in what other ways are whales threatened?
• Should we take into account the intelligence of whales when we consider whether or not they should be slaughtered?
• Do whales ever attack humans and, if so, why?

Why is Japan so determined to continue whaling

You may have heard that at the end of March the International Court of Justice demanded that Japan stop its so-called "research whaling" since the court determined that the killing of whales by Japan was not being done for any sort of sound scientific reasons, but was really just commercial whaling in disguise. The Australian government, with the backing of New Zealand brought the case to the International Court. They consider it a big victory. The Japanese government had said they would abide by the ruling and they did; their whaling ships in the Southern Ocean made their way back to Japan. However, CNN reported late last month that Japan ships would resume "research whaling" in the Northwest Pacific. Even though this is a much smaller whaling program, they are still doing what the international Court of Justice ruled against. I was astonished to read on CNN's website that the Asahi Shimbun took a poll and found that 60% of people they questioned believed that "research whaling should continue." Only 23% said the whale hunt shouldn't be carried on anymore. Do so many Japanese really believe that the research whaling is legitimate? Even when the International Court found that it had no basis in science. I'm confused by this. I would like to see the kinds of questions the Asahi Shimbun asked its readers. I suspect that the questions were worded in a biased way.

Wakatsuki, Y., & Brown, S. (2014, April 25). Japanese whaling fleet set to sail despite recent ruling. . Retrieved May 8, 2014, from http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/24/world/asia/japan-whaling/