I am disgusted with American journalism. It’s boring. I blame editors for assigning uninteresting stories and interviewees for being evasive. So, for a small fee, I provide journalists with stories that could have happened and quotes that should have been said. Contact me at Customfacts.org.
None of this is true. But if it caught your eye, remember that in most forms of journalism, lies are frowned upon.
Not so with wildlife photojournalism. Liars rule. This irritates me because I work with so many honest wildlife photographers who spend months getting shots that liars get in an hour.
Consider the Finnish story, viral in the US and Europe with 759,000 page views, of a wild wolf and a grizzly bear constantly petting each other. “Unusual friendship” understates a title. “No one can know exactly why or how the young wolf and bear became friends,” the photographer told the magazine. Daily mail.
A person knows. That would be Melissa Groo, a rising star in honest wildlife photojournalism, who is co-chair of the Ethics Committee of the International League of Conservation Photographers. “There is now a big business in northern Europe luring these animals (often with dog food) for photographers,” she says. “I can’t even look at pictures of these animals from Finland anymore.”
Then there is the epic “fight between wolves and grizzlies” over the bloodstained snow in Montana documented by a “nature photographer.” The story was first reported by Sun Y daily mail, then recycled 11,000 times on both sides of the Atlantic. The photos are impressive.
The blood came out of a planted deer carcass. The grizzly bear and wolves were meek performers, jailed by Animals of Montana, an “animal training service” notorious for animal abuse, including illegal wildlife trafficking and violations of the Endangered Species Act. . Prior to 2021, when the state closed Animals of Montana, it was sponsored by some of the world’s most acclaimed “wildlife photographers.” Your website still exists.
The photo game farm animals “spend much of their lives in small cages with concrete floors and just enough room to turn around,” Groo writes in National Wildlife magazine. Some of these game farms, he learned from Freedom of Information requests, are analogous to “domestic puppy mills, which breed and sell wild animals such as wolves, foxes, and bobcats.” Babies are separated from their mothers at young ages and sold to roadside zoos and exotic pet dealers.
Twelve years ago, I considered an undercover visit to Animals of Montana. “Our grizzlies,” his website proclaimed, “will amaze you by running towards the camera, standing on command, growling viciously, or posing cutely.” But the violations already recorded scared me. If I had exposed this equipment, the game farm industry would accuse me of being selective.
Ultimately, I settled on Triple D Wildlife in Kalispell, Montana. (This was before the USDA cited it for various abuses including “dead flies and floating debris” in water bowls, “excessive accumulation of animal droppings and food waste in animal enclosures,” “excessive accumulation and accumulation of dirt, grime, fur, and urine,” as well as declawing a tiger cub).
I felt bad for the wolves who spent most of their lives in a dark, dank enclosure. When I took Big John and Lakota out of Triple D for a “photo shoot,” the other 15 wolves cried. Big John and Lakota reveled in their brief freedom, receiving beef treats thrown by the trainer every time they jumped over logs or pretended to growl viciously. After his romp, Big John rolled onto his back to get his belly rubbed.
“You couldn’t have gotten those shots in the wild,” Triple D co-owner Jay Deist declared angrily after I asked him questions he didn’t like.
He was correct.
Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering lively conversations about the West.