Shark shows rely on unethical tactics

The secrets of animal TV: many nature shows rely on unethical tactics:

Extract of interview:

Laurel Neme: Another aspect of the audience deception is the idea of staging the animal fights and consistently depicting certain types of animals, like sharks, as murderous and evil. What is the impact of that?

Chris Palmer: It’s not good. As you know, America and other countries go to United Nations meetings like CITES [the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species] to try to protect endangered species, animals like sharks, bluefin tuna and polar bears. We've been amazed how difficult that is. You'd think it would be fairly simple to get parts of the world to unite to protect sharks, [especially] with shark populations plummeting so severely. But we find it hard. We get outvoted. Why is that? Why isn't there more public support for this? I think one reason is programs like Shark Week that demonize sharks, and so when our representatives go to CITES to try and persuade them to protect sharks, there's not enough public support. People generally think: 'sharks are dangerous, they’re menacing, dark. They’re dangerous. We should get rid of them.' And so, [while] Shark Week does have some good programs and is run by very good people who mean well, in their drive to get ratings, they show sharks as dangerous man-eating monsters. And this is not good. I'm not saying every program is like that on Shark Week, but for the most part [they are]. The reason that it gets high ratings, the reason that key demographic males ages 21 to 36 tune is, is that they want to see mayhem and murder and blood and attacks. It is in the commercial interest of the network to promote Shark Week as showing exciting, dramatic, dangerous pictures and stories about sharks. This is not good.

We need to have more programs that show the true nature of sharks. We now know we can swim outside shark cages with Great Whites without any trouble at all. We know sharks are far less dangerous than we used to think, even the so-called dangerous sharks like Bull sharks and Great Whites and Tiger sharks, that have been know to attack people. Most shark species do not attack. There are three or four [species] like Bull sharks that have a reputation for being dangerous, but we know that, even with those sharks, you can swim with them now quite safely outside shark cages. So, these animals are not as dangerous as you've been led to believe by Shark Week, and I think Discovery has a responsibility and they know this too. They’re trying to balance the desire to promote conservation with the desire to get high ratings. But I think Discovery needs to lean its weight more towards conservation and portraying animals in an accurate responsible scientific way.


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