Gulf News is like a pit-bull on strychnine with this Sammy The Shark story: they've got their jaws clamped on its leg and they're not letting go. It's rapidly turning into a case study media nightmare.
Today's soaraway kilo of dead tree has got a story that is going to escalate the whole thing beyond reason: The Atlantis Hotel was apparently actively searching for a whale shark to put in its aquarium and Sammy was nabbed on purpose!
It's a pretty damning story, if it's true. Gulf News asserts that the 'rescue' story was a lie, that fishermen were sent out to collect specimens of Gulf aquatic fauna to populate the hotel's aquariums and that Sammy was one of a number of fish that were 'caught to order'.
Given the slightly dodgy sounding circumstances of the shark's 'rescue', Gulf News must have felt it was on pretty safe ground with this one.
It's almost good enough to forgive them for dubbing the brute 'Sammy'. The key will be whether Gulf News can keep this story going - and whether this latest revelation will be picked up by other news media.
4 comments:
sounds fishy indeed
*Sniff sniff*
Yup, something's fishy in there.
According to X-ray Mag Issue #26, Page 26, the whale shark is called Sheikha, and they're running with the thank-god-it-was-rescued-in-time spiel.
Perhaps Atlantis isn't responding to all the hoohaa because they haven't got a shark called Sammy? ;-)
International Herald Tribune picked the story up,it's all over Dubai Eye radio and all the animal welfare groups are on the case so it'll keep going for a while.
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