In a Guardian article this week, Shocking animal rights exposes were nothing of the kind, Fiona Fox (pictured left) of the Science Media Centre attacked the “one sided reporting” of investigations at two animal labs. She admits the BUAV’s evidence is “distressing” and “difficult to watch” but accuses its reports of being “inaccurate, sensational and misleading” and says the stories in the media are “largely untrue”.
The Home Office is clearly biased because it licenses animal labs but even its report on Imperial was highly critical and as a result the licence holder immediately stood down.
Fiona Fox is part of a network of right wing libertarians clustered around the Institute of Ideas and the online magazine called Spiked. They have infiltrated media bodies and made films attacking the green movement and arguing climate change is a hoax. Fiona Fox wrote an article in the nineties that caused outrage among human rights campaigners by denying that there had been a genocide in Rwanda.
Their agenda is pro-capitalism, pro-GM, anti-green and anti-animal rights. According to George Monbiot the Science Media Centre receives funding from Astra Zeneca, Dupont and Pfizer. No wonder, he says, that “Fox has used the Science Media Centre to promote the views of industry and to launch fierce attacks against those who question them.” In his 2003 article in the Guardian he called Fiona Fox, her sister Clare and their cronies a “bizarre and cultish political network” of “the pro-corporate libertarian right”.
Monbiot’s article can be found here: http://www.monbiot.com/2003/12/09/invasion-of-the-entryists/
The Guardian article is here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/07/animal-rights-uk-newspapers-buav?commentpage=2
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