The more striking thing about the human rights and environmental abuses that occur at sea is not their pervasiveness but their impunity, which is why this recently produced story meant a lot to me. You can read it here.
In 2014, I started investigating this slow-motion slaughter that was caught on camera mostly motivated a sense of incredulity: how could the murder of at least 5 men, caught on film, where there were dozens of witnesses and for which the culprits posed in the end for celebratory selfies go unpunished? If this sort of brazen bloodshed occurred on land, it surely would have met with swift government action and press outcry and yet in this instance police, industry and governments seemed decidedly disinterested.
After nearly year of digging on the incident, we put the matter on the front page of The New York Times and in no small part due to the intrepid work of private investigator named Karsten Von Hoesslin, Taiwanese prosecutors office finally began (in glacially slow pace) to try to arrest the captain who allegedly ordered these killings. In hopes of keeping the pressure on, I put out a number of subsequent reports about new evidence. And finally the Taiwanese arrested the captain late last year.
Among many lessons I see here there’s one about the challenges of public service and investigative journalism in the internet era: even at venues like the Times, which have a longer attention span than many news venues, it is ever more difficult to actually stick with stories (especially the most vexing and egregious of them) long enough to accomplish real impact. Incalcitrant actors — be they bad industries, companies, captains, whomever — know this: hunker down, ride out the bad press, and soon enough the reporter will have to cover something else.
All this to say, I will take the small victories where we can land them and the arrest of this captain is just that (assuming that the evidence corroborates his alleged guilt).
On a wholly different note, but also in the category of good news, The Outlaw Ocean Music Project is a bit too elaborate to explain here but needless to say it is a bizarre and dazzlingly successful experiment that the folks at Synesthesia Media and I launched to meld journalism with music. I sort of expected it to fall flat but to enjoy it nonetheless. Instead it continues to grow.
Last week we recruited Peter Gabriel (personal favorites: Biko and his album Passion). We have a rap album and animated documentary coming out later this year with a bunch of the original cast from Hamilton. And then the folks at The Pulitzer Center called and said they were drawn to the innovation of the project and they wanted to make a short film about it. What they produced turned out great. Watch it here.
That’s all for now.
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