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December 18, 2007
CNN: Not quite a hero
A few days ago, I blogged about the CNN Hero Awards and my personal favorite, Pablo Fajardo. In the meantime, Pablo won for the Fighting for Justice category. Also in the meantime, my post drew a note with disturbing information from Amazon Watch Managing Director Paul Paz y Mino, with whom Pablo has worked to stop Chevron (formerly Texaco) from polluting the Ecuadorian Amazon.
According to Amazon Watch, after Pablo was named the winner, CNN caved into pressure from Chevron to remove its name and other information from the network's website. Amazon Watch is not the only one that says so. An article in The New York Post also states that
“CNN never named Chevron, a big advertiser on CNN, as the oil company. While the CNN Web site has "How to Help" links for all the other "heroes," the link to chevrontoxico.com, the Web site of Fajardo's Amazon Defense Coalition, was removed two days before the show aired. “
After several days, CNN has reinstated the link, including the reference to Chevron. While I agree with CNN that they should not take sides on legal disputes (that’s what blogs are for, after all), it is crucial to provide all information about the case to the public.
Amazon Watch also states that during a live CNN broadcast, Pablo, who speaks Spanish, named Chevron several times, but the company's name was left out by the network's English interpreter. To read more about Pablo’s struggles with Chevron, please check out this web site. Thank you, Paul, for bringing this to our attention.