#Peddling in gossip does not make you a credible source

[ihazyourkitty]

For those of you who, like me, strongly disagree with Blackfish, most of you are probably aware of SeaWorld’s 69 point rebuttal here.

What you may not be aware of is Blackfish’s rebuttal to that rebuttal. In an effort to try and be balanced, I went and read it. Personally, I found most of their points to be underwhelming at best, and at worst some of the biggest piles of disingenuous brain rot I can think of in recent memory.

Needless to say, I do not have the time to go through each and every point here. I will simply address the common themes I noticed: TL;DR: they continually shifted goal posts, doubled down on their misrepresentation of facts/science/the OSHA hearing, and “excuse me, are you questioning the veracity of our eyewitness accounts!?” (Um. Yes…. yes we are)

You know what, at least SeaWorld cited their sources! These guys just expect us to take their word for it. This gets particularly galling when it's in reference to ex-trainers involved. “Trust us, we interviewed dozens of ex trainers! They all told us the same thing!” Did they? Because Mark Simmons and Bridgette Pirtle would like to have a word with you about that. Kyle Kittleson also has some thoughts.

See, by dozens of ex trainers, they pretty much mean Jeff Ventre, Dean Gomershall, Kim Ashdown, John Jett, Carol Ray, Samantha Berg, and John Hargrove.... the same ex-employees featured in the film. It’s certainly plausible that they interviewed others who wished to remain anonymous, but there’s no way to verify that. Anyone can say “well I’ve talked to an anonymous source, and they said X!” but unless you can independently verify that information, for all you know they’re just peddling gossip, if not outright lies.

That is precisely the problem with Blackfish. Even if we assume that the aforementioned individuals aren’t being outright dishonest, most of their information is coming second or third hand. Meanwhile the firsthand accounts they do provide either come from decades ago, contradict independent fact checking, and/or even contradict one another. These are not trivial things. It never seems to occur to these filmmakers that human memory can be flawed, especially when recalling information further back in time, or when retelling stuff heard through the grapevine. This is why things like cross examination exist.

What further complicates all of this is that each of the ex-trainers featured in Blackfish (Mark Simmons excepted) have an obvious anti-SW/cap agenda through which they are filtering the information they're providing. This info is then filtered even further by the film's very conscious, manipulative editing choices. Scrutinizing these things are not irrelevant cheap shots... it's perfectly fair game, and an important part of media literacy.

Still, we are expected to just take Ventre, Hargrove, et al. at their word, because listen, they worked at SeaWorld ya'll, and they've talked with other people there too, so they would know! Except that when Blackfish is confronted with other current/former employees who are pro-SeaWorld, oh no no no no, their accounts cannot be trusted! Of course they'd want you believe the orcas are happy, right? Never mind that they largely had more experience and expertise than the Blackfish brigade, or that some of them actually worked with Tilikum, or were the spotters who were ACTUALLY THERE when Dawn Brancheau was killed. Never mind that, again, SeaWorld has provided documents in their rebuttal that corroborates what they're saying. Nope nope nope, we can't trust them, because they have a conflict of interest, just like we can't trust anything any zoos say about animal welfare. Of course they'd want us to believe their animals are happy, right?

Except that bias is not the same thing as conflict of interest, and come on Blackfish, you can't have it both ways! Dr. Naomi Rose is part of the Animal Welfare Institute and Humane Society of the United States, both of which are ideologically opposed to animals in zoos, cetaceans in particular. Dr. Lori Marino is part of the Nonhuman Rights Project, another organization ideologically opposed to captivity. Samantha Berg, Carol Ray, and Howard Garrett were plaintiffs along with PETA, Ingrid Visser, and Ric O'Barry in a 2011 federal lawsuit against SeaWorld-- alleging that Tilikum, Katina, Corky Kasatka and Ulises were being held captive in violation of the 13th amendment.

All of that indicates that these individuals have a vested interest in convincing you that captivity=bad. But somehow, somehow, NONE OF THAT constitutes a conflict of interest? Is having an obvious bias or agenda only bad when pro-SW people do it?

What this creates is an unfalsifiable position shielding itself from criticism. This then begs the question..... What sort of expert would be an acceptable voice in SW's favor? If the evidence provided by SW's 69 point refutation isn't enough, then what would be enough for these people?

Case in point: their assertion that SW didn't properly disclose Tilikum's history to its trainers, or that it didn't do its own investigation of what happened to Keltie Byrne at Sealand of the Pacific.

Except that SW did inform trainers that Tilikum was involved in that fatal incident, and they had special safety protocols in place for him precisely because of that history. Those documents are there, cited in the SW response. So instead the Blackfish team shifted the goalposts. Well, they didn't tell them the full story, you see!

What full story? I'm sorry, were you expecting them to get into every single nitty gritty, gory detail of the event? But in truth, that's not what they meant. What they meant was that SW didn't disclose information that aligned with what Blackfish concluded about Keltie Byrne's death... that Tilikum was the instigator who pulled her in. He did it, he killed Keltie Byrne!!!

Except that that's not what the verdict from the coroner's jury concluded. According to witnesses, Byrne slipped and fell in, whereupon the whales grabbed her and would not let her leave. It was not clear which whale started it. This was the verdict that SeaWorld relied on when acquiring Tilikum. So, they shift goalposts again: "Well, according to the OSHA hearing, SW admitted that they didn't do their own investigation of what happened!"

.....okay? I'm sorry, but why should they have? They already had the investigation from the coroner's inquest. Did SW somehow have investigative means that the coroner didn't? By what authority could SW have conducted this? What, were they supposed to consider, and then include in official memos, training documents and SOP's, theories that contradicted the official coroner's investigation? Does the Blackfish team seriously not realize how unprofessional, if not potentially legally problematic, such a thing would have been?

Fundamentally, SW did disclose precisely what the trainers needed to know... that he was involved in the death of Keltie Byrne, then later Daniel Dukes, and as such no one should be in the water with Tilikum, ever, for their own safety.

And here's the really dumb thing here: on the one hand, SW didn't do their own investigation of the Sealand incident, but also they apparently knew how dangerous Tilikum was, and covered it up? Huh!? Again, you can't have this both ways!!!

But suppose SW did do their own investigation, or did include more comprehensive information on Keltie Byrne's death. Would that have satisfied the Blackfish team? Because I'm pretty sure they would still be accusing them of shoddy management.

Again, they are operating from a foregone conclusion ("Tilikum was known to be a dangerous killer who killed Keltie Byrne, and SW covered it up"), and are thus contorting the facts to suit that premise...

Then there's this:

I'm sorry, but accusing someone of lying because what they're saying doesn't add up with the evidence at hand IS NOT AN AD HOMINEM ATTACK!!!

Samantha Berg worked primarily with dolphins and belugas. Her experience at Shamu Stadium amounted to 1 year, and it's extremely unlikely that she was signed off to start doing waterworks in that time, given how much training it takes to even get approved to start interacting with the whales at all, let alone get in the water with them. Blackfish claimed it was "an event to which many bore witness", so okay... who were the witnesses??? Who has corroborated this!? Again, they're expecting us to just take them at their word here, and if you question the veracity of their interviewees, well how dare you!

Oh, and in another point they said there's no way Berg could have seen the internal memo on Tilikum's history because it was released in January 1993 and she was there in 1992.... except that she didn't leave SeaWorld until August 1993, well after that memo was released. Why the obfuscation here Blackfish?

As for the practice of using b-roll footage, yes that is a standard film-making technique. BUT... that doesn't make what they did a benign choice either. For one thing, it's not like the movie clarified who the trainer was in that footage, nor was it framed as just a generic clip. Second, well... let me just quote what Holly Byrd said about this: "that was two years of my career leading up to that point that they twisted and took from me."

Holly Byrd worked hard to get to where she could start doing waterworks. Blackfish reduced this down to just a bunch of uneducated dupes being able to swim well and look good, and they used this b-roll footage to achieve that effect. This is bad enough for trainers in general, but when you consider who the victim is here (a woman, whose education and training gets completely erased by Blackfish's framing), it's also incredibly sexist, IMO.

Lastly, Blackfish's response concludes by saying that no, it did actually consider all the evidence, and thus Blackfish was born. Gabriella Copperwaith, allegedly, went in wanting to make one movie, but then came out with this because something, something, evidence was, something, something, captivity=bad.

Except that this is kind of backwards. You see, Copperwaithe was inspired by Tim Zimmerman's Killer in the Pool, which also questioned the ethics of cetaceans in captivity. She also initially questioned SW's ponytail narrative. These were the circumstances in which she began her work on the documentary. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind you, everyone gets inspiration from somewhere... but what's disingenuous here is pretending that all they did was "look at the facts" and then conclude that captivity=bad, when in fact they started with that conclusion.

Copperwaithe didn't just look at the facts, she looked at them as framed by someone else, and then made a movie about it. They claim Copperwaithe isn't an activist, Blackfish wasn't a piece of activism, and that animal rights groups were not involved in the production. Except that's not entirely true. Copperwaithe can claim she's not an activist, but that doesn't change what Blackfish itself is. Nor does it change the fact that Lori Marino, Naomi Rose, and Howard Garrett are all outspoken activists who were heavily involved in the film, or that their favorite ex-trainers have collaborated with organizations like PETA.

Oh, but don't worry. They're not activists. You can trust them. Sure.

They allege that SeaWorld didn't directly refute Blackfish's claim that orcas are ill-suited for captivity. Here's the thing though: like them or hate them, the burden of proof here is not on SeaWorld... ultimately it's on the Blackfish team. Over and over again in that document, Blackfish alleges that the evidence they've provided is enough, because "trainers X, Y and Z said so!" However, Blackfish merely insulated itself inside an echo chamber of like minded people, and then sold it to the public as an expose grounded scientific consensus. Except that this isn't actually settled science, there are researchers on both sides of the debate, and plenty of current and former trainers dispute what's in Blackfish. In truth, the issue of captivity is not so black and white.

So when SeaWorld and others then rightly highlighted the inaccuracies of the film and questioned the reliability of these ex-trainers, all Blackfish could do was double down. They don't present any new evidence. They didn't meaningfully back up their original claims beyond appealing to the authority of people like Rose, Marino, or Visser. As for their favorite ex-trainers, their defense is that even if they didn't see something directly, well, they've got connections with people on the inside, and those people told them all about it! In other words... gossip..... they're expecting us to believe gossip.

This is not meeting the burden of proof. It just isn't.

If you're still skeptical of SeaWorld, that's fine. I'm not asking you to accept their claims at face value either. But a skeptical analysis of Blackfish and the effects it has had is seriously absent from public discourse. It shouldn't be.