The Daily Telegraph published a story about the absence of Chris Packham and Mark Avery from the Game Fair on their website last Friday evening.
We wrote to the Daily Telegraph as follows on Saturday:
Sir, Your report of our banning from the Game Fair (25 July) is wildly inaccurate – perhaps because you didn’t speak to us. We had both been invited to the Game Fair to be interviewed by a presenter of a pro-shooting news channel. Your report did not mention this and falsely gave the impression that we were planning to gate-crash the gathering. Having been invited weeks ago, we were ‘uninvited’ a couple of days before the event. The organisers of the Game Fair were nervous about an audience hearing our very reasonable views about how game shooting needs to reform to survive. Wild Justice is not an animal rights campaigning group. No Wild Justice directors are involved in a Panorama programme on grouse shooting. We have invited Charlie Jacoby of the Fieldsports Channel to the annual Bird Fair at Rutland Water on Saturday 17 August to ask us the questions that the Game Fair wouldn’t allow to be asked. We hope he can attend.
Chris Packham CBE and Dr Mark Avery
Wild Justice www.wildjustice.org.uk
What the paper has published:
SIR – We had both been invited to the Game Fair (report, July 25) to be interviewed by a presenter of a pro-shooting news channel. Having been invited weeks ago, we were “uninvited” a couple of days before the event. The organisers of the Game Fair were nervous about an audience hearing our very reasonable views about how game shooting needs to reform to survive.Wild Justice is not an animal rights campaigning group. No Wild Justice directors are involved in a Panorama programme on grouse shooting.We have invited Charlie Jacoby of the Fieldsports Channel to the annual Bird Fair at Rutland Water to ask us the questions that the Game Fair wouldn’t allow to be asked.
Chris Packham
Dr Mark Avery
London W1
