By Pawan Kumar, president of the Seafood Exporters Association of India
As a businessman and a leader in the seafood export trade, I am used to being the one receiving inquiries from news reporters, not the one trying to get them to respond to my own calls and emails. But that’s just what happened in my unsuccessful effort to connect with Associated Press reporter Martha Mendoza in recent days as she rushed to publish a distorted and irresponsible article on Indian seafood exporters.
It began during the recent seafood show in Boston when I received word that Ms. Mendoza was roaming the exhibition confronting our members’ customers with unsubstantiated rumors and accusations about those members’ practices.
Specifically we heard Ms. Mendoza was asking customers of our member company, Nekkanti, about conditions she claimed to have witnessed of workers toiling in dangerous and unsanitary conditions, and being detained for extended periods against their will at onsite dormitories where guards allegedly rarely allowed them to leave.
Like the executives hearing these lurid descriptions, I was deeply concerned. But that reaction turned to incredulity when I learned from my colleagues at Nekkanti that they had never even heard from Ms. Mendoza — not while she was on location in India, nor afterward, nor during the seafood show. That was all the more galling since the facts Nekkanti shared directly contradicted the rumors Ms. Mendoza was spreading.
By piecing together details they were able to gather from others who had spoken to the Associated Press, Nekkanti determined that the location she had observed was not part of Nekkanti’s operations at all–nor did it appear to be part of any shrimp export operation.
Rather it appears to have been from a small company operating only in India’s domestic market, which had merely leased the independent use of several trucks from Nekkanti during Nekkanti’s lean season. In other words, they fingered the wrong company, and falsely and recklessly implicated Nekkanti to its customers, doing real harm.
Mendoza and her AP colleagues were also wrong about dormitories. Nekkanti employees have the option to reside in dormitories at their facilities or can opt instead to commute, which many do. Nearly all have cell phones, ones that contain apps with direct hotlines to government agencies that oversee workplace safety. They routinely come and go from those premises as they wish, as Nekkanti’s documented entry and exit logs demonstrate. Those logs are hard proof because the workers themselves sign in and out. Yes, there are guards on site but that is to protect employees and property, and to prevent unauthorized personnel from gaining entry in what can be dangerous areas. The safety and security of its workers is the primary concern of Nekkanti. Most importantly, In the years Nekkanti has provided those dormitories, not once has any employee filed a complaint that they were held against their will.
But that did not stop Mendoza. In the days following the seafood show, she sent emails to a number of other customers, repeating her accusations and demanding those customers justify their relationship with Nekkanti. Meanwhile, Nekkanti received a reply from Ms. Mendoza only after Nekkanti reached out to her. Nonetheless, Nekkanti promptly gave thorough and substantiated answers to her questions, and you can read that reply here.
I admit that I am not an expert on the U.S. media. But I could not help but wonder: Why would a decorated journalist at a prestigious outlet like Associated Press conduct her reporting in this careless and incautious manner?
Part of the answer may be what’s motivating the reporting itself: money. For years now, AP has been receiving millions of dollars from deep-pocket foundations specifically to conduct investigations of the international seafood trade. They received $2.5 million from one such foundation for seafood investigations last year alone, and as they note at the bottom of the article, that money supported this piece in particular. Many of those same benefactors also lavishly fund a variety of extremist ENGOs and activist groups that are ideologically opposed to the seafood industry.
AP’s reporting here also relies on analysis from an activist group called C.A.L. Neither we nor Nekkanti ever saw that analysis or had any opportunity to respond to its contents prior to publication, though we are reviewing them now and expect to have a great deal more to say about the matter. But that outfit too is privately funded by wealthy donors with their own agendas.
Fair minded journalism is essential, no doubt, but readers should ask what role this funding and the incentives of the funders play in the slant and biases of the resulting work.
An American colleague shared with me this quote from media ethicist Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute, who called this sort of work “an exercise in journalistic agenda setting. They are commissioning journalistic work as emperors and archbishops used to commission concertos,” he wrote. “Mozart did the composing but his benefactors stipulate the size and shape of the thing.”
I found the metaphor of empire an apt one in this case, because the Associated Press’ behavior felt like an act of journo-imperialism. At the behest of wealthy donors in the West, they had targeted a growing industry in the East for destruction with amorphous charges, seemingly without regard for the damage their insinuations will do to the very workers they claim to care about.
Unfortunately the report that was rushed to print just days after we learned of it confirmed my worst suspicions. While AP stopped short of repeating their false accusations against Nekkanti, the entire article made no distinction between independent, domestic shrimp operations and the established export companies like those in our group, which have a longstanding track record of regulatory compliance and high standards.
Instead, AP misleadingly blurred that line to incriminate our members by vague association, for instance by falsely writing that “[i]t is nearly impossible to tell where a specific shrimp ends up, and whether a U.S.-bound shipment has a connection to abusive labor practices.” That is simply not the case. There are stringent regulatory processes in both India and the United States that monitor and oversee that supply chain from start to finish.
Worse yet, by lumping our diligent and responsible companies in with alleged rulebreakers, the result of AP’s could be to drive business away from the companies that are doing things the right way. Again readers would be wise to ask who benefits financially from such a consequence.
As of this writing, Ms. Mendoza and her editors have not so much as replied to any outreach from SEAI. In other words, while the subjects of their reporting have been wholly forthcoming, the Associated Press have been the ones evading scrutiny. In the course of leveling accusations of unethical conduct against an entire industry, it is the Associated Press whose behavior looks most irresponsible.
Pawan Kumar is the president of the Seafood Exporters Association of India, the trade association for the leading seafood exporting companies in that country.