Letter to Discovery Founder and President

June 13, 2009

Subject: International Boycott of Shark Week Programs

Mr. John Hendricks, Founder and Chairman,
Mr. David Zaslav, President & CEO,

Dear Sirs,

We, representing The Shark Group, wrote to you in July, 2007, with regards to the inauthentic material shown on Shark Week, portraying sharks as dangerous man-eaters. When your representatives contacted us, after what seemed to be a candid discussion of the problems involved, four of our people spent much time and money to travel to Silversprings, Maryland, to meet with them in your offices.

While at the time it seemed that our points were understood, we have waited to see some results, and found that we were simply ignored. The new programs advertised for Shark Week 2009, make it very clear that you are continuing to use endangered marine animals to provide horror shows for profit, facilitating their mass slaughter with almost no public sympathy, nor protest.

Indeed, Discovery Channel has so effectively convinced their millions of viewers that sharks deserve to be hated, that many people think that sharks should be hunted to extinction.

We have therefore moved to the next step, and launched an International boycott of all of Shark Week's programs until Discovery Communications stops using sharks dishonestly for profit in horror shows, and starts presenting them as the important marine animals that they are, now in danger of extinction.

Yours truly,
Ila France Porcher
Alex Buttigieg
for The Shark Group

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