You've heard of the VegNews fiasco by now, right? Luckily for me, the ever-reliable Erik Marcus laid it all out. Quarry Girl spilled the beans a few days ago on VegNews' meaty photos. VegNews uses stock photos of nonvegan food to represent vegan food in their magazine and on their website. After this was discovered, their initial response was to delete website comments that "bullied" them by revealing the truth.
Their response is not good enough. What would be good enough is to take responsibility for the mistake and become a real advocate. I really think that the recent New York Times headline "Meat discovered in Meatless Magazine" says it all. These issues are confusing enough for people.
Want to read more? Check out Quarry Girl, some of the comments are interesting, too. Though there might be a million by now. Vegan.com updates regularly with related articles. You can now read comments on VegNews site since the release of their statement. And of course, since everyone's talking about it everywhere, you can hit up the PPK forum and anywhere else that supports veganism.
UPDATE 4/18: VegNews has now issued an apology.
12 comments:
I cancelled my subscription after they refused to apologize. Their response was a joke. I was on the fence about keeping my subscription anyway for several other reasons, so this just made my decision much easier. They lost a lot of subscribers & respect out of this.
Yeah, your right in doing so. I had thought about subscribing this year to support a vegan conscious publication, but that won't be happening.
i read a blogger...a VEGAN blogger that supported them and their decision. they said that "hey vegnews needs to make money too" i was like what the heck? are you serious? this is not ok, even my non vegan husband was blown away that they would do something like that. i dont know if veg news is trying to brazen it out or what but i wont be reading anything by them again.i feel so sorry for the people that subscribed and looked at the pictures and thought that the stuff looked good. they must feel so sick right now.
go MOLLY!!!
It's disappointing. I find it upsetting to see vegan readers defending them.
This is such an absurd thing to say: "hey vegnews needs to make money too" There is so much I could say about that comment...
They claim to be an ethical vegan company, but to lie and try to cover up what they were doing? That's definitely not ethical. They were deleting comments for a while that called out what they were doing. I agree with you both that it's very disturbing to see some vegans supporting them.
As I read from a commenter on another site, this is just plain irresponsible laziness on VN's part. Vegan bloggers have awesome pictures on their sites of 100% vegan food, so why can't they procure pics from one of us? Hell, I'm sure most would even donate their pics out of flattery- I know I would (as long as they gave me credit in fine print). Most vegan bloggers with great pics online, also save them in high res too, suitable for print. AND, who's to say they couldn't come up with a suitable vegan source for photos, in exchange for ad space or for a competitive price?-there really is no excuse!
To editors of VN: Shame on you!
Molly - You're definitely right. It seems that they really just didn't know how to handle the situation. They really should have expected that day to come and thought out a better way to handle it if they really thought they were the right (which is hard enough to understand!).
VegSpinz - Agreed. It just seems extremely lazy to me that they didn't use vegan images. I have seen many solutions and thoughts on this that seem very reasonable. At least they might be doing something about it. I posted the apology link above.
Wow. I had not heard about this yet. How embarrassing. For them - and for all of us. Why would they do something that makes it look like we need to change the look of our food or use meat to make it look better? Ridiculous. I'm glad they apologized. I'm all for giving people second chances - but it seems like they already had their second chance after it was repeatedly pointed out to them it was being recognized that the photos were not vegan. I just can't believe they deleted those comments. I could get over the fact that they used stock photos, I guess. But then to try to cover it up or attack people for pointing it out.
Thanks for posting this. I read and got up to date on everything including the apology. It's just sad. As if vegans don't have it hard enough already, VegNews had to go and do this. Come on now...
I didn't know that, but usually I don't read much news, I prefer to go and visit blogs made by real people, they have the best tips and recipes :-)
ciao and Happy Easter
Alessandra
http://alessandra-veganblog.blogspot.com/
Jenny and Carissa - Glad to help! Luckily I've started following vegan.com more closely recently and happened across this one. I'm glad they've decided to change.
Alessandra - I don't blame you. Much of the news is depressing anyway. Every now and then I realize that I've perhaps lost touch with what's happening in the world and try to brush up on things. But it's rarely a happy story. I, too, am a happy blog reader. :)
Post a Comment