The increasingly desperate racing industry is turning to propaganda to try to fool the public.
Its aim is to cancel out negative, factual media coverage with PR misinformation, diverting funds away from greyhound welfare.
In its latest campaign, Greyhound Racing NSW has taken out full-page advertorials in papers to show fake “good” news.
The ads appeared in papers in Wagga, Goulburn, Dubbo, Newcastle, Wollongong, and Bathurst.
The main story was a disturbing piece on a nine year old boy who has been encouraged to call greyhound races.
Greyhound racing has never felt under more threat
Instead of spending money on improving animal welfare, the industry is using paid PR to try and slow the growing community sentiment against it.
Greyhound Racing Victoria recently hired a PR firm, The Comms Gurus, to teach greyhound trainers to tell “positive” stories. The selected trainers were named as Holly Thompson, Brad Greenough, Jess Hopkins, Mia Sharp, Tom O’Neill, and Morgan and Taylor Cockerell.
GRV’s “commitment to storytelling” doesn’t seem to extend to telling the stories behind the huge number of greyhounds killed on Victorian racetracks. That would need a commitment to truth-telling.
In Queensland, the Racing Queensland Review into Racing revealed the industry’s fears about the public seeing the truth:
“Industry participants are disheartened with the lack of promotion for greyhound racing and a perceived absence of an appetite to counter the anti-greyhound racing activists claims by governing bodies…The result is an industry that has allowed narratives defined by activists and mainstream media to define it”.
Racing Queensland recommended that it “immediately activate a Greyhound Racing media team” with a “credible spokesperson and adopt a UK-style storytelling strategy to secure the industry’s future”. Communication has to be “daily”.
The Queensland Government accepted this recommendation.
Links:
https://www.grv.org.au/news/