The direct quote is “Don’t trust NGOs, they may have their own agendas.”
I took out the “may” because NGOs are committed to themselves and their staffs before any cause or others. That alone justifies removing the “may.” They have their own agendas and you need to keep that in mind.
Wildlife Crimes: Focus On The Villain, Not The Victim by Ufrieda Ho, says in part:
Ease up on the blood shots, ditch the undercover ploys and think crime story, not animal story.
These are top tips from Bryan Christy, author, investigative journalist and National Geographic Society Fellow. He says environmental trafficking and smuggling should be treated like a “whodunnits” rather than yet another depressing tale of gore and horror.
Christy, a panelist at this morning’s GIJN session on Environmental Crime and Wildlife Smuggling, says: “We need to stop telling the rhino-victim story and start thinking about the trafficker-villain story.”
Christy says shifting the editorial telling of stories in this way is a tool to fight “sad story” fatigue. It trains the audience to follow the trail of a villain through plot-driven action rather than to be turned off by feeling hopeless and despairing in the face of another climate change story or another report on a butchered elephant.
“The criminal plot is also a pack horse – it can pack in a lot of information,” says Christy, understanding that the nature of environmental investigations on smuggling and trafficking is about exploring intricate webs.
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That sounds like a data mining/science angle to wildlife crime to me!
There will be people in the field but connecting all the dots will require checking shipping, financial, even the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers for potential connections and leads.