McLuhan's Children: The Greenpeace Message and the Media

Ron Verzuh is the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ senior
communications officer.

Greenpeace was a Canadian invention, getting its start with the launch
of a small vessel to protest the U.S. nuclear test at Amchitka in 1971.
Greenpeace founders like Vancouver Sun columnist Bob Hunter and media
critic Ben Metcalfe were among those who charted and set the
media-driven course of the popular environmental organization. Media
critic Stephen Dale argues that while daily media exposure made
Greenpeace a household word and helped build it into a global protest
movement, it also made the organization a slave to the mass media’s
dictates. McLuhan’s Children makes a persuasive case that Greenpeace
failed to foster a broad-based people’s movement because it was too
busy selling out to the god of media entertainment.