5/6 Steven Donziger

     Today we learned about Steven Donziger who was a lawyer in the US. First, we searched his name in three major newspaper companies: New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The major newspaper companies were mentioning him like a criminal and were trying to give a negative impression to the readers. However, they weren't telling the whole picture of the story. The major newspaper companies were cutting off a part of the story to make Donziger look bad. This was what actually happened: Chevron was drilling oil from a rainforest in Ecuador without sufficient safety measures, so the environment was damaged severely. Donziger prosecuted Chevron on behalf of the villagers in Ecuador and won the trial. However, Chevron didn't pay the compensation and abandoned the offices in Ecuador. After that, Chevron used its connection to judges and lawyers to counterattack Donziger. Relatively small newspaper companies such as Rolling Stone mentioned the whole picture of this problem. However, no Japanese online newspapers were writing about this problem.

   Firstly, I thought that this incident is similar to the Monsanto incident. A big company has done something bad, and some courageous people prosecute the company, but in the end, the company wins the trial because it has money and power. This is injustice and is clearly unfair. I visited Chevron's website, and it said that they were "taking actions for a lower-carbon future", but at the same time Chevron is attacking Donziger to threaten other lawyers. The fact that there are no Japanese articles about Donziger is suspicious too. If many famous people and Nobel laureates are supporting Donziger, it means that it's a big problem but no newspapers are writing an article about him.