An escaped and lovable beluga whale

24.  From The New York Times Magazine, The Great Read, today, January 14, 2024 a story about a beluga whale.

The Whale Who Went AWOL.  Hvaldimir escaped captivity and became a global celebrity.  Now, no one can agree about what to do with him.  By Ferris Jabr. 

A paragraph from the article:  

"Wherever Hvaldimir goes, he is followed by a small but passionate entourage of human defenders and devotees. One individual among them has become especially prominent and controversial: Regina Crosby Haug, an American filmmaker whose entanglement with Hvaldimir is largely a product of circumstance."

It should be noted that Regina Crosby Haug refuted several of the claims and accusations the author, Ferris Jabr, made in this piece.  She responded to many of the critical readers' comments (my own included; which was later retracted by the NYT for reasons I didn't understand) with her own explanations for where and how Jabr got his facts wrong.   As a reader like everyone else, I have no special knowledge of who got it right or wrong, but I am inclined to be sympathetic with Haug's explanations for her intentions and actions toward the whale.  Readers, myself included, often respond to this kind of article 'from the heart' and without thinking it through fully.  I recognize I am guilty of this.  It's the New York Times, after all, so I think readers feel comfortable taking what is written at face value.  I'm guilty of this, too.  But I also want to be a more discerning reader and a better critical thinker.  This includes when I read things in the NYT that I don't find to be quite right, as occurred with a recent op-ed.  We'll all be better off if we stop giving the NYT, and many other highly-regarded publications as well, a free pass when we suspect they are getting it wrong,  We still need to think for ourselves before we lose the ability to do so.  Think about this.  It's kind of the direction we are moving in. 

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