The Discovery Channel’s president, Paul Lewis, approved a promotional campaign for the rapidly rotting cable channel’s “Shark Week” that included a fake video, shown above, intended to “go viral” and convince people that there are sharks in Lake Ontario. After the video prompted the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources to warn swimmers and anxiety over the shark sighting was expressed in social media, the channel’s ad agency admitted that it was hoax. Some people still don’t believe it’s a hoax, however, because they’ve seen “Jaws.” After all, claiming a real sighting is a hoax to save the tourist season is just the sort of thing Amity Mayor Larry Vaughn would do, right?
Or that equally slimy Paul Lewis would do. Here is his despicable, ethics-free “apology”:
“We didn’t want it to be something that would negatively impact people’s summer…It’s unfortunate that some people took what we did so serious. If we upset anybody, of course I apologize for that. It would be totally counterproductive for us to go out there and upset and disturb our audience.”
First of all, how does someone become president of a communications company who uses “serious” like that?
Second: Lewis is a liar and an idiot. The video was intended to fool people. Of course the people who swim where your fake video suggests there are big sharks waiting for them still take the video “serious”–what would you expect? This is a non-apology apology that literally means “I’m sorry people were upset by the video we made to upset them, and we certainly didn’t intend to upset people who matter—you know, the idiots who watch our channel. Now I’m counting on this controversy to boost ratings—it’s a win!”
Discovery Channel, I’m warning you: fire this guy now. Not for the irresponsible stunt, although that would be justified, but because the hoax combined with his statement is signature significance. This guy doesn’t know right from wrong, ethics from a hobby horse. He is corrupting your staff and its culture by the second, and he is capable of almost anything, because his ethics alarms are either rusted dead or were never installed. The fact that he also appears to be incapable of beating Forrest Gump at Scrabble only adds to the urgency.
Fire him.
Now.
It might already be too late.
___________________
Pointer: Alexander Cheezem
Facts: Doubtful News, National Post
Ethics Alarms 
Found shortly after I sent you that e-mail: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/2014/07/18/fraud-deception-lies-discoverys-shark-week-became-greatest-show-earth/ .
you’re right. it’s too late.
It was too late when they stopped doing shows that helped viewers discover things about the world, science, and history, in favor of shows that pander to sensationalism and tabloid topics like Naked and Afraid, Street Outlaws, Russian Yeti, Amish Mafia. and Dual Survival. Shark week is just about the last gasp of their nature programming. Mythbusters gets left on as featured because is is the last Name experimentation/discovery series that was virtually canceled. Any channel that has more than 33% tabloid shows is in trouble, but Discovery is far over that line. Seeing blurred naked people isn’t a discovery. Like many of the networks they jumped on one hot idea and then beat that concept to death, dropping what audience they had for a more fickle one,
The channel I used to watch most days of the week is dying and all I can think is it should have been sooner.
No mission, no values, no ethics. Corruption follows. Yup—it’s too late.
It doesn’t help when the market stopped demanding the value they originally provided.
They’re hardly alone in what’s become a long list of cable channels that started out good and morphed along the way into a check out line tabloid.
Who wants to start a list of channels whose programming has deteriorated such that the programming no longer matches the theoretical purpose of the channel? I’ll start with a few that bug me…
MTV – May be the first example of this
A&E
SyFy – Ghost hunters pretty well covers what i detest here.
That last “show” should be channel dang it.
Fixed.
History Channel.
They are occasionally punctuated with good shows and arguably have resisted longest. But the encroachment of Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, and that ilk have started pushing the good stuff to non-viewable hours.
AMC
Bravo
The Learning Channel (TLC)
I enjoyed Sy-Fy when they were still running vintage movies and TV series that hearkened back to the age when there were no astronauts. Only Spacemen!