So there's this website, called CDNN. The Cyber Diver's News Network. In their attempt to rip-off any brand recognition from CNN, they seem to have forgotten the difference between journalism and mud-slinging personal agenda promoting. They should change their name to something more along the lines of FOX Bullshit Underwater News instead.

Just a couple days after the world learned about Dave's getting rejected by a shark when he tried to kiss it, they jumped all over the "story" spinning it to try and make Dave look like a cross-species sex offender. I've known Dave for years, and he's never been a CROSS-SPECIES sex offender... Sure there were a couple women here and there who we all THOUGHT were a different species, but different strokes for different folks, right? They also called out the owner of the dive shop where he works for feeding barracuda, Stuart Cove for promoting shark dives in the Bahamas and last week led off with the sensationally insensitive headline "Animal World finally takes revenge on Steve Irwin."

A quick search for "Stingray City" on their site turned up this headline:

Diver-fed eel nearly bites off scuba diver's arm at Stingray City

That is a complete load of bollocks. I remember this happening last year. One of the younger eels bit a younger boy on the arm, and because the arm was so small, it did a lot of damage. They make it sound like this crazed eel bit THROUGH the arm and that the victim was medevaced to a hospital with his arm hanging by a few tendons. Absolute bullshit.

Lamar Bennington, the self-styled hack who wrote the story condemning Dave also takes a shot at PADI's Project Aware. Surprisingly, the horribly insensitive "article" about Steve Irwin was written by another hack, named Germaine Greer. I thought for sure the sensationalistic, attention-grabbing "look-at-me" headline was written by the same person. Maybe they both got their writing "skills" from a course advertised on the back of a matchbook? Who knows. Perhaps they weren't hugged enough as children... and growing up with names like Lamar and Germaine couldn't have contributed to their development as human beings, either.

Getting links like this sent to me makes me realize why I never bother going to CDNN or reading any of the crap they spin in any of their "articles". I wouldn't go so far as to boycott or recommend against any of their advertisers-just yet anyway- but I definitely will remind people in the diving industry what a bunch of clowns these people are and that there are much better avenues of marketing available to them elsewhere. Why pay for advertisements at a place that generates it's traffic by slagging off their advertisers? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you... They should write an article about that entitled "Rabid pseudo-journalists completely mangle the hand that feeds them"