Media Bias...

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In most cases we have found that the media reporting on canine related stories are extremely biased against pit bull type dogs.   Example stories

1. Dog attacks involving any pit bull type or mix dog tend to make the national news and are covered for days.   Where as attacks by other breeds barely make the news at all.  We find a lot of attack stories that are only in the local city paper in the Police Blotter section.

2. For instance this past summer the death of Nicholas Fabish by his families two pit bull type dogs made national news.  The story was covered for weeks, months.  If you do a search you will find hundreds if not thousands of stories regarding this story.  The majority of stories focused on the dogs, breed bans, other incidents, etc.    Even when more of the story came out that the mother had lied,  the mother had locked the kid in the basement and shoved a shovel under the door to keep him there yet the stories still revolved around the dogs.    When details were exposed that the dogs had been issues in the past,  neighbors reporting the kids punching the dogs in the face,  the dogs being intact, the female in heat, the male dog being very protective since the female was in heat, etc.  Still the stories revolved around the breed and not the facts contributing to the incident nor the fact that the mother could have stopped this from happening. 

   Now compare that to this spring when Kati-Lynn Logel was killed in Colorado by her families two Alaskan Malamutes,  oddly enough the day before this tragic incident a two year old was mauled in Pontiac Michigan by her families two Siberian Huskies.  Neither of these stories made the National news,  the coverage was minimal on either incident.  If you search on these stories you will find very few stories.

3. Any unidentified dog attack is identified as a Pit Bull,  when canine experts do properly identify the dog, most media continue using pit bull or stop mentioning breed at all in the stories.

4. Differences in reporting style:

   Pit Bull incident:  The term Pit Bull appears through out the article,  there is a list of other incidents involving alleged pit bulls over the last several years,  there are comments about banning the dogs,  all to often several untrue statements involving locking jaws, 1800 psi bite pressure, etc.  

   Other breeds:   Quite often no breed is mentioned in the article at all, it's "dog attack".  If there is mention of the breed it's only once and there is no list of other incidents involving the breed.  There is no mention of banning the breed or untrue information on the breed contained in the article.

   The language used in the articles are also very different,  with pit bull incidents the articles are quite dramatic even when it was a small nip or single bite.  With other breeds even the severe maulings are not nearly as dramatic.

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