Why you should care about pit bull bans
Apr. 27th, 2008 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanIt's obvious why those of us who own pit bull type dogs get angry about efforts to ban our dogs. But why should anyone else care? Sure, if you own another breed of dog that's sometimes singled out for negative attention you should be wary, too. Once they ban pit bulls, it will be that much easier to ban Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, German shepherd dogs, huskies and malamutes, chow chows, shar-peis, akitas, mastiffs, bulldogs, ad infinitum. But what about those people who own only small dog breeds, or those people who don't own, or even like dogs? Why should they care about dog breed bans, or breed-specific legislation?
Because, as has become all too familiar in recent years, fear and misinformation are being used to take away your freedom. Fear is used by the media as much as sex in order to get our attention. And your attention is more valuable than ever to the media. It means ad revenue. The media doesn't care what you think or believe, or how much freedom you have, it justs wants your attention, so that it can sell more ads.
Misinformation is a great way of spreading and amplifying fears. It can be as simple as emphasizing a fact in a story, or even better, omitting a fact. It can be an outright mistruth, since there are no consequences for the media outlet that redacts their misstatement in a subsequent issue, hidden on the bottom of page three. And it can be as easy as choosing words for impact, instead of literal meaning. In that spirit, I am going to henceforth refer to the media's use of misinformation, omissions, and mistruths, as 'lies.'
The people who wish to ban certain breeds of dogs, or otherwise restrict ownership of them, use media stories to back up their position. They repeat the lies, which, since they are written by a professional news outlet, are taken to be facts. They back up their media-inflamed assertions with studies cobbled together from 'data' mined from media stories. They use the news media as if they were scientific journals, reinforcing their fears with misinformation deliberately concocted to reinforce their fears. Lawmakers react to emotional pleas from a fearful public, which drowns out the reason and knowledge of the veterinary community, animal behaviorists, and dog experts.
Today I read a news story that used several well-worn tactics for spreading fear through misinformation. I'll go through it, point by point. Remember, even if you don't like dogs, or if you hate pit bulls, or your idiot neighbor who owns pit bulls, what I'm talking about here is LIES used to TAKE AWAY your FREEDOM.
The headline reads 'Baby boy attacked by family pit bull.' Whoa. Am I really going to defend this dog, this monster that turned on its own family, that ATTACKED a BABY? Well, no, I don't even know this dog. But I will point out facts in the story that don't quite mesh with this alarming headline. For starters, reading the body of the story, we find that the baby does not belong to the family that owns the dog. The baby came with visiting relatives--so technically, everyone involved is family, but the dog doesn't know that. Again, I 'm not excusing the dog from attacking, I'm saying the dog did not know it was attacking 'family.' We can't accuse the dog of betrayal, as the headline suggests.
More importantly, we have facts about the circumstances of the 'attack,' which are often omitted in this kind of story. It turns out that the baby approached the dog while it was eating. Again, this is a terrible thing, a baby was bitten by a dog, but any idiot knows you don't approach a strange dog while it's eating. A DOG OF ANY BREED, toy poodle, golden retriever, your loveable mutt, is more likely to bite if it's approached while eating than any other time. The use of the word attack, in this context, is misleading. If I slap your hand away when you reach to steal something off my plate, am I attacking you?
Pretend for a minute that some other kind of dog snapped at a strange kid who was approaching it while it was eating. Is that really news? If a cairn terrier (Toto from The Wizard of Oz) bit a member of the family who owned it so bad that it required a trip to the hospital, and made the family question whether or not they should keep the dog, would that be something worthy of a television news crew? My mother's cairn terrier did just that, and broke my father's finger--if he was a baby on the floor, it would have been facial injuries, like what happened with the pit bull in this news story. Where were the reporters?
It's only news because you can get people to pay attention to the words PIT BULL, no matter what actually happened. If a pit bull gets loose from a fenced in yard and chases a child, and the child is not injured, the headline will read 'PIT BULL ATTACKS, CHASES CHILD.' If a pit bull injures another dog, it's a MAULING. My mother's cairn terrier was torn to shreds by my neighbor's German shepherd when it got loose from its kennel. Somehow that didn't make the news either, even though she made a miraculous recovery that the news outlets would have loved. If a pit bull attacks a domestic animal, like a horse, goat, or cat, it makes the news. Again, my mother's cairn terrier got ahold of my pet hamster and killed it; dogs are predatory animals that attack and kill other animals every day--it's not news. Unless the dog attacking the domestic animal is a pit bull, then it can be added to the scary mythology of the monster dog.
Overstatements, lies, misstatements, facts out of context, and more lies, all engineered to make you scared. I'm not saying there aren't dangerous pit bulls out there owned by irresponsible people--they are one of the most popular breeds in the country, it's the law of averages that some jerks will mistreat their dogs, chain them up in yards, let them run without leashes, and refuse to get them spayed and neutered. I won't stand up for criminals, but I also ask that those of us who keep our dogs correctly not be made into criminals because of the dog breed we choose. It's not fair, it's not right, and it's a violation of our freedom.
You should care about pit bull bans because the same kind of fear tactics could be used to take away your freedom in another sphere of life. You would be forgiven if you thought that the number of dog attacks was spiraling out of control--it sure sounds that way. In fact, despite the increasing population of people and dogs in the United States, attacks per capita have been going down steadily for decades. There isn't an epidemic of pit bull attacks, there's an epidemic of reporting of pit bull attacks, real and imaginary. But since it fits the story, the scary story that there is this one breed of dog unlike all the others, that's popular with inner city people and trailer park people and drug dealers, and that they are on the rampage, attacking and killing the people that own them and innocent strangers too. LIES. I'm tired of mincing words about it. LIES TOLD TO YOU to make you scared, and to make you needlessly scared of my dogs, so that you join the herd of panicked sheep taking away our freedoms. Stop believing lies.
Because, as has become all too familiar in recent years, fear and misinformation are being used to take away your freedom. Fear is used by the media as much as sex in order to get our attention. And your attention is more valuable than ever to the media. It means ad revenue. The media doesn't care what you think or believe, or how much freedom you have, it justs wants your attention, so that it can sell more ads.
Misinformation is a great way of spreading and amplifying fears. It can be as simple as emphasizing a fact in a story, or even better, omitting a fact. It can be an outright mistruth, since there are no consequences for the media outlet that redacts their misstatement in a subsequent issue, hidden on the bottom of page three. And it can be as easy as choosing words for impact, instead of literal meaning. In that spirit, I am going to henceforth refer to the media's use of misinformation, omissions, and mistruths, as 'lies.'
The people who wish to ban certain breeds of dogs, or otherwise restrict ownership of them, use media stories to back up their position. They repeat the lies, which, since they are written by a professional news outlet, are taken to be facts. They back up their media-inflamed assertions with studies cobbled together from 'data' mined from media stories. They use the news media as if they were scientific journals, reinforcing their fears with misinformation deliberately concocted to reinforce their fears. Lawmakers react to emotional pleas from a fearful public, which drowns out the reason and knowledge of the veterinary community, animal behaviorists, and dog experts.
Today I read a news story that used several well-worn tactics for spreading fear through misinformation. I'll go through it, point by point. Remember, even if you don't like dogs, or if you hate pit bulls, or your idiot neighbor who owns pit bulls, what I'm talking about here is LIES used to TAKE AWAY your FREEDOM.
The headline reads 'Baby boy attacked by family pit bull.' Whoa. Am I really going to defend this dog, this monster that turned on its own family, that ATTACKED a BABY? Well, no, I don't even know this dog. But I will point out facts in the story that don't quite mesh with this alarming headline. For starters, reading the body of the story, we find that the baby does not belong to the family that owns the dog. The baby came with visiting relatives--so technically, everyone involved is family, but the dog doesn't know that. Again, I 'm not excusing the dog from attacking, I'm saying the dog did not know it was attacking 'family.' We can't accuse the dog of betrayal, as the headline suggests.
More importantly, we have facts about the circumstances of the 'attack,' which are often omitted in this kind of story. It turns out that the baby approached the dog while it was eating. Again, this is a terrible thing, a baby was bitten by a dog, but any idiot knows you don't approach a strange dog while it's eating. A DOG OF ANY BREED, toy poodle, golden retriever, your loveable mutt, is more likely to bite if it's approached while eating than any other time. The use of the word attack, in this context, is misleading. If I slap your hand away when you reach to steal something off my plate, am I attacking you?
Pretend for a minute that some other kind of dog snapped at a strange kid who was approaching it while it was eating. Is that really news? If a cairn terrier (Toto from The Wizard of Oz) bit a member of the family who owned it so bad that it required a trip to the hospital, and made the family question whether or not they should keep the dog, would that be something worthy of a television news crew? My mother's cairn terrier did just that, and broke my father's finger--if he was a baby on the floor, it would have been facial injuries, like what happened with the pit bull in this news story. Where were the reporters?
It's only news because you can get people to pay attention to the words PIT BULL, no matter what actually happened. If a pit bull gets loose from a fenced in yard and chases a child, and the child is not injured, the headline will read 'PIT BULL ATTACKS, CHASES CHILD.' If a pit bull injures another dog, it's a MAULING. My mother's cairn terrier was torn to shreds by my neighbor's German shepherd when it got loose from its kennel. Somehow that didn't make the news either, even though she made a miraculous recovery that the news outlets would have loved. If a pit bull attacks a domestic animal, like a horse, goat, or cat, it makes the news. Again, my mother's cairn terrier got ahold of my pet hamster and killed it; dogs are predatory animals that attack and kill other animals every day--it's not news. Unless the dog attacking the domestic animal is a pit bull, then it can be added to the scary mythology of the monster dog.
Overstatements, lies, misstatements, facts out of context, and more lies, all engineered to make you scared. I'm not saying there aren't dangerous pit bulls out there owned by irresponsible people--they are one of the most popular breeds in the country, it's the law of averages that some jerks will mistreat their dogs, chain them up in yards, let them run without leashes, and refuse to get them spayed and neutered. I won't stand up for criminals, but I also ask that those of us who keep our dogs correctly not be made into criminals because of the dog breed we choose. It's not fair, it's not right, and it's a violation of our freedom.
You should care about pit bull bans because the same kind of fear tactics could be used to take away your freedom in another sphere of life. You would be forgiven if you thought that the number of dog attacks was spiraling out of control--it sure sounds that way. In fact, despite the increasing population of people and dogs in the United States, attacks per capita have been going down steadily for decades. There isn't an epidemic of pit bull attacks, there's an epidemic of reporting of pit bull attacks, real and imaginary. But since it fits the story, the scary story that there is this one breed of dog unlike all the others, that's popular with inner city people and trailer park people and drug dealers, and that they are on the rampage, attacking and killing the people that own them and innocent strangers too. LIES. I'm tired of mincing words about it. LIES TOLD TO YOU to make you scared, and to make you needlessly scared of my dogs, so that you join the herd of panicked sheep taking away our freedoms. Stop believing lies.
