Columnist calls for examination of Bangalore's dog problem

[Guest guest]

I started my journalistic career in 1964 as the Editor of the Blue Cross

Newsletter and its magazine (not published now due to a paucity of funds) - The

Animals' Voice. I was proud to mention my journalistic past in my CV but not any

more.

The reports I have read in the Bangalore newspapers, show that most of the

journalists there are not letting facts stand in the way of a " good story " .

 

There have been notable exceptions, one of them being Mr. Hiranmay Karlekar of

the Pioneer.

 

There are stories and there are facts. As a father, I deeply empathise with the

parents of the two children who were killed by dogs in Bangalore in January and

March.

Highly literate the journalists in Bangalore may be, but those who reported on

these cases are hardly educated.

The fact is that Sivalingiah, the father of the child who died in January, laid

the blame squarely at the feet of the authorities who allowed the illegal and

unregulated mutton stalls where the

dogs had gathered. The fact is that this happened because of corrupt civic and

government officials who knowingly allowed these stalls to come up and continue

because they were bribed to do so.

 

Someone once said that lies and untruths travel halfway around the world before

truth gets a chance to put its shoes on. Irresponsible journalism at its most

sensational led to a wave of hysteria where

innocent and friendly dogs are being butchered by roving gangs of thugs imported

from Kerala.

 

The bond that has existed for 14,000 or more years between man and dog has been

broken several times and in all cases only by one party. This beastly behaviour

must stop and we must learn to be

more like the animals who have put so much trust in us.

 

It is time the silent majority woke up and cry halt to this senseless

madness. As a Bangalorean myself, I hang my head in shame at what is going on.

Dogs are being picked up and hundreds are being locked up

in crowded conditions. Many have waited on trucks for 24 hours without food and

water. The fact is that the dogs that get caught first are the most docile and

friendly ones. And in all this madness, let us not forget those who took up this

work which should have been done by the Government and which responsibility the

Government abdicated. They have toiled at great cost to themselves to do

something which the Government failed to do. And the same corrupt Government

officials now have the gall to suggest that the NGOs failed.

 

Dr. S. Chinny Krishna

Former Vice Chairman - Animal Welfare Board

Government of India

 

 

aapn [aapn ]On Behalf Of

 

Thursday, March 08, 2007 1:49 PM

aapn

Columnist calls for examination of Bangalore's dog problem

 

 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist & file_na

me=karlekar%2Fkarlekar119.txt & writer=karlekar

Mindless killings

 

During the past several days Bangalore and Mysore have witnessed vicious

outbursts of orchestrated hysteria against stray dogs. Despite denials by the

municipal authorities, large numbers have been caught and killed savagely. The

incidents that sparked these off are doubtless tragic. Two young children were

reportedly mauled to death by stray dogs in Bangalore -

one on January 10 and another on March 1. In Mysore the killing, which began

on Sunday, March 4, followed the alleged attack on five children by a stray dog.

 

While fully sympathising with the families of the two children in their

profound grief, one must recognise that they would have felt as intensely had

the two been run over and killed by a Karnataka State Transport Corporation

(KSTC) bus. In the past, such accidents have led to the torching of buses and

attacks on their drivers and conductors. But never have these lead to hysterical

mobs setting KSTC buses on fire, demanding the destruction of all of them on the

ground that they posed a threat to the lives of all children. Nor have they gone

on lynching sprees of transport department personnel. And even if they had done,

the State Government would not have enthusiastically led them from the front.

 

Any explanation that KSTC buses do not pose any threat to children would carry

little conviction. A look at traffic accident statistics would show that

vehicular traffic on roads poses much greater a threat than stray dogs.

The difference in response clearly lies in the fact that the destruction of

all KSTC buses and lynching of transport department personnel would have brought

all human activity - commercial, industrial, governmental, social, cultural and

educational, to cite a few examples - to a standstill in the State. This, in

turn, would have led to a massive and violent public backlash against the

perpetrators. The killing of stray dogs, they were convinced, was unlikely to

cause any such thing.

 

Therefore, the question here is not what poses a greater threat to

children's lives but what one can do without upsetting one's life and what one

can get away with. One can argue that the lives of human beings are more

important than those of stray dogs.

 

The argument would have had a semblance of credibility if stray dogs as a

category threatened the lives of human beings as a category. They do not.

On the other hand, as a species their affection for - and loyalty to - human

beings have earned them the sobriquet of being " man's best friend " .

 

It is only a few dogs that bite, and that too mostly when provoked. One can,

of course, argue that the question of right and wrong is irrelevant:

Even one human life is more important than the lives of all stray dogs. We

enter a very difficult moral terrain here.

 

The argument that human life is more important than non-human life can lead to

a position where some humans can be described as sub-human and treated like

animals. In his incisive book, *Philosopher's Dog*, Raimond Gaita talks of a

woman grieving her son who had died recently. She says on watching on television

Vietnamese mothers grieving over their children killed in American bombing,

" It's different for them, they can just have more " .

 

Gaita also cites the instance of James Idsell, Protector of Aborigines

(indigenous people would be the right term, but one cannot change designations)

in western Australia, speaking similarly about indigenous women whose children

were taken from them. He quotes Idsell as saying " They soon forget their

offspring " and that he (Idsell) " would not hesitate for a moment to separate any

half-caste from its aboriginal mother, no matter how frantic her momentary grief

might be " .

 

In *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany*,

William L Shirer writes, " The Jews and the Slavic people were the *

Untermenschen* - subhumans. To Hitler, they had no right to live, except as

some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields and the

mines as slaves of their German masters " .

 

Shirer further writes, " By the end of September 1944, some seven hundred and

half million civilian foreigners were toiling for the Third Reich.

Nearly all of them had been rounded up by force, deported to Germany in

boxcars, usually without food or water or any sanitation facilities, and there

put to work in the factories, fields and mines. "

 

Apart from the moral, there is the practical aspect. The World Health

Organisation (WHO) has repeatedly made clear that stray dogs cannot be

eliminated from the streets through mass killing which has to be continued

endlessly without results.

 

Killings, scholars have found, destabilise a country's dog population and

increase the number of dog bites and the incidence of rabies. The Animal Birth

Control (ABC) programme under which dogs are neutered, immunised against rabies

and brought back to where they had been picked up from, is the only solution.

 

Are those who are orchestrating the killing in Bangalore and Mysore trying to

scuttle the ABC programme in the cities? If so, then whose interest are they

serving? The argument that they are doing it out of ignorance and are unaware of

the WHO's findings, raises the question, why are the State Government and

municipal authorities siding with them? Surely, they cannot be unaware of the

facts!

 

This makes it imperative to ask whether the circumstances in which the two

fatal and five non-fatal attacks took place, have been thoroughly investigated.

Did the children throw stones at the dogs? Tease them? Or, were they trying to

snatch puppies from a bitch? Or, did someone unleash the dogs on them? If the

State Government is not utterly perverse, it would stop the killing and order a

judicial inquiry into the whole train of events.

[Guest guest]

I saw a report by Maya Sharma of NDTV, Bangalore.

 

The link is below:

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?id=101645 & frmsrch=1 & txtsrch=maya%\

2Csharma

 

In the end of her story she did a piece to camera ( P2C) sitting beside a

stray dog and placing her hand on it while she spoke to the camera a few

lines advocating their rights, this is a brilliant example of what kind of

reporting should be done at this hour.

You need to show with your medium and make people feel that yes, the Dog is

truly a Man`s best friend, and not a terrorist as has been projected again

and again.

 

Azam

 

 

On 08 Mar 2007 02:22:37 -0800, Dr.Chinny Krishna <drkrishna

wrote:

>

> I started my journalistic career in 1964 as the Editor of the Blue Cross

> Newsletter and its magazine (not published now due to a paucity of funds) -

> The Animals' Voice. I was proud to mention my journalistic past in my CV but

> not any more.

> The reports I have read in the Bangalore newspapers, show that most of the

> journalists there are not letting facts stand in the way of a " good story " .

>

> There have been notable exceptions, one of them being Mr. Hiranmay

> Karlekar of the Pioneer.

>

> There are stories and there are facts. As a father, I deeply empathise

> with the parents of the two children who were killed by dogs in Bangalore in

> January and March.

> Highly literate the journalists in Bangalore may be, but those who

> reported on these cases are hardly educated.

> The fact is that Sivalingiah, the father of the child who died in January,

> laid the blame squarely at the feet of the authorities who allowed the

> illegal and unregulated mutton stalls where the

> dogs had gathered. The fact is that this happened because of corrupt civic

> and government officials who knowingly allowed these stalls to come up and

> continue because they were bribed to do so.

>

> Someone once said that lies and untruths travel halfway around the world

> before truth gets a chance to put its shoes on. Irresponsible journalism at

> its most sensational led to a wave of hysteria where

> innocent and friendly dogs are being butchered by roving gangs of thugs

> imported from Kerala.

>

> The bond that has existed for 14,000 or more years between man and dog has

> been broken several times and in all cases only by one party. This beastly

> behaviour must stop and we must learn to be

> more like the animals who have put so much trust in us.

>

> It is time the silent majority woke up and cry halt to this senseless

> madness. As a Bangalorean myself, I hang my head in shame at what is going

> on. Dogs are being picked up and hundreds are being locked up

> in crowded conditions. Many have waited on trucks for 24 hours without

> food and water. The fact is that the dogs that get caught first are the most

> docile and friendly ones. And in all this madness, let us not forget those

> who took up this work which should have been done by the Government and

> which responsibility the Government abdicated. They have toiled at great

> cost to themselves to do

> something which the Government failed to do. And the same corrupt

> Government officials now have the gall to suggest that the NGOs failed.

>

> Dr. S. Chinny Krishna

> Former Vice Chairman - Animal Welfare Board

> Government of India

>

>

>

> aapn <aapn%40> [

> aapn <aapn%40>]On Behalf Of

>

> Thursday, March 08, 2007 1:49 PM

> aapn <aapn%40>

> Columnist calls for examination of Bangalore's dog problem

>

> http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist & file_na

> me=karlekar%2Fkarlekar119.txt & writer=karlekar

> Mindless killings

>

> During the past several days Bangalore and Mysore have witnessed vicious

> outbursts of orchestrated hysteria against stray dogs. Despite denials by

> the municipal authorities, large numbers have been caught and killed

> savagely. The incidents that sparked these off are doubtless tragic. Two

> young children were reportedly mauled to death by stray dogs in Bangalore -

> one on January 10 and another on March 1. In Mysore the killing, which

> began on Sunday, March 4, followed the alleged attack on five children by a

> stray dog.

>

> While fully sympathising with the families of the two children in their

> profound grief, one must recognise that they would have felt as intensely

> had the two been run over and killed by a Karnataka State Transport

> Corporation (KSTC) bus. In the past, such accidents have led to the torching

> of buses and attacks on their drivers and conductors. But never have these

> lead to hysterical mobs setting KSTC buses on fire, demanding the

> destruction of all of them on the ground that they posed a threat to the

> lives of all children. Nor have they gone on lynching sprees of transport

> department personnel. And even if they had done, the State Government would

> not have enthusiastically led them from the front.

>

> Any explanation that KSTC buses do not pose any threat to children would

> carry little conviction. A look at traffic accident statistics would show

> that vehicular traffic on roads poses much greater a threat than stray dogs.

> The difference in response clearly lies in the fact that the destruction

> of all KSTC buses and lynching of transport department personnel would have

> brought all human activity - commercial, industrial, governmental, social,

> cultural and educational, to cite a few examples - to a standstill in the

> State. This, in turn, would have led to a massive and violent public

> backlash against the perpetrators. The killing of stray dogs, they were

> convinced, was unlikely to cause any such thing.

>

> Therefore, the question here is not what poses a greater threat to

> children's lives but what one can do without upsetting one's life and what

> one can get away with. One can argue that the lives of human beings are more

> important than those of stray dogs.

>

> The argument would have had a semblance of credibility if stray dogs as a

> category threatened the lives of human beings as a category. They do not.

> On the other hand, as a species their affection for - and loyalty to -

> human beings have earned them the sobriquet of being " man's best friend " .

>

> It is only a few dogs that bite, and that too mostly when provoked. One

> can, of course, argue that the question of right and wrong is irrelevant:

> Even one human life is more important than the lives of all stray dogs. We

> enter a very difficult moral terrain here.

>

> The argument that human life is more important than non-human life can

> lead to a position where some humans can be described as sub-human and

> treated like animals. In his incisive book, *Philosopher's Dog*, Raimond

> Gaita talks of a woman grieving her son who had died recently. She says on

> watching on television Vietnamese mothers grieving over their children

> killed in American bombing, " It's different for them, they can just have

> more " .

>

> Gaita also cites the instance of James Idsell, Protector of Aborigines

> (indigenous people would be the right term, but one cannot change

> designations) in western Australia, speaking similarly about indigenous

> women whose children were taken from them. He quotes Idsell as saying " They

> soon forget their offspring " and that he (Idsell) " would not hesitate for a

> moment to separate any half-caste from its aboriginal mother, no matter how

> frantic her momentary grief might be " .

>

> In *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany*,

> William L Shirer writes, " The Jews and the Slavic people were the *

> Untermenschen* - subhumans. To Hitler, they had no right to live, except

> as some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields and

> the mines as slaves of their German masters " .

>

> Shirer further writes, " By the end of September 1944, some seven hundred

> and half million civilian foreigners were toiling for the Third Reich.

> Nearly all of them had been rounded up by force, deported to Germany in

> boxcars, usually without food or water or any sanitation facilities, and

> there put to work in the factories, fields and mines. "

>

> Apart from the moral, there is the practical aspect. The World Health

> Organisation (WHO) has repeatedly made clear that stray dogs cannot be

> eliminated from the streets through mass killing which has to be continued

> endlessly without results.

>

> Killings, scholars have found, destabilise a country's dog population and

> increase the number of dog bites and the incidence of rabies. The Animal

> Birth Control (ABC) programme under which dogs are neutered, immunised

> against rabies and brought back to where they had been picked up from, is

> the only solution.

>

> Are those who are orchestrating the killing in Bangalore and Mysore trying

> to scuttle the ABC programme in the cities? If so, then whose interest are

> they serving? The argument that they are doing it out of ignorance and are

> unaware of the WHO's findings, raises the question, why are the State

> Government and municipal authorities siding with them? Surely, they cannot

> be unaware of the facts!

>

> This makes it imperative to ask whether the circumstances in which the two

> fatal and five non-fatal attacks took place, have been thoroughly

> investigated. Did the children throw stones at the dogs? Tease them? Or,

> were they trying to snatch puppies from a bitch? Or, did someone unleash the

> dogs on them? If the State Government is not utterly perverse, it would stop

> the killing and order a judicial inquiry into the whole train of events.

>

>

>

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Dear colleagues,

Been reading the messages on the Bangalore dog

fiasco with great interest and the relentless media and journalist bashing

does intrigue me. One of the most enlightening sessions at the last Asia for

Animals conference was the media workshop where a gentleman from DNA(Daily

News and Analysis) from Bombay made a very pertinent point: If animal

activists and organisations have a problem with the media, they should work

their way around. That statement rings a bell now in the aftermath of the

press coverage of the events in Bangalore. It would also be relevant to

prepare oneself with philosophical arguments when faced with a situation

like the current 'Dog or baby?' kind. Mr Hiranmay Karlekar has made an

honest attempt to address the philosophical question logically and has set a

good precedent. An excellent piece of work in this respect is Gary

Francione's book, 'Introduction to Animal rights: Your child or the dog? "

where he addresses this question Awareness of this debate would provide

information that could be used to tackle the 'either or' questions raised by

the media in situations like this.

I would also suggest that there is a substantial difference between

journalism that involves editing a specialist animal welfare newsletter and

one that involves running a mainstream daily newspaper. For a specialist

newsletter, one is largely speaking to the converted, but a daily newspaper

is addressing animal lovers as well as those who dislike animals, so

policies are likely to be different. I was an intern in Times Of India in

Bangalore in 2001 when there was a similar outcry in the city when a child

had his face ripped by a pack of dogs and was witness to the debate that

took place in the media. Then, as now, there were reports that were fair and

accurate. Please check the 'Letters to the Editor' from animal lovers

published in today's Times Of India. Dealing with the media requires some

skill. Since it is an inherent part of the nature of any media industry

anywhere in the world to sensationalise, like it or not, it would be very

beneficial if animal organisations made an effort to engage the media

regularly. There is no one way to do this but it has to be recognised that

journalists work under duress under editors who in turn have to take orders

from owners who determine policy of a newspaper that dictates content. It is

a complicated hierarchy in the media industry and certainly working one's

way around is a better way to achieve things rather than launching a

fullscale attack on all journalists and all media organisations. That guy

from DNA certainly wasn't kidding, the byword is " Work your way around. "

Best wishes,

 

 

 

 

 

On 08 Mar 2007 08:57:05 -0800, AZAM SIDDIQUI <azam24x7 wrote:

>

> I saw a report by Maya Sharma of NDTV, Bangalore.

>

> The link is below:

>

>

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?id=101645 & frmsrch=1 & txtsrch=maya%\

2Csharma

>

> In the end of her story she did a piece to camera ( P2C) sitting beside a

> stray dog and placing her hand on it while she spoke to the camera a few

> lines advocating their rights, this is a brilliant example of what kind of

> reporting should be done at this hour.

> You need to show with your medium and make people feel that yes, the Dog

> is

> truly a Man`s best friend, and not a terrorist as has been projected again

> and again.

>

> Azam

>

> On 08 Mar 2007 02:22:37 -0800, Dr.Chinny Krishna

<drkrishna<drkrishna%40aspick.com>

> >

> wrote:

> >

> > I started my journalistic career in 1964 as the Editor of the Blue Cross

> > Newsletter and its magazine (not published now due to a paucity of

> funds) -

> > The Animals' Voice. I was proud to mention my journalistic past in my CV

> but

> > not any more.

> > The reports I have read in the Bangalore newspapers, show that most of

> the

> > journalists there are not letting facts stand in the way of a " good

> story " .

> >

> > There have been notable exceptions, one of them being Mr. Hiranmay

> > Karlekar of the Pioneer.

> >

> > There are stories and there are facts. As a father, I deeply empathise

> > with the parents of the two children who were killed by dogs in

> Bangalore in

> > January and March.

> > Highly literate the journalists in Bangalore may be, but those who

> > reported on these cases are hardly educated.

> > The fact is that Sivalingiah, the father of the child who died in

> January,

> > laid the blame squarely at the feet of the authorities who allowed the

> > illegal and unregulated mutton stalls where the

> > dogs had gathered. The fact is that this happened because of corrupt

> civic

> > and government officials who knowingly allowed these stalls to come up

> and

> > continue because they were bribed to do so.

> >

> > Someone once said that lies and untruths travel halfway around the world

> > before truth gets a chance to put its shoes on. Irresponsible journalism

> at

> > its most sensational led to a wave of hysteria where

> > innocent and friendly dogs are being butchered by roving gangs of thugs

> > imported from Kerala.

> >

> > The bond that has existed for 14,000 or more years between man and dog

> has

> > been broken several times and in all cases only by one party. This

> beastly

> > behaviour must stop and we must learn to be

> > more like the animals who have put so much trust in us.

> >

> > It is time the silent majority woke up and cry halt to this senseless

> > madness. As a Bangalorean myself, I hang my head in shame at what is

> going

> > on. Dogs are being picked up and hundreds are being locked up

> > in crowded conditions. Many have waited on trucks for 24 hours without

> > food and water. The fact is that the dogs that get caught first are the

> most

> > docile and friendly ones. And in all this madness, let us not forget

> those

> > who took up this work which should have been done by the Government and

> > which responsibility the Government abdicated. They have toiled at great

> > cost to themselves to do

> > something which the Government failed to do. And the same corrupt

> > Government officials now have the gall to suggest that the NGOs failed.

> >

> > Dr. S. Chinny Krishna

> > Former Vice Chairman - Animal Welfare Board

> > Government of India

> >

> >

> >

> > aapn <aapn%40><aapn%40>

[

> > aapn <aapn%40><aapn%40>]On

Behalf Of

> >

> > Thursday, March 08, 2007 1:49 PM

> > aapn <aapn%40><aapn%40>

> > Columnist calls for examination of Bangalore's dog

> problem

> >

> >

> http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist & file_na

> > me=karlekar%2Fkarlekar119.txt & writer=karlekar

> > Mindless killings

> >

> > During the past several days Bangalore and Mysore have witnessed vicious

> > outbursts of orchestrated hysteria against stray dogs. Despite denials

> by

> > the municipal authorities, large numbers have been caught and killed

> > savagely. The incidents that sparked these off are doubtless tragic. Two

> > young children were reportedly mauled to death by stray dogs in

> Bangalore -

> > one on January 10 and another on March 1. In Mysore the killing, which

> > began on Sunday, March 4, followed the alleged attack on five children

> by a

> > stray dog.

> >

> > While fully sympathising with the families of the two children in their

> > profound grief, one must recognise that they would have felt as

> intensely

> > had the two been run over and killed by a Karnataka State Transport

> > Corporation (KSTC) bus. In the past, such accidents have led to the

> torching

> > of buses and attacks on their drivers and conductors. But never have

> these

> > lead to hysterical mobs setting KSTC buses on fire, demanding the

> > destruction of all of them on the ground that they posed a threat to the

> > lives of all children. Nor have they gone on lynching sprees of

> transport

> > department personnel. And even if they had done, the State Government

> would

> > not have enthusiastically led them from the front.

> >

> > Any explanation that KSTC buses do not pose any threat to children would

> > carry little conviction. A look at traffic accident statistics would

> show

> > that vehicular traffic on roads poses much greater a threat than stray

> dogs.

> > The difference in response clearly lies in the fact that the destruction

> > of all KSTC buses and lynching of transport department personnel would

> have

> > brought all human activity - commercial, industrial, governmental,

> social,

> > cultural and educational, to cite a few examples - to a standstill in

> the

> > State. This, in turn, would have led to a massive and violent public

> > backlash against the perpetrators. The killing of stray dogs, they were

> > convinced, was unlikely to cause any such thing.

> >

> > Therefore, the question here is not what poses a greater threat to

> > children's lives but what one can do without upsetting one's life and

> what

> > one can get away with. One can argue that the lives of human beings are

> more

> > important than those of stray dogs.

> >

> > The argument would have had a semblance of credibility if stray dogs as

> a

> > category threatened the lives of human beings as a category. They do

> not.

> > On the other hand, as a species their affection for - and loyalty to -

> > human beings have earned them the sobriquet of being " man's best

> friend " .

> >

> > It is only a few dogs that bite, and that too mostly when provoked. One

> > can, of course, argue that the question of right and wrong is

> irrelevant:

> > Even one human life is more important than the lives of all stray dogs.

> We

> > enter a very difficult moral terrain here.

> >

> > The argument that human life is more important than non-human life can

> > lead to a position where some humans can be described as sub-human and

> > treated like animals. In his incisive book, *Philosopher's Dog*, Raimond

> > Gaita talks of a woman grieving her son who had died recently. She says

> on

> > watching on television Vietnamese mothers grieving over their children

> > killed in American bombing, " It's different for them, they can just have

> > more " .

> >

> > Gaita also cites the instance of James Idsell, Protector of Aborigines

> > (indigenous people would be the right term, but one cannot change

> > designations) in western Australia, speaking similarly about indigenous

> > women whose children were taken from them. He quotes Idsell as saying

> " They

> > soon forget their offspring " and that he (Idsell) " would not hesitate

> for a

> > moment to separate any half-caste from its aboriginal mother, no matter

> how

> > frantic her momentary grief might be " .

> >

> > In *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany*,

> > William L Shirer writes, " The Jews and the Slavic people were the *

> > Untermenschen* - subhumans. To Hitler, they had no right to live, except

> > as some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields

> and

> > the mines as slaves of their German masters " .

> >

> > Shirer further writes, " By the end of September 1944, some seven hundred

> > and half million civilian foreigners were toiling for the Third Reich.

> > Nearly all of them had been rounded up by force, deported to Germany in

> > boxcars, usually without food or water or any sanitation facilities, and

> > there put to work in the factories, fields and mines. "

> >

> > Apart from the moral, there is the practical aspect. The World Health

> > Organisation (WHO) has repeatedly made clear that stray dogs cannot be

> > eliminated from the streets through mass killing which has to be

> continued

> > endlessly without results.

> >

> > Killings, scholars have found, destabilise a country's dog population

> and

> > increase the number of dog bites and the incidence of rabies. The Animal

> > Birth Control (ABC) programme under which dogs are neutered, immunised

> > against rabies and brought back to where they had been picked up from,

> is

> > the only solution.

> >

> > Are those who are orchestrating the killing in Bangalore and Mysore

> trying

> > to scuttle the ABC programme in the cities? If so, then whose interest

> are

> > they serving? The argument that they are doing it out of ignorance and

> are

> > unaware of the WHO's findings, raises the question, why are the State

> > Government and municipal authorities siding with them? Surely, they

> cannot

> > be unaware of the facts!

> >

> > This makes it imperative to ask whether the circumstances in which the

> two

> > fatal and five non-fatal attacks took place, have been thoroughly

> > investigated. Did the children throw stones at the dogs? Tease them? Or,

> > were they trying to snatch puppies from a bitch? Or, did someone unleash

> the

> > dogs on them? If the State Government is not utterly perverse, it would

> stop

> > the killing and order a judicial inquiry into the whole train of events.

> >

> >

> >

>

>

[Guest guest]

>D I would also suggest that there is a substantial difference between

>journalism that involves editing a specialist animal welfare newsletter and

>one that involves running a mainstream daily newspaper.

\

 

I happen to have more than 20 years of experience in

mainstream journalism, mostly for daily newspapers, also for

Canadian national radio and television networks, and in reporting

and editing primarily for people who are personally engaged in animal

protection.

 

While the audiences differ, the basic principles are the

same. Most fundamental is to be fair and be accurate. Much of the

coverage of the Bangalore dog crisis flagrantly flunked on both

counts.

 

I verified my own perceptions by sharing 12 articles from The

Times of India, Deccan Herald, Reuters, and The Hindu with several

colleagues who teach journalism at U.S. universities. Several of

these colleagues, having no background in animal welfare, but

considerable background in journalism, ended up using these bad

examples as the basis for classroom discussions on Thursday and

Friday.

 

These were some of the common failures:

 

 

1) Failure to identify the authors of first-hand accounts,

as a check on the veracity of the claims. The common practice of

Indian newspapers of identifying authors only as " Our Correspondent, "

or " Our Staff Reporter " is grossly inadequate and irresponsible.

 

 

2) Failure to identify the sources of quoted opinionated statements.

 

For example, one article quoted a nameless veterinarian who

asserted that no vet could do more than seven or eight sterilization

surgeries per day, even if supported by vet techs, and that

therefore the ABC program heads were lying when they claimed to be

sterilizing 40 dogs per day.

 

This baseless assertion was then used to impugn the integrity

of the ABC programs.

 

The quoted vet was incompetent, by global surgical

standards, and should have been held accountable for his incendiary

remarks.

 

 

3) Failure to use qualified sources.

 

The above-cited vet was just one of many examples of

reporters using sources who were not properly qualified to comment on

the subjects at hand. Perhaps the most flagrant example was Reuters'

citation of a single source, a computer company executive, in

asserting that " most " Bangalore residents supported the dog captures

and killing.

 

Such a statement might be made if supported by a poll, a

survey, or a petition, but not by quoting random individuals. No

matter who those individuals happen to be, no one or two, or one or

two hundred, can be represented as " most " without some indication

that they are a representative cross-section, selected for

demographic accuracy.

 

 

4) Failure to use multiple sources.

 

Much of the coverage consisted of reporters merely attending

press conferences at which various demagogues ranted and raved, and

then summarizing their ravings without subjecting any of it to any

test of veracity, fairness, or accuracy.

 

That isn't reporting. Where I come from, the fundamental

rule of journalism is, " If your mother says she loves you, get a

second source. "

 

Every significant claim should be supported by multiple

sources, and opposing perspectives should also be presented.

 

These precepts are so universal in U.S. journalism that one

of my friends who teaches at the freshman level flunks anyone who

fails to include at least three separate and unrelated sources in a

piece of reportage. She expects 19-year-olds to know that they have

to find three sources even if they are only reporting the outcome of

a football game, and most of them understand why by the end of their

first week.

 

 

5) Failure to verify statistics.

 

The Times of India headlined " Figures belie NGOs' ABC claims

on dogs " above an article by Smitha Rao that added apples to oranges

to get pears.

 

Numbers pertaining to one procedure were misrepresented as

numbers pertaining to another, and then the erroneous numbers were

used to call the ABC program directors liars.

 

It is fundamental to journalism that if you are going to call

someone a liar based on numbers, you at least have to get the

numbers right.

 

There were many other examples. Another was that a " Staff

Reporter " for The Hindu, whose name whould have been on the article

so that he/she could be held accountable, claimed that only 70,000

dog sterilizations were done in all of India last year, while Rahul

Sehgal's team alone did 45,000 in Ahmedabad.

 

 

6) Failure to avoid libelous statements.

 

This, from the Deccan Herald, was among the most blatantly

libelous phrasings that I have seen in a mainstream newspaper in

quite a long time--

 

 

>Meanwhile, Mr Ashok has announced that criminal action will be taken

>against four NGOs - CUPA, Karuna, Krupa and ARF- and health

>officials if they were found to be misappropriating funds or

>neglecting their responsibilities.

 

 

Note, first of all, that this is not a direct quote, for

which some responsibility could be shared with R. Ashok. This is a

paraphrasing, for which " DH News Service " is solely responsible.

 

The statement that " Mr. Ashok has announced that criminal

action will be taken against four NGOs, " naming them, constitutes a

complete sentence by itself, before even getting to the qualifying

" if, " and without presenting any reason whatever why they should

even be suspect.

 

This is like stating, " Joe Smith will be prosecuted for ax

murder, if an ax-murdered body turns up and Joe's fingerprints are

on the ax handle. " Absent any stated reason to believe that an ax

murder has been committed and that Joe Smith did it, asserting that

Joe Smith will be prosecuted for it is improperly accusing Joe Smith,

and could not be defended.

 

The qualification " if they were found to be misappropriating

funds " is insufficient to escape a libel charge, absent any reason

to believe misappropriation might be going on.

 

Evidence must precede indictment in news reportage, as well

as in courtrooms.

 

Failure to present the NGOs response would probably clinch a

libel verdict against the Deccan Herald in a U.S. court. The Deccan

Herald would probably be funding a significant amount of ABC work if

held to U.S. standards of accountability.

 

This reminds me that any foreign newspaper with a more than

incidental U.S. mailing list or web site made deliberately accessible

to U.S. readers can be sued for libel in U.S. courts. Most major

Indian newspapers are very vulnerable simply through carrying

matrimonial advertisements on behalf of Indians living and working in

the U.S.

 

I much dislike encouraging anyone to sue news media, but as

regards Bangalore, some of the reportage was so inflammatory and

inaccurate as to potentially jeopardize not only the ABC programs and

the dogs, but also the lives of the program administrators, amid an

atmosphere of mob violence.

 

This was not how newspapers are supposed to operate, not in

India and not anywhere.

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

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