Editorial: Media relations & the Bangalore dog crisis

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

 

 

Editorial:

 

Media relations & the Bangalore dog crisis

 

 

The Bangalore dog crisis, extensively covered in both this

and the previous edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, has underlying meaning

for almost every reader.

Heavily publicized dog attacks, in Bangalore and elsewhere,

may cause India to rescind or weaken the decade-old policy mandating

civic participation in the national Animal Birth Control program,

and forbidding indiscriminate massacres of street dogs.

This would be a reversal of momentum toward achieving no-kill

animal control of global influence--and would come even though ABC

has cut the street dog population of India by as much as 75% in 10

years, according to the most recent World Health Organization

estimate. Dog attacks are down proportionately, including in

Bangalore, which has 74% fewer dog attacks per 1,000 citizens than

the national average.

Yet because dog attacks are fewer, those that occur are

getting more attention. Because the Bangalore and Indian national

news media were inadequately informed about ABC successes, and were

insufficiently enlisted in educating the public, much of India now

wrongly believes that dog attacks are more frequent and more vicious

than when ABC started.

Journalists have been easily manipulated by political opportunists

who saw in two recent fatal dog attacks--one of them beyond the areas

served by ABC--a chance to restore to the public payroll their goonda

bagmen and enforcers. Traditionally such thugs were hired as

dogcatchers, supplementing their salaries by selling dog meat, fur,

and leather.

The most outspoken opponents of ABC, in Bangalore and

throughout India, include politicians whose careers are founded on

manipulating the votes of illiterates, and operators of unlicensed,

uninspected, unsafe, unsanitary, and thoroughly inhumane shanty

butcher shops, whose carelessly discarded offal attracts street dogs

who form warring packs. Such packs were responsible for both recent

fatalities.

Illiterates vote in India--but they do not buy newspapers.

The illegal meat shops pay bribes to avoid law enforcement, but they

do not buy mass media advertising. There was no inherent reason why

ABC opponents gained the immediate amplification and leverage they

did, except that supporters of ABC had insufficiently introduced

themselves in newsrooms.

Ethnic and class issues were immediately exploited by the

foes of ABC. Butchering, for example, is chiefly done by members

of the Muslim minority, officialy 12% of the Indian population.

About two-thirds of Indians eat meat, including most of the poorest.

ABC programs are by contrast mostly headed by educated and relatively

affluent vegetarians, who tend to be acutely aware of their

vulnerability to mob violence, as well as of the vulnerability of

the dogs they try to help. Often ABC program heads and spokespersons

are too discreet to point out to illiterates at volatile public

meetings that many of their blustering leaders are the very people

whose exploitive habits are most responsible for their misery.

For example, instead of funding the eradication of rabies

through immunizing dogs, at a fraction of the cost of killing them,

politicians relying on illiterate support make a show of " putting

poor people ahead of dogs, " by funding only post-exposure

vaccination for dog bite victims. This brings kickbacks from local

vaccine makers and distributors, as has occasionally been exposed,

and earns the gratitude of the victims and their families, but does

nothing to make communities safer because it fails to attack rabies

at the source. It does, however, perpetuate fear of rabies as a

device that can be used to rally voters.

Anti-ABC politicians are pushing a policy which will

inevitably result in poor children continuing to be exposed to

maulings and rabies.

The reasons for this should have been firmly and forthrightly

established in media awareness and public opinion before the recent

fatal attacks ever occurred--and through broadcast as well as print

media, to reach the illiterate poor.

Because these points were not adequately made, ABC opponents

were taken seriously when they alleged that ABC is responsible for

the very problems it is rapidly reducing.

 

Do not wait for media to call

 

In sum, the Bangalore crisis is an ongoing illustration of

the most important points made by the ANIMAL PEOPLE tip sheet Media

Relations for Animal Shelters.

Thousands of copies have been distributed since 1993 as

conference handouts, both on paper and in CD format. More have been

downloaded from the ANIMAL PEOPLE and Best Friends Animal Society web

sites. People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi incorporated much of

Media Relations for Animal Shelters into the PfA handbook on media

relations, expressly for use in India. Key tips are closely

paraphrased in the World Society for the Protection of Animals

membership handbook. Media communications presenter Lynn D'Souza

kept the Best Friends edition on an overhead projector screen

throughout most of her talk at the January 2007 Asia for Animals

conference in Chennai.

Yet in Bangalore the very first sentence was neglected, for

whatever reason:

Do not wait for the media to come to you. If you do, they

usually will not come until someone has complained about a problem,

which puts you on the defensive.

The remedy, anywhere and everywhere, is to get to know your

local media.

Find out who edits each of the newspapers and broadcast news

programs serving your area. Find out who covers lifestyles,

children's issues, municipal affairs, crime, and wildlife.

Introduce yourself to all of these people.

Send personal letters of introduction, explaining what your

organization does that involves each reporter's beat. Then call.

Make yourself immediately and easily accessible as a reliable source

of information and perspective, who can be reached on deadline, can

be quoted on the record, and will not retreat from controversy.

Be aware that journalists often have short tenures. Read

newspapers, and listen to the broadcast news. If someone new

addresses a topic that might overlap animal work, make immediate

contact. If reporters disappear, find out where they went and

maintain acquaintance. Many will have moved up to editing, or to

media reaching more people. Those who have changed cities might

become valuable contacts on regional or national issues. Those who

have retired might volunteer to help amplify your media outreach.

Always have background material ready to e-mail, fax, or

deliver in person to anyone who needs it, and have the information

posted at your web site.

Include, in this order:

* Contact information--and don't forget to offer a number

for 24-hour-a-day crisis response. Being able to reach you in the

morning doesn't help when the morning edition describing last night's

incident goes to press at three a.m.

* Vital statistics on your work, together with the national

norms on important subjects. For example, none of the Bangalore

news media knew, until informed by ANIMAL PEOPLE, that Bangalore

has 75,000 fewer dog bites per year than could be expected, based on

Indian norms, and no rabies within city limits in three years.

* Succinct explanations of variance from the norms. The

Bangalore ABC programs are demonstrably preventing at least 75,000

dog bites and hundreds of human rabies cases each and every year.

* Succinct statements of realistic short-term and long-term

objectives. The goal of ABC is often misrepresented by opponents as

trying to perpetuate street dog populations. They get away with it

because ABC proponents inadequately explain the ecological principles

behind the ABC approach.

The longterm goal of ABC is to eliminate street dogs by preventing

them from breeding up to the carrying capacity of the habitat. The

short-term goals include reducing the carrying capacity of the

habitat, by allowing dogs who cannot reproduce to continue to

consume the food, which would otherwise encourage the fecundity and

nursing success of breeding bitches. (An important unofficial goal

of ABC, which also must be amplified, is encouraging communities to

improve their sanitation, before each dog's place is taken by two

monkeys, three cats, 100 rats, or a pig, all of whom will be much

more problematic.)

* Succinct statements of needs in order to achieve

objectives. As Animal Rights Fund volunteer Poornima Harish

explained in the March 2007 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, the

hue-and-cry over the dog attacks gave the Bangalore ABC programs an

excellent chance to seek further funding and community support.

Unfortunately, much of the momentum of the moment was lost because

the programs' unmet needs were not already prominently on the public

agenda. If the ABC program leaders had been vociferously on record,

demanding the wherewithal necessary to extend their efforts to the

unincorporated area where the second fatality occurred, they could

not have been accused of not " doing the needful. "

* Your most recent financial summary, including any

compensation paid to top personnel. The Bangalore ABC programs were

wrongly accused in print of self-aggrandizement. All of them are led

entirely by volunteers, and ANIMAL PEOPLE has often cited one of

them, Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, as a model of

accountability. Had the financial facts already been shared with

local news media, the people making the allegations--including some

reporters and columnists--might have been asked by their editors to

document their claims, instead of those claims going to press.

 

Recovering from disaster

 

The Bangalore ABC programs were victimized by much sloppy and

sensational reporting, mostly by people who were shielded by the

common Indian practice of identifying newspaper article authors only

as " Our Correspondent, " or " Our Staff Reporter. "

One article quoted a nameless veterinarian who asserted that

no vet can do more than seven or eight sterilization surgeries per

day, even if supported by veterinary technicians. Therefore the

Bangalore ABC spokespersons were said to be lying when they claimed

to sterilize 40 dogs per day. That the quoted vet was incompetent,

by global surgical standards, might have been recognized before his

remarks saw print, if the ABC programs had shown enough reporters

and editors over the years the standards that their surgeons meet.

Media failures to verify purported statistics were

ubiquitous. A " Staff Reporter " for The Hindu claimed that only

70,000 dog sterilizations were done in all of India last year, while

Rahul Sehgal's Animal Help Foundation team did 45,000 in Ahmedabad

alone.

Beneath the headline " Figures belie NGOs' ABC claims on dog, " Smitha

Rao of The Times of India misrepresented vaccination and

revaccination counts as unsubstantiated assertions about the numbers

of dogs sterilized.

Much of the Bangalore coverage consisted of reporters merely

repeating the rantings and ravings of local demagogues, without

subjecting any of it to tests of veracity, fairness, or accuracy,

and without presenting any opposing perspective.

Fortunately, apart from having failed to cultivate

sufficient media contacts in advance, the Bangalore ABC

spokespersons did not transgress the other basics for winning over

media in difficult situations, of which the most important is Never

lie to a reporter. You will always get caught, and you will lose

more credibility in five minutes than you have built up in five years

when it happens.

At this writing, while dog bites and even occasional serious

attacks continue to occur in Bangalore, as in all cities, the ABC

programs appear to have begun getting better press. Some of this may

be ascribed to several severely libeled persons serving notice on the

offending media that they may be sued.

The turnabout, however, had already begun before the legal

notices were served. A key part of it was not ascribing to malice

what could be ascribed to ignorance or miscommunication. In India as

elsewhere, animal care and control tends to be a low priority topic,

often handled by rookie reporters. Better informing them helped. So

did making contact with more experienced reporters. The Deccan

Herald, for instance, published some of the most incendiary

criticism of the ABC programs, but did a striking turnabout when the

situation was turned over to an editor who had previously visited

some of the ABC program hospitals.

ANIMAL PEOPLE helped to inform her understanding, and

eventually helped many other Bangalore journalists. Which brings up

the last of the Media Relations for Animal Shelters tips: if a

reporter wants to verify your information, or needs broad

perspective or historical background, we're here, we're news media

too, and almost every day we help mass media colleagues to make

heads or tails of complicated animal issues.

(If you don't have Media Relations for Animal Shelters, send

an e-mail to get the latest updated edition.)

 

 

--

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

 

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