Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Another Hurricane Side Effect: Some Soul-Searching About Pet Coverage
By Andrew Adam Newman
The New York Times
Published: 11/28/05
Excerpt:
Roy Peter Clark, vice president of the Poynter
Institute for Media Studies, says journalists gravitate toward three
types of pet stories. "One is the cynical story that satirizes humans'
over-attachment to their pets. Then, there are the outrage stories,
usually written when human beings cause intentional harm to animals,"
he said. "And then there's the heroic dog, sort of the Lassie paradigm:
'What is it girl? What are you trying to tell me?' "
But after Katrina and the news reports of heart-rending human-pet
separations and reunions, Mr. Clark said "there's a renewed
understanding of how much pets mean to certain people, and how hard it
is for some people to take life-saving actions if it requires them to
abandon their pets."
Mr. Clark also argues that there is a lesson here for news
organization: get someone to cover pets and pet ownership. "It's one of
the things that people talk about most, and talk about most with
strangers," he said.
Mr. Clark has an 11-year-old Jack Russell terrier named Rex "who my
wife and I love more than we love each other, even though we've been
together 35 years," he said.
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