On Friday, May 19, CBS Evening News aired a fluff piece about the Ringling Bros elephant breeding ground, referring to it as a sanctuary. Viewers were treated to quotes by the Ringling team such as "The elephants I take care of are basically like members of my family." The reporter told us that the elephants were living in the lap of luxury -- hard to know since the breeding ground allows no uninvited guests because they want to "maintain the privacy for the elephants." The piece lightly refers to the fact that a third of the baby elephants "will follow in their parents' giant footsteps and join the circus."
Four animal protection groups, with undercover footage and eyewitness testimony from a former Ringling Bros trainer, have brought a federal lawsuit against Ringling Bros for its treatment of elephants. You can read some of the details of that suit at http://www.awionline.org/wildlife/elephants/rbsuit.htm. You'll read about "large visible lesions" found by the USDA, during an unannounced inspection, on the rear legs of two baby elephants, Doc and Angelica, aged 18 months. Ringling told the USDA they were formed during the "routine" process of separating babies from their mothers. The circus has to tear them away, pulling the babies with ropes around their legs and chains around their necks.
You'll also read about the death of baby Benjamin, "who eyewitnesses say was repeatedly beaten by Ringling Bros. trainers." He "died while purportedly swimming in a pond. He was only 4 years old. Video footage shows he preferred to remain in deep water to going towards shallower water because his trainer was standing there holding a bullhook." A bullhook is a heavy rod with a sharp metal hook at the end. Covering the lawsuit, on September 5, 2005, KTVU TV in San Francisco aired footage of his death. You can view it, as part of the story, at http://www.ktvu.com/video/4936923/detail.html
The voiceover tells us, "The lawsuit claims that Benjamin drowned when he tried to avoid a bullhook that had so frequently been used on him by trainer Pat Harned. It is Pat Harned you see hitting him in the water." We see the trainer striking Benjamin with the bullhook while he is in the water, then exclaiming "Oh God" as he realizes Benjamin has died.
That KTVU story also shows disturbing footage of a young elephant, Shirley, giving birth while chained by three legs, tugging and pulling at the chains, "standing in her own amniotic fluid on a concrete floor," unable to move around naturally as she would, or even to kneel. The baby therefore drops many feet onto the cement floor. We learn that the baby, Ricardo, at eight months of age, falls off of a pedestal breaking two legs and is euthanized.
The lawsuit also refers to baby elephant Kenny who died while traveling with the Ringling Bros circus. According to the USDA, Ringling Bros made him perform the day he died "after determining that the elephant was ill and needed to be examined by a veterinarian."
Please do go to the AWI link above for more details of the suit and to www.Circuses.com for more information about, and shocking footage of, circus training.
With the above in mind, it is heartbreaking to watch the CBS Evening News fluff segment from Friday, May 20, and hear the Ringling Bros breeding ground called a "sanctuary." You can watch the CBS piece on line at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/19/assignment_america/main1638027.shtml OR http://tinyurl.com/fbxok
Whenever one sees corporate abuse of animals, there is a monetary reason for it. When the media supports that abuse it may be for advertising dollars. But other factors play a part. One is lack of knowledge -- the reporter may not have seen the footage the rest of us have seen and may know nothing about the truth behind Ringling. He will be far more open to learning the truth if it is not delivered in an attacking manner. Another factor is the credibility of animal advocates and even a distaste some in the media may have for us -- the impression that we are angry, strident, even potentially violent. That image does not help the animals. Viewing CBS's nationally aired misrepresentation of the Ringling relationship with baby elephants, we have reason to be angry. But while encouraging absolutely every animal advocate to write to CBS and strongly express disappointment with regard to Friday's coverage, I urge people not to vent their anger at the expense of the animals, not to
write anything that furthers the image of animal advocates as unreasonable and not credible. Though CBS Evening News has traditionally not been good on animal issues (as compared to ABC, for example) we hope that will change -- we would like CBS Evening News to become a friend to our movement and we should keep that goal in mind when writing our notes.
Please send strong polite notes to CBS Evening News at evening@cbsnews.com . Please be careful not to use any of my exact phrasing -- we do not want our emails to seem like form letters. For that reason sample letters are never a good idea when dealing with the media. You don't need to write a Pulitzer Prize winning piece -- a couple of lines expressing your disappointment at the biased coverage and hoping for better coverage in the future is plenty. You can write a little more if you have time and are inspired -- Not too long though, or your good work won't get read.
I send thanks to Ryan Merkley from Compassionate Consumers (http://www.compassionateconsumers.org/) for making sure we knew about the CBS Evening News piece.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)
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Date: Mon May 22 13:01:29 2006
