Monday, August 31, 2009

Oh media, how fickle you are!

Let's follow the timeline of this story. Or, let's just follow how this dog transforms from a puppy to a fully grown dog in a matter of hours! Fascinating stuff, media reporting!

Initial reports (and thankfully most of the current reports):
"were taking care of the 12-week-old Pit Bull"

The Associated Press (2 hours ago):
"
dog-sitting the 1-year-old pit bull for a friend" <--- will be interesting to see if this is the article most picked up by other news agencies.

News14
"when a pit bull bit the child's toes off his left foot." - no age of dog is mentioned.

In most of the articles, these are the consistent reports:
- dog is 12-weeks old
- puppy running loose throughout house
- mother and boyfriend asleep on sofa, medicated
- infant in same room as mother and boyfriend
- puppy owned by jerk
- felony child abuse charges issued

But this article reports some discrepancies, per a neighbor's account:
- mother actually locked puppy in bathroom
- one of the other children let puppy out
- boyfriend not on the couch but sleeping in another room
- puppy owned by jerk
- felony abuse charges issued

Which is all interesting stuff, of course. There's still a baby with a mangled foot and a dog who is probably going to be killed. There's still the issue of self medicating with sedatives when you have a 4-mos-old infant to look after. And if it's true the dog was loose, there's the elephant in the middle of the room wondering why on earth any sane parent would let a teething dog (any dog) be loose/alone with defenseless babies.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

remember the story of the pit bull that chewed the genitals off a baby? The sad details of that included drugged out mother in another room and puppy that had been allowed to forage in the garbage where used diapers were placed...

Princess said...

wow, I'm sad but not surprised to say you were right, it's being picked up a lot!! But seriously why would AP add 9 months to this puppies life?! I could just screem at the media!! If only they'd listen.

Unknown said...

@EmilyandLulu: I vaguely remember that...I can't remember, was that the one in which it was the ferret who did it or the puppy? Disturbing, nonetheless.

@Princess: I wasn't surprised, either. Well, except for the AP piece, which is an example of some pretty egregiously bad reporting.