Monday, January 25, 2010

Interesting Title Change - Breed Name Eliminated

This is what I received in my google alerts ("animal control" happened to be the alert):

Authorities: 4 Great Danes attack 5-year-old in Montgomery County
KHOU
The dogs are now being collected by animal control. There is no further information at this time. I hope this little child is going to get well soon...its ...
See all stories on this topic

but when I clicked on the link, this is what I got:

Authorities: 5-year-old recovering after vicious dog attack

by khou.com staff
Posted on January 23, 2010 at 5:57 PM
Updated today (1/24) at 12:57 PM
******

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas – A 5-year-old  boy is recovering after being viciously attacked by his neighbor's dogs. 
Drake Talley, was out playing Saturday around 2:30 p.m., when two of the neighbor's four dogs attacked him. 
Drake was airlifted to Memorial Hermann hospital for treatment, where he is now recovering.  
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Emphasis my own, along with the added italicized date. We went from mentioning the breed name in the title (common with reporting on Pit Bull bites) to eliminating the breed entirely in both the title and the body of the article (common with reporting on non Pit Bull bites).

4 comments:

Daisy Dog said...

Grrrr! This really upsets me. If a pit bull does anything, the breed is CAPITALIZED! Its put in your face, but if its not a pibble oops we forgot to tell you it was a cocker spaniel or whatever. Thanks for pointing this out once again.

Unknown said...

It's definitely frustrating and all too common. And as usual, reporters and the media at larger aren't held accountable.

Two Pitties in the City said...

The Chicago Tribune had a huge headline the other day about a Pitbull killing owner in home (or something) and it was only later in the day that they changed it to Man killed by dogs in home and if you read the fine print of the article it said they were wrongly identified as pitbulls and just mixed dogs of unknown breeds.

Nichole said...

Wow, I'm surprised the Chicago Tribune even bothered to note that they were misidentified.