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Pit bulls aren't necessarily demons -- or angels
“Do you report on all dog bites involving children or only if it involves a pit bull?” e-mailed one reader recently, referring to an item about an attack on an 8-year-old Lenexa boy in the Feb. 2 Kansas City Star. “All breeds including Akitas, Labs, chows, German shepherds and golden retrievers, can bite and cause severe injury to children. However, in your paper it seems you only report if it involves a pit bull.”
Fans of pit bulls — an umbrella term that usually refers to four different breeds — claim that the media are responsible for the animals’ bad reputation among the public at large.
“They’re no more likely to bite anyone than any other dog, no matter what,” said a reader several weeks ago, who was worried that coverage of Michael Vick’s dogfighting ring would further sour people on the animals. It’s true that any breed, from Doberman pinscher to dachshund, has the ability to attack, and dogfight organizers sometimes use breeds other than pits. Pit bull owners often report that the dogs make wonderful, loyal pets.
On the other hand, I think pit bull lovers do sometimes overlook that other dogs get bad press, too. The Star has run stories about attacks by bull mastiffs and German shepherds in the recent past, for example. And a Page A-1 story on Jan. 27 took a very sympathetic look at the pit bulls rescued from Vick’s kennels, noting that even dogs that had been abused can be socialized into pets.
Journalists should make sure not to demonize any breed. But at the same time, two facts are unassailable: For centuries, breeders have intentionally maximized pit bulls’ tenacity and muscular strength — traits that are highly valuable to dogfighters. And pit bulls are currently the dog of choice among most fighters.
Over-Americanization?
Chris Pettman recently made a fascinating point about a quote from Sir Edmund Hillary published in The Star shortly after his death. The celebrated mountaineer decried the “dozens of aluminum ladders” used by the inexperienced climbers who make the trek up Mount Everest today.
“Hillary was from New Zealand and they spell and pronounce aluminum as ‘aluminium’ in the same way as the British do,” he wrote. “Whilst this may seem a niggling point, I am bothered by the need to Americanise spelling for home consumption.”
In all matters, the copy desk’s main objective is to make words as clear as possible to the largest number of readers. I’m confident that if the paper had printed the Kiwi spelling, I’d have heard from people who thought they’d found a typo.
Since the quote was from something Hillary said verbally, I think I would have also changed the spelling to “aluminum,”myself. But if it had come from a written source, I think the right choice would be to leave it in its original form.
What do you think? Logical compromise, or a linguistic double standard?