The BBC in ‘Horror Dog Attack’ Correction (sort of)
Posted By Ryan O'Meara Date: 18/02 Posted Under: Breed Specific Legislation, Dangerous DogsThank you to everyone who emailed the BBC following our Devil Dogs, Lies and the Media story of last week.
It seems a positive result has been achieved with the BBC finally publishing a correct account of Mr James Rehill’s death - by natural causes NOT by dog attack as was previously reported.
However, it does appear the original BBC report ‘Dog kills owner in horror attack‘ is still un-corrected and thus somewhat diminishes the credibility of the recently added account of the man’s death by natural causes as both stories contradict each other.
It’d be be just dandy if the BBC could see their way to updating the original story as it is, for want of a better expression, completely wrong.
At the time of this being published (a full two weeks after it was confirmed Mr Rehill was NOT killed by his dog) it appears many of the newspaper reports who wrongly attributed his death to a ‘devil dog attack’ have not had the decency to issue a correction.
Mr Rehill’s dog was shot and killed at scene by police.
Author DetailsRyan O'Meara is editor-in-chief of K9 Magazine, the lifestyle magazine for dog lovers. He lives in the East Midlands with his own two dogs, Mia and Chloe. - See this author's webpage
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Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:38 am and is filed under Breed Specific Legislation, Dangerous Dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Ryan
The truth does not sell red tops or even broad sheet’s, why would they be bothered to change their angle when they know just how easy it is to put a picture of a Rottweiler or a SBT in the article (even when the incident had no Rotti or Staffi involvement!)
You would think though that after correcting their story, the BBC would ensure that all parts of it had the same line!
Once again, proof that main stream media is about nothing but profit. “If it bleeds, it leads”. There is a complete disregard for fact, truth, honesty and balance.
I hate the devil dog tag. the omen has a lot to answer too and if im not mistaken it was dobermans in the film not rotties but the media do like to use that picture of a rottie snarling dont they. pity they dont realise how much harm it does to the reputation of this magnificent breed
You are right to a degree. The dogs in the Omen were in fact Rottweilers and that film probably did do much to bring about the whole ‘devil dog’ tag. However, and this for me is really an ironic replica of how the devil dog stories of today get trotted out, what many people don’t know about those dogs in the Omen is that they were actually very nervous of the actors and didn’t want to chase them or even get too close. So in the end the director had to get the actors to stuff sausages up their sleeves to encourage the dogs to chase them. The even had to overdub the dog’s barks on the film track. So we see even in film, the media is able to make us believe one thing but the reality is very, very different.