so Oprah is having Wayne Pacelle

by JOHN YATES
The American Sporting Dog Alliance
http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org

Dog owners might be in for another bashing on Friday, when ultra-liberal
talk show host Oprah Winfrey does a special program on “puppy mills.â€
Winfrey’s star reporter, Lisa Ling, went undercover in commercial
breeding kennels to do an expose on the pet store trade.

Although the commercial trade in pet store puppies has nothing to do with
the vast majority of dog owners and breeders, sensationalistic news
coverage tars us with the same brush. To the liberal animal rights
mindset, all breeders are either “puppy mills†or “backyard breeders,â€
and this always translates into more laws that harm only the innocent.
Moreover, the hidden agenda of the animal rights movement is the ultimate
elimination of animal ownership, and their strategy is to pick us off one
group at a time.

The American Sporting Dog Alliance (ASDA) does not know how Winfrey and
Ling will approach the topic, but we are not optimistic that it will be a
fair, balanced and reasonably objective report. Based on the normal
biased reporting we see about dog breeding, and Winfrey’s close personal
ties with animal rights groups, we would expect them to take their
cameras into a couple of “worst case†kennels, and then by inference say
or imply that all kennels and breeders are bad.

Expect to take a thumping from one of the wealthiest and most powerful
animal rights activists on Earth. According to a report in Women’s Day
magazine, billionaire Winfrey feels that leaving a cool $30 million to
her own five dogs in her will is not even slightly extravagant.
Inflation, you know.

Winfrey was partners with the radical Humane Society of the United States
in a movement aimed at destroying cattle ranching because of alleged food
safety issues from eating beef, and they were codefendants in a lawsuit
brought by the industry.

This month, Winfrey has been giving serious consideration to an
invitation to appear in nude photographs sponsored by one of the most
extreme animal rights groups in America, People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals, pop tabloids report. The nude photos would be for PETA’s “I’d
Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur†campaign. Winfrey’s concern reportedly is
not about endorsing PETA. The tabloids report that she is worried that
nude photos might offend voters and harm the presidential campaign of
Barrack Obama, whom she has strongly endorsed.

On Friday, we can expect a thumping with no opportunity to defend
ourselves. The Winfrey/Ling style of journalism is to exploit highly
emotional topics and sensationalize them to twang the heartstrings of a
predominantly middle class audience of liberals who are looking for the
next “do-gooder†cause to embrace. It looks like saving the whales or
feeding starving people in Somalia aren’t fashionable this year. Pity the
poor whales. Pity the poor Somali refugees.

And pity the poor dog owners! A campaign against dog owners and breeders
has become the latest fashionable cause for the glitz and glitter crowd
of celebrities.

The question is, what are we going to do about it?

For myself, I’m just plain sick and tired of being unfairly bashed. I
guess I just wasn’t raised to be a punching bag.

But, you might be asking, how can we fight back against the wealthiest
and most powerful media mogul in America? How can we fight that kind of
power? How can we fight someone who wills $30 million to her dogs when
we’re trying to figure out how to pay last month’s electric bill?

I think we can do it, if we get off of our butts and actually do it.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who breed dogs because they
love them – show dogs, performing dogs, hunting dogs, obedience dogs,
field trial dogs, companion dogs and just plain dogs. In addition, there
are millions of dog owners who love their animals and thank breeders for
doing the fine job that they know we do in improving temperament, genetic
soundness, utility, beauty and health.

If we join together in this, we can be a formidable force.

My thoughts are that a boycott of Winfrey’s advertisers would be the most
effective strategy. If several hundred thousand dog owners and breeders
were to contact advertisers on the Oprah show and refuse to buy any of
their products, they would be forced to take notice.

Please understand that I am not talking about censoring Winfrey’s
opinions. I would fight for her right to express any opinion she chooses,
and also for her right to present and endorse the views of animal rights
groups on her program.

However, journalistic ethics demands fairness, balance and objectivity if
programming purports to be reporting the news. If Oprah wants to do a
report on dog breeding, that’s fine. But the report should be fair to us
and give us the opportunity to balance the views of the animal rights
groups with our side of the story.

I don’t expect that Oprah will hold to the same standard of ethics that I
did as a newspaper reporter. I expect that her report will be a hatchet
job on dog owners and breeders. The promotional blog for Friday’s Oprah
Show gives us an idea of what we can expect:
http://www.oprah.com/community/thread/44908. Read it for yourself.

A boycott of advertisers just might convince Oprah to undergo an ethical
reformation. Most of her advertisers won’t like the idea of losing
several hundred thousand customers so that Oprah can preach sermons
against dog owners and breeders.

When I worked on newspapers, there was a cynical wisecrack that my bosses
sometimes told me when they didn’t like something I wrote. “There is
freedom of the press in America – for anyone who owns a press.†That
meant I didn’t own the press.

It takes a lot of money to own a TV show. Oprah has that kind of money,
and she earned it, but it has gone to her head. Now she sneers at the
rights and lives of ordinary people who made her a pop star, and that
includes dog owners and breeders.

The Internet is the great equalizer. One of the beauties of the Internet
is that it allows everyone to truly have the rights of free speech and
free press. The Internet has become the printing press of ordinary
people, and now it reaches a reported 80-percent of American households.

Television represents the past, when Oprah’s kind of money and power
controlled the right of a free press. The Internet has given us our
voice.

The American Sporting Dog Alliance is asking all dog owners and breeders
to watch the Oprah Show on Friday and form your own opinions. Then, if
she does the kind of hatchet job we expect, please bombard her with
emails expressing your displeasure.

Then, we need to get organized for a campaign to reach her advertisers.
In order to get ready, ASDA is asking readers of this report to email us
a list of every advertiser that supports the Oprah Show. ASDA is willing
to organize this campaign. Also, please let us know if you are able to
help with it. Our email address is [email protected].

The American Sporting Dog Alliance works at the grassroots to defend the
rights of dog owners and professionals against the very real threats of
animal rights activism. Please visit us on the web at
http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org. We maintain strict
independence and are supported only by the voluntary donations of our
members.

While the Oprah segment may be about “puppy mills,†the laws that her
friends in PETA and HSUS are proposing really are targeting dog owners
and hobby breeders, with the goal of reducing and ultimately eliminating
animal ownership. These same radical groups also want to eliminate
hunting, ban the ownership of firearms, forcibly convert us to vegan
vegetarianism and destroy American farming traditions.

“Puppy mills†are not the issue. Existing federal, state and animal
cruelty laws already intensively regulate commercial kennels. You are the
issue. These groups want to destroy the things that you love and believe
in.

Does Oprah have a conscience? She is leaving $30 million to support five
dogs that she loves and apparently believes she is doing something right
by supporting animal rights groups.

But she is being suckered. She is supporting groups that believe that the
only unexploited dog is a dead dog. The truth is that PETA slaughters
97-percent of the dogs that enter the organization’s “shelter†in
Virginia. They would rather kill those dogs than help them find a loving
home.

Please forward this posting to as many people as you can, and also
cross-post it on message boards. We need to reach as many people as
possible quickly.

I don't get it... when a pet store opened here and a bunch of people rallied and started complaining, writing letters to the newspaper, so on and so forth... we were told that we're stupid extremist dirty liberal tree-huggers, there's no "proof" that the pet store was getting from a puppy mill, dogs are just animals so who cares, the dogs at the store LOOK healthy and they're all CUTE...

But now "liberals" LOVE a good cause and a show linking puppy mills to pet stores is going to be really really bad...?

I don't even know what to think anymore. I have a feeling that this show, even if it goes into a puppymill and shows the nasty dirty stuff, is STILL going to be passed off by people as "sensationalism," and people will STILL say there's "no proof" that Pet Store A is actually related to all that "bad stuff on Oprah's show."
I can't see it really doing any harm OR good, on a whole, from where I'm standing.