For those of you who still don’t believe that “pit bull” bites are treated differently by the media, here’s a local Ontario example.

On the morning of June 19, a two-year-old child (gender unspecified) was attacked by a Great Dane while the dog was being walked by a relative. The child suffered injuries to his or her right ear and left upper arm and puncture wounds to the upper back and to the stomach.

More than 36 hours later, I have only been able to find three news stories about the incident: CBC, CTV, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.

ALL THREE simply quoted verbatim the original police report with NO further investigation by the news organizations.

No pressing the police for more details. No attempts to interview the dog owners or the child’s parents. No “person-on-the-street” opinions as to what should be done about this dog or this type of dog. No lying-in-wait to pounce on the dogs’ owners as they leave for work. No proclamations by politicians that “something must be done”.

Just three tiny niblets on three websites. Even the CTV version, which included a TV “report”, simply repeated the same info and showed the street name, the road, and the hospital. That’s it.

Here’s the CBC report: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/guelph-toddler-mauled-by-great-dane-1.2681965

Here’s the CTV report: http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/child-in-hospital-following-dog-attack-in-guelph-1.1876992

Here’s the Record report: http://www.therecord.com/news-story/4589793-guelph-child-hospitalized-after-great-dane-attack/

And here’s the police report (3rd item down): http://www.thefountainpen.com/s/showstory?id=12619

Even if you’ve been skeptical of our claims about media basis, just ask yourself: If the police had identified the dog as a “pit bull” and all other aspects of the case were identical to this one (including the injuries), do you not think that this would have been in the national newspapers (Globe and Mail, National Post) and the Toronto newspapers (Star, Sun, etc) which are read country-wide? Would it not have been on every TV station? Would they not have sent trucks with camera crews and interviewers to talk to neighbours, relatives, police, politicians? Would they not have found that obscure neighbour from two streets down who’s too scared to walk on that street anymore?

And so on…

This child’s life has been drastically (and probably permanently) altered as a result of this incident, yet he/she gets zero attention because of the type of dog that caused the injuries?

How does that even begin to make sense?