There are two ways editorial judgment of audience interest can influence reporting about dogs and dog bites.

1.    •Over-reporting because of breed
   1.    •Sensationalized reporting

1.  
2. Media Bias in Reporting on Dog Bite-Related Fatalities
3.  
4. Incidents involving non-"pit bull" dogs are rarely taken up by national or international news outlets, even in cases of dog bite-related fatalities.

1. 2008 NCRC Media Bias Report.
2. 2007 NCRC Media Bias Report.

Dog-Related-Injury Stories as Entertainment:

"I write for a tab, not Newsweek. So certain things are played up in a story..."

-- Reporter Simone Weichselbaum, New York Daily News in conversation with Director of Research Karen Delise, explaining why accurate information was not included in a story, July 7, 2008.

Sources that use news stories for information on dog bite-related injuries must recognize that the impulse to play a story up emotionally will compromise, accurate reporting of events. While there are hundreds of dog-related-injury stories that can illustrate this point, here are two examples:

A dog bite-related incident involving a 6-year-old Youngstown boy and his father's yard dog was reported in a number of Ohio papers. Here are excerpts from some of the more sensational accounts:

Case # 1

The Reporting:

"The boy was fading in and out." "I never seen anything like it in my life." "I heard the mother screaming and saw the dog rolling the baby like a tumbleweed, I heard the bones crush on his left arm." "The dog bit the boy's face and neck, ripped his lip, and bent his arm back like paper." "The mother was trying to free her son from the pit bull's jaws, but the dog kept tearing at the child's flesh as they rolling in the yard." "Neighbors used a baseball bat and a steel rake to beat the dog away." "He (the dog) had a lock on the baby." "The dog clamped his jaws around the boy's neck." "The initial call to police listed the victim as a nonbreather."

(Quotes from Vindy.com, May 26, 2008 & Tribune Chronicle, May 27, 2008)

The Facts:

Sadly, a 6-year-old boy experienced a frightening, painful and unfortunate incident with his father's yard dog and no doubt he was seriously injured. Happily, however, despite the graphic descriptions of locking jaws, crushing bones, ripping of skin and tearing of flesh, and the victim being a "nonbreather, " – The boy was released from the hospital a few hours after the incident.

Case # 2

The Reporting:

On February 17, 2008, a Lubbock, Texas newspaper trumpeted the headline: "Boy Critical after Pit Bull Mauling." The article claimed the boy was in "critical condition after being mauled by a Pit bull – Boxer mix." And in an "expanded coverage sidebar," the paper went on to list each and every story of any "pit bull" dog encounter (with or without injuries) with a human or animal that they found in their archives. Included in the follow-up coverage was an emotional editorial urging a ban on all "pit bull" dogs.

The Facts:

Less than 24 hours later, the "critically injured" boy was at home, running around and playing like a normal 3-year-old. Photos of the boy reveal a sweet-looking boy with a few scrapes and abrasions on his forehead. Indeed, it was later reported that it could not be determined if the dog actually bit the boy or if the abrasions were caused by the dog's claws when he jumped on the boy.

This is simply another gross misrepresentation of a dog encounter with a human that re-enforces the hysteria around dogs and dog bite-related injuries.

Had the newspaper highlighted instead the failure of this owner  -- and other owners -- to exercise proper control of his dog, the coverage might have resulted in this community requiring and enforcing better owner control over dogs. In the paper's ill-considered eagerness to capitalize on the notariety of "pit bull" dogs, that opportunity was lost.