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Front Porch: Hissy fit over paper’s cat snub unwarranted
I take these mutterings with a grain of salt because if you’re looking for bias, you’ll certainly find it. Imagine my surprise when I found it on the front page of last Thursday’s features section. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but there it was in living color – proof that this good paper had gone to the dogs.
A story announcing the launch of The Spokesman-Review’s new online pet page featured seven reader-submitted photos of pets. I know I’m not very good at math, but I can count, and what I counted was six dog photos and only one cat photo. ONE! (Full disclosure: I happen to be owned by two cats.)
Outraged, I did the only logical thing. I posted a rant about it on Facebook. “Does The Spokesman-Review hate cats?” I asked.
It didn’t take long for folks on both sides of the cats vs. dogs debate to weigh in. The fur flew. Here’s a sampling of the comments:
“Left-leaning cat haters. I knew it!”
“I believe that’s right-leaning cat haters.”
“It’s sad that in this day and age of supposed ‘tolerance,’ anti-cat prejudice still exists, even in the press.”
“A cat will not fetch your newspaper for you, thus, they are worthless!”
“It’s OK; cats aren’t too fond of The Spokesman-Review either.”
One friend tried to explain the dearth of cat photos thusly, “The cats refused to be photographed unless they were provided a dressing room, makeup services and a catered fish buffet lunch.”
Opinion Editor Gary Crooks offered no apologies and simply stated: “We hate hamsters even more.”
Fortunately, the hamster lobby was asleep at the wheel, otherwise my whole rant could have veered rodent.
Over at the S-R blog, Huckleberries Online well-known cat hater D.F. Oliveria opined, “I consider the lineup to have one cat too many.”
My youngest son, Sam, a staunch advocate for justice, took up the gauntlet and created two hashtags for this travesty, #CatLivesMatter and #SpokesmanSoDog.
Just when the rant was gaining speed and exclamation marks and morphing into a movement, online producer Alison Boggs weighed in.
“Sorry to introduce facts into this discussion, but here they are: By the time deadline hit for that section, of the 60 or so photos we had received, approximately 10 were of cats,” she wrote. “Representing the submissions accurately, therefore, we would need to post 1 cat photo for every 6 dog photos. As 7 photos ran, having 1 cat photo was a perfectly accurate representation of the submissions.”
Don’t you just hate it when someone interrupts a good rant with FACTS? Even more appalling, Boggs used math, which, if not actually prohibited by the Society of Professional Journalists, is certainly frowned upon.
It was kind of hard to rally the outrage after that. I mean, she used a story problem. Story problems are hard enough to figure out, let alone refute.
Then someone pointed out that there weren’t any tortoise photos, either.
It seemed the whole #CatLivesMatter movement would be over without a march downtown, or a theme song, which was really too bad because I’d planned to reach out to Tom Jones and secure the rights to “What’s New Pussycat.”
There would be no speeches, no dumping of litter boxes, no sad cat placards or mailings.
In fact, Boggs weighed in again, “I must commend the ‘cat lobby’ – since this conversation began, the S-R reader photo gallery for pets has received 6 new cat photos!”
So, the fur settled without any scratching or biting and only a little hissing.
That is until I opened my newspaper Sunday morning. The story on the cover of the Today section? “The Power of Pets.”
But once again, the only pet pictured was, you guessed it, a dog!
I’m outraged all over again. #CatLivesMatter
Contact Cindy Hval at dchval@juno.com. She is the author of “War Bonds: Love Stories From the Greatest Generation.” Her previous columns are available online at spokesman.com/ columnists. Follow her on Twitter at @CindyHval.