The injustice of dogs in the media

I think the media have a dog bias.

In the past few years, I’ve seen hundreds of news stories about cute pooches and all the crazy things people do with them. Birthday parties, outfits, etc. It’s kind of ridiculous.

A few months ago I was walking from my desk to the coffee shop down the hall at work. When I passed the entrance to the photo studio, I noticed there were at least 12 dogs inside. They were all dressed up in different outfits, for a story that one of the feature sections was doing on “spring dog fashions.”

I decided to do a little empirical research today, because I wanted to know just how deep this anti-cat bias ran. My methods may not be purely scientific, but I figure they can give us a small picture of how unfair the world of journalism is to the cat lovers among us.

• Since the Star Tribune electronic archives started on Jan.1, 1986, there have been 22,491 mentions of the word “dog” in a story and only 9,336 mentions of the word “cat.” Since Jan.1 , 2006, there have been 498 uses of the word “dog” in a story, and only 220 uses of the word “cat.”
  
• In headlines, there have been 48 uses of the word “dog” this year, compared with only 19 for the word “cat,” three of which were used for stories about an Arctic Cat snowmobile.

Now, I realize that using a word like “dog” or “cat” doesn’t necessarily show an affinity towards them. So I did a little cross-referencing.

• Since the beginning of the Star Tribune electronic database in 1986, 4,446 stories have used both the words “dog” and “love.” Only 1,947 stories have used the words “cat” and “love.”
  
• In a lead paragraph for a story, 143 stories have used both the words “dog” and “love,” and 37 has used the words “cat” and “love.”

This may be an institutional problem with the Star Tribune, and readers of more cat-friendly newspapers may not feel that their newspapers are quite so unfair. But for a cat lover like me to be subjected to a parade of dogs in cute outfits whenever I walk past the photo studio is just plain unfair.

Some may attribute the disconnect in the number of stories about dogs or cats to be indicative of a greater cultural divide. Not true, I say.

According to a 2003 survey by the American Pet Association, there are 62,965,000 pet dogs in the United States and 76,688,000 pet cats. Thirty-one million dog owners annually purchase Christmas gifts for their dogs, and 39 million cat owners purchase Christmas presents for their cats.

There are 13.4 million cat birthday celebrations a year and 9.8 million dog birthday celebrations a year. Clearly, there are more cats out there being loved than dogs, so it just goes to show how disconnected the mainstream media really are from everyday Americans.

I can’t deal with the injustice.

(photo credit: Star Tribune. How predictable.)