I realise this is probably quite stupid. It's a crap show anyway, poorly written and poorly acted (no offence if there is somehow a Casualty writer/actor on these boards!) and I wouldn't normally watch it, but I'd just got in from the Stop the War demo, I was pretty knackered, and I wanted something to stare at while I ate my tea.
Anyway I don't know if anyone saw it, but it had these supposed animal rights activists as one of the storylines. Pretty obvious stuff really. Bullying manipulative man, poor deluded girlfriend.
(I was hooked though, that's just the effect it has on me when animal rights people get any sort of media recognition at all. I was really hoping they might somehow mention their diet and if they were vegans! Sad I know but I hardly know any other vegans myself, so it's nice to see them on TV sometimes even if it's just actors pretending...)
Really silly storyline, they were blowing up this woman who had taken on a job as director of an animal research laboratory. Obviously the woman had a pet dog and the local vet was at her house and got the full force of the bomb while she emerged unscathed. Then the victimised girlfriend character drove over the dog and crashed her car, it was so dumb. It was like, 'look at these violent animal rights people, HAH! They succeeded only in blinding a vet and killing a dog, the hypocrites!'
Never mind the hypocrisy of a vivisectionist keeping a dog in the first place.
The police got involved, then they had all the doctors in the hospital walking around going 'blah blah blah mindless violence blah blah blah the drugs we use every day in this hospital to save lives are tested on animals and I wouldn't be happy if they weren't blah blah blah necessary evil no viable alternative blah blah blah animal rights idiots.'
I mean they must have devoted a good three minutes of dialogue AT LEAST, to discussing how stupid the anti vivisection lobby is. I can understand that they can't exactly explore the debate in full because it IS a 'drama' but they could have at least given a better, more rounded representation of the 'anti' argument than 'we must blow this woman's face off otherwise animals will continue to suffer'.
What I am trying to say is it was so utterly, ridiculously biased. I mean okay, I've come to expect that in the media with all animal rights people branded 'extremists' or 'terrorists' in the news. But really, for a show that's supposed to be kind of one step up from a soap, rather than Newsnight or The Daily Politics, they spent a disproportionate amount of time rubbishing anti-vivisectionists.
Upshot of it all was, I got pissed off then complained to the BBC. It made me feel like a real crabby bitch as it's not something I've ever done before, because of freedom of speech/expression etc, plus I just couldn't care less whether someone swore before six o' clock. But this was so one-sided it was ridiculous. I hear the BBC take one complaint to represent 1000 people who were annoyed but didn't say anything. If that's true I think it's worth doing at times.
Did anyone see this show? How do you lot feel about the way the animal rights movement is represented in the UK media?
(I posted this here cos it's a UK TV show, but hey if it's too long or belongs elsewhere please edit!)
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