Where I Stand — Janie Greenspun Gale: R-J does real harm

Friday, Oct. 12, 2001 | 4:26 a.m.

HERE'S A BIG SURPRISE: the Review-Journal got it wrong again.

A columnist has attacked two things about which I care very deeply, the Las Vegas Sun and the Animal Foundation. The R-J's usual mean-spirited stories and half-truths are infuriating, but going after the city shelter is causing true damage. And it's unwarranted. Insult me to your cold heart's content, Tom Mitchell, I could care less. But cause the public to distrust the city animal shelter so animals' lives are in jeopardy, and you have got a fight on your hands.

This all began with the death of a dog last December. We at the Animal Foundation (where I am chairman of the board) took our licks in the press, apologized and were pummeled for almost a year because of it, largely because the R-J reporter took a position and never let the facts get in his way. Talk about agendas, Mr. Mitchell, your reporter fell for the lies he was told by the woman leading the charge against us even though she gets most of her funding from those running the other animal shelter in town. By the way, at stake for the county shelter is a 10-year extension of its contract worth $15 million, but apparently that's not reason enough for your reporter to doubt his source's veracity.

Mr. Mitchell, you pointed out the difference in journalistic styles between our papers. Yes, they are completely different. In fact the whole reason there is a Sun newspaper is because in 1950 my father knew he couldn't live in a town with one editorial voice, the R-J's, when that newspaper ran ads featuring "Kelly the Kike" and want ads that read, "... coloreds need not apply." So the Sun was born out of a complete distaste for the way journalism was handled on your side of the street. And the Sun is as relevant today as it was back then.

Our Sun reporter got the story right about the city investigation of the Animal Foundation, my involvement notwithstanding. She read the report, toured the new shelter, interviewed the head of Animal Control, who gave the same story to both newspapers, and reported the whole story.

The R-J reporter, as he has done for months and months, just quoted the parts that could be construed to make us look bad. Need more proof of that? At the end of every slanted story he writes about the shelter, and there have been dozens, he always puts a little paragraph saying that when the Animal Foundation operated a low-cost spay neuter clinic in Los Angeles it was under investigation.

It matters not that documentation was given him proving the Animal Foundation was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing by the California State Board of Veterinary Medicine. He chooses to leave his readers with a cloud of suspicion hanging over our heads. From where I sit, the only cloud hanging over anyone's head is the stench of biased reporting from your newspaper.

Mitchell's column was really a sniping mission aimed at my brother Brian and the Sun. Brian can handle his own fights. But by choosing the Animal Foundation as his weapon, causing public distrust, which translates into fewer adoptions and spaying or neutering of animals, he does a real disservice to this community.

So what else is new?

I invite anyone to visit the Lied Animal Shelter, at 655 N. Mojave, and see firsthand the real truth. And while you are there, take home a little friend.