Teddy Roosevelt Would Not Approve of These Muckrakers

Jack McElroy, at Knoxnews.com, writes an interesting and well-intentioned editorial about the Animal Cruelty and Abuse bill, or the Ag-Gag bill as it's sometimes called -- TN HB 1191/SB 1248. The bill that's currently sitting on Governor Bill Haslam's desk awaiting his signature.

In McElroy's article, "Bill sneers at the First Amendment," he compares the animal rights brigade of today to the muckrakers of the past who went undercover in unsavory businesses and brought to light some of the ills of society in order to end evil practices. McElroy describes how these muckrakers were praised by Teddy Roosevelt. Then he goes on to cast aspersions on the Tennessee General Assembly for passing HB 1191/1248.

According to McElroy the bill "sneers at the First Amendment" -- which guarantees our freedom of speech, and flies in the face of the Tennessee Shield Law -- the law that protects reporters from having to turn over to authorities their sources or unpublished material except in extraordinary circumstances. He believes this law should apply to your run of the mill animal rights person who lies to get a job on a farm because anyone can call himself a journalist these days.

I think there are some problems with Mr. McElroy's analogy. Whether or not the people who lie to get jobs on farms have good intentions and want to see animal cruelty ended is up for debate, as far as I'm concerned. Animal rights activists are often uninformed about farm life. They don't always understand what they're seeing on a farm and when they film something they can present it in a way that makes it look cruel even when it's an accepted, even traditional farming practice -- like disbudding the horns from calves or notching the ears on young pigs. You can film lots of animals squealing and crying to make people think the animals are being mistreated but what's being done is for their own good. (Kind of like the way kids at a doctor's office cry.) But show that film to people who live in Nashville or Knoxville -- people who have not been on a farm in a couple of generations -- and they're going to think that farmers are cruel.

The Humane Society of the United States knows this. They don't care. They count on it, as do Mercy for Animals and other groups which have specialized in putting people on farms and filming undercover. Do you really want to know why it takes these groups so long to turn over their video to authorities? It's because the footage has to be carefully edited and doctored to make things look as bad as possible.

Do you really think they film for six weeks or longer because they want to stop animal cruelty? No. They do it because they need plenty of film so they can splice things together. They might have to film for weeks before they even find something that looks questionable. (Put a camera in your home for six weeks and I bet someone could make a film that would make you look bad, too.) Their purpose isn't about stopping animal cruelty. These groups are opposed to animal agriculture in all forms and want to put farms out of business, while raising as much money for their own organizations as possible.

HB 1191/1248 does not prevent these groups from filming. What it does is require them to turn over their photos or film every 48 hours to law enforcement. This reduces the amount of time they would have to edit and play with the evidence for their own purposes. I don't think these AR infiltrators fall under the Tennessee Shield Law because they aren't necessarily journalists. Not everyone who posts something on the Internet is a journalist, despite what Mr. McElroy seems to think.

This law would reduce the likelihood that the film you see from a farm in Tennessee is faked. Is that interfering with the First Amendment? Well, it does cut down on their First Amendment right to lie, I suppose. I guess lying is protected speech under certain circumstances. But there are already some limits on free speech. You can't yell, "Fire" in a crowded theatre, for instance, and cause a panic for no reason. I think in this case the public good has to be weighed. It's not in the public good for animal rights zealots to edit together video taken over weeks or months to lie about our food supply or how animals are treated. Sure, go ahead and film. Show the truth and turn over the photos and video every 48 hours. But stop the fake editing. This gets law enforcement involved at an early stage and we can stop animal abuse as quickly as possible. If there's a food safety issue, we can address it.

I think it's a stretch to say that the Animal Cruelty and Abuse bill infringes on the First Amendment. This law is really about the timely reporting of any animal abuse and that should be something we all want. But even if it does touch upon the First Amendment, in this case I think the public good requires that this bill become law for the simple fact that HSUS and other animal rights groups have been playing fast and loose with the video they've been taking on farms. Farms and farmers need some protection from over-zealous animal rights agents who lie to get jobs on the farm and then put together film in such a way to make farm practices look bad. HSUS has been exploiting this situation to raise lots of money and that's not good for any of us who love animals. Why else do you think HSUS is fighting so hard to get the governor to veto the bill? It will affect their cash flow. If more states start passing these laws, it means HSUS won't be able to attack farmers so freely.

Similar laws have already been passed in six states: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and Utah. In some of these states the laws go much farther than with the Tennessee bill, prohibiting someone from lying about their reason for getting a farm job, for instance.

Animal rights activists are not the kind of muckrakers that Teddy Roosevelt would have approved. It's a nice idea, but if you're going to rake muck, you're supposed to tell the truth and that's something animal rights activists don't do with faked videos.

Please contact Governor Haslam today and ask him to SIGN the Animal Cruelty and Abuse bill (HB 1191/1248). E-mail him at
bill.haslam@tn.gov ; and call him at (615) 741-2001. Be sure you ask him to SIGN the bill!