Count the kinds of wrong

I only just got to the very yuckiest thing in Monday's paper, an interview with Ingrid Newkirk, founder of PETA -- arguably the most influential animal rights activist of our time. And it's in the 'Life' section. And it's by one Sarah Hampson, most recently seen writing about starter marriages, what to do when your ex-remarries, and something I couldn't make sense of about Vince Vaughn. Every 'question' Hampson asks is nakedly hostile:

"Some people would say the move is shameless hucksterism," I point out.

Doesn't she worry that people might develop fatigue over PETA's predictable shock tactics and ignore the message?

But doesn't she debase humanity by putting it on the same level as other animals?

There seems to be a distinctly anti-human theme to her comments.

Does she ever wonder if she has felt more love for animals other than humans, I ask by way of concluding the interview.

It isn't even intelligible as a hit job, because it tries to depict Newkirk both as an unabashed nutbar and as a cunning manipulator of her own image ("she keeps the image on a tight leash" -- i.e., strangely, she wasn't keen to share secrets about her private life with an aggressively hostile doofus). It's a compendium of all the ways an article can be wrong without, so far as I know, quite saying anything factually incorrect. Trivializing an important subject; filtering everything through biases that aren't acknowledged or explained; and sneering and snickering because... well, because that's what journalists do when they don't know what to do. And I say this without having a pro-PETA axe to grind: I don't know whether to think of them as a force for good or not, that's why I read this stupid thing.

Sometimes I think environmental issues are finally being taken seriously in the mainstream media. Sometimes I know they're not.