Brian Williams: A Hypocrite Who Hates Snoopy

Last Thursday, the Nightly News producers treated us to a two-minute story about 40 beagles that had been rescued from a research testing lab in Spain. Apparently, the producers figured that Thanksgiving was a slow news day and there wasn't much to report. But the U.S. is the only country that celebrates its Thanksgiving on that particular day, so for the rest of the world, last Thursday was just a regular news day. So instead of showing us pointless stories devoid of any news value (Black Thursday shopping, the troops in Afghanistan eating turkey dinners, homeless veterans, a female football coach, beagles), the producers could have shown us actual news stories from Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and other regions of the world where it was not a holiday. But they didn't. Because the Nightly News producers don't roll that way. They're satisfied to show us garbage instead of news. So now we know all about the rescued beagles. Great job, guys.

But it didn't end there. On Friday, Brian Williams saw fit to spend another 40 seconds rehashing the beagle story. Did he have any new information to report? Of course not. But that didn't matter. Brian can do whatever he wants. However, he did end his story by shamelessly and inappropriately begging the viewers to donate money to the Beagle Freedom Project. Okay--first of all, it's not a news anchor's job to publicly promote his favorite charities or to beg his viewers to donate money to anything. An anchor's job is to objectively report news--nothing else. But there is a much more disturbing aspect to this story.

Question for Brian Williams: How much ad money does NBC Universal (and Nightly News in particular) accept each year from companies that test their products on dogs and other animals? $25 million? $50 million? $100 million? Let's just say it's a lot. That would certainly include cosmetics companies (like Revlon, Estee Lauder, Clinique, Lancome, L'Oreal and others), health and beauty aids manufacturers (like Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble) and pharmaceutical companies (like GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Bayer). All of these NBC advertisers test their products on animals, perhaps even beagles. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the beagles in the story were rescued from a facility owned by one of these companies. I noticed that Miguel Almaguer did not mention the specific place the dogs came from. He was probably instructed not to divulge the name in order to protect an NBC advertiser.

So Brian Williams reported a story about rescuing beagles from a research lab when his own broadcast accepts millions of dollars each year from companies that test their products on animals! There's a word to describe someone like that: Hypocrite. It's obvious that Brian does not care the slightest bit that his sponsors are murdering animals. If he did, he would refuse to work for a network that accepts so much ad money from companies that test their products on animals. Here's an idea: Instead of begging his viewers to donate money, why doesn't Brian march into the office of NBC News president Steve Capus and demand that NBC News immediately stop accepting this blood money? And if NBC won't stop that practice, why doesn't Brian resign? You know when that will happen? When pigs fly.

Speaking of which--do you know when pigs actually do fly? When they're in the Bayer research labs. In order to test their many headache remedies (like Bayer aspirin and Aleve), the Bayer researchers first have to induce headaches in their lab animals. One way they do this is by launching pigs across the room head-first into a brick wall. That usually does the trick. Then they give them some aspirin or Aleve and monitor their pain response through the electrodes sticking out of their brains. After that, the researchers go home and pet their dogs or cats. They're hypocrites--just like Brian Williams. He has the blood of thousands of animals on his hands and he has the nerve to ask us to donate money to the Beagle Freedom Project!

P.S.--Immediately before Thursday's beagle story and immediately after Friday's beagle story, Nightly News aired ads for Aleve. Talk about adding insult to injury! So how many beagles gave their cute little lives so that Bayer could test Aleve before bringing it to the market? I'm guessing it was more than 40. And I'm guessing that one or two of them may have even been named Snoopy.