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PrintHow Muskingum County made Al Jazeera
When the news about the escaped lions and tigers scrolled across the bottom of the CBS procedural I was half watching, I didn’t really take note, thinking that those tickers too often are used by TV stations to cry wolf. Turns out, a couple of those were loose, too.
In less than 24 hours, the story that began near Zanesville on Oct. 18 when Terry Thompson released his 56 exotic animals and then shot himself, played out in thousands of media outlets around the world, from
The story of the roaming menagerie was a reminder that there’s no such thing as local news anymore.
Two days after the tigers, lions, monkeys and bears had all been killed or captured, the headline on the website for Al Jazeera read: “Ohio Police shoot escaped zoo animals.” While not technically accurate—they were privately kept on 46 acres—it still had to be the first time Muskingum County made the Arabic news.
The story unfolded online in real time, as new information came out in nuggets made for headlines. It had all the elements of a worldwide story, with tragedy, controversy, political angles and disturbing photos.
First came the questions: How could this happen? Are people in danger?
Then we learned that Thompson purposely had let the animals free and that, because tigers roaming around populated areas can only lead to worse headlines, law enforcement was hunting them down. Now we had something to debate.
Things got tense as new estimates on animals killed came in and sketchy profiles of Thompson, who had just been released from prison on gun charges, were cobbled together.
It took little time before someone found a way to make political hay out of the opened cages: Gov. John Kasich had let lapse an executive order governing the keeping of exotic pets. Now, we had a second villain, never mind that the circumstances were so bizarre it’s hard to imagine any authority anticipating them.
And there came Jack Hanna, who must have something akin to a Bat Signal to alert him whenever there is a breaking story about wild animals. He arrived and lent instant absolution to the unlucky officers who had to shoot animals that are easily romanticized, but not easily contained. Now, we had a hero.
Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz lent pathos to the whole affair as he appeared on TV and in photos looking genuinely disturbed by the events as they unfolded.
The news followed his lead. Most stories addressed the situation as the unfortunate and sad scene that it was. Many copy editors even resisted the temptation of an obvious headline that would have been overly glib. Reuters went so far as to write, “Freed tigers, lions and bears cause panic in Ohio” instead of the lions, tigers and bears order that would have led to the inevitable “Oh my!” (The Telegraph in the UK and ABC News were not so circumspect.)
But then came the celebrities. Rocker and gun enthusiast Ted Nugent piled on Kasich in the Detroit News, not caring he was bashing a fellow Republican. (Or that he was Ted Nugent, and who cares?) But it was a site called contactmusic.com that had my favorite tangent of the affair: “Eliza Dushku: Stars in Shock Over Ohio Animal Deaths.”
You may know Dushku as the lead of a Fox series called “Dollhouse” that didn’t last long, but you probably don’t.
Attention soon shifted to the six surviving animals taken to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. But it was no longer the lead on Google News. Word of another big game hunt of sorts was announced: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, on the run for months, was killed.
I eagerly await Eliza Dushku’s thoughts.
