There will be plenty of mindless hype anyhow. Those of us who live or lived on the coast have a healthy respect for stingrays....we have that in the hopes of remaining healthy. On the Eastern Shore, stingrays frequently get scooped up with the oyster shells crushed for the Eastern Shore version of "dirt" roads and for driveways. We always had to watch for them on the freshly spread stuff and remove them before local kids, driven by curiosity, got hurt badly. Like the head of a rattlesnake not properly taken care of, dead stingrays remain very dangerous.
In addition, almost anyone who's raised clams for years and takes the Monitor out into the bay to bury or harvest them, or anyone who's spent a long time running crab pots, can give you a firsthand horror story about the damage stingrays are capable of.
It's unlikely anyone in the media will bother with the public's right to know the truth of stingrays...in fact, tomorrow they'll probably be reporting on some "stingrays are people too" rallys.