Posted on 05/01/2010 4:48:00 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Wildlife documentaries invade animal privacy rights, claims leading academic
Wildlife documentary makers are breaching the rights of animals by invading their privacy, a leading academic has claimed.
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Published: 5:51PM BST 29 Apr 2010
Dr Brett Mills believes programmes such as the BBC's Nature's Great Events, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, are "unethical" for capturing animals' most intimate secrets on camera without their consent.
The senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia said it was wrong for broadcasters to treat all creatures as "fair game" and to fail to consider their right to privacy before recording.
Animals just like humans have a basic right not to have their most intimate moments – such as mating, giving birth and dying – broadcast to an audience of millions, he said.
He compared putting pinhole cameras in birds' nests to intrusive Big Brother-style CCTV.
Dr Mills, at the university's School of Film and Television Studies, said: "We can never really know if animals are giving consent, but they often do engage in forms of behaviour which suggest they'd rather not encounter humans, such as running away or building a burrow.
"The question constantly posed by wildlife documentaries is how animals should be filmed, they never ask whether animals should be filmed at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The same place wehre AGW hoax was cooked up.
I was out in the dark at 4 AM this morning photographing lightning.
Guess I was peekin up mother nature’s skirt.
And we have warned you about that!
Apparently I’m gonna go blind.
There are so many jokes I can think of for this story that my head is spinning.
For one of the very rare times in my life......I am speechless!
Send this fruit to Alaska to commune with the brown bears.
And what about the rights of rocks and trees too? How about the rights of water and the oceans? The clouds and the sky, let’s not forget those. They have feelings too you know. And lastly, the precious rights of the air gosh darnit, it’s all around us working for our benefit, doesn’t it also deserve a little respect?
Have I missed anything?
Wild beaver filming!
;-)
very true!
Please don’t post the shots of her warm fronts.
I’m Cirrus.
I feel better.
LLS
Great Britain, where they have the greatest number of video cameras monitoring every aspects of their citizens lives, is concerned about the privacy rights of animals???
This guy gives new meaning to the phrase “highly educated but incredibly stupid”.
He reminds me of a former sister and brother in law that were both Ph.D’s who were both so stupid and embarrassing to be with or around, that I would do almost anything to avoid them.
ROTFLMAO
Someone help me out here: if it is theoretically possible to find an implied “right to privacy” for an animal under the U.S. Constitution, does that mean my dog can apply for a CCL?
In other words, this guy isn't even a professor!
I wonder what subject his doctorate is in. Probably something that isn't even a hard science, like English or sociology. And he probably has no clue whatsoever about animal behavior.
Caribou too! The caribou need counseling about their rights, viciously trampled underfoot by oil and pipeline men.
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