Animal Rights; "Extremists" or Liberators?

British police arrested 30 animal rights activists; or "extremists"; for their actions to save innocent animals from torture cruelty.

Most articles reporting the raid, such as this one from the Reuters and the Daily Telegraphy article, are inexcusably biased; while widely quoting from the police statement, they don't refer to the comments of animal rights groups at all. Even Reuters article rather looks like a press release from the police, and Telegraph article concludes with the comment "these extremists are threatening dedicated researchers", without ever introducing the animal rights activist's ideas that these "dedicated researchers" can also be abusers of animal rights. The Sun, the most circulated English-language newspaper in the world, went on to describe the activists 'terrorists' in their headline (with the quotation marks).

Even the BBC article is extremely biased against the activists; they give the activists only one paragraph (two lines) in the bottom while devoting ten paragraphs to the police. The Independent coverage was slightly better as they reported that "Freshfields Animal Rescue Centre in Merseyside was among the places raided. The centre, which has been established for more than 25 years, takes in unwanted animals from across the region", but nonetheless isn't any different in a sense that police view (and those who support the police that the animal rights activism is morally indefensible) on animal rights and property rights are "true", "credible" viewpoints that readers need to succumb to.

Where's the principle of "objective" journalism? I know objectivity is an illusion, but can't they even pretend to be objective? It seems that the mainstream media hardly tells the animal rights activists' perspectives and reasons for their activism. Radical animal rights organisations, such as the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (whose leader was arrested this time), don't advocate any actions that harm humans; "The ALF's credo states that no harm shall come to any sentient being". They believe that to liberate animals from cages, which is "burglary" when animals are considered "properties" of human owners, is justice. I don't necessarily support all of their actions, but their points that animals shouldn't be abused as properties, their actions are quite reasonable ones for them.

This post is neither to support nor to oppose actions taken by the ALF/any of the arrested activists. I'm a vegetarian and I fully support animal rights, but I'm myself ambivalent about ALF-type radical animal rights activism. However, I can confidently say that the activists' case deserves to be fairly and equally treated, and reported, by the media. When the public is bombarded with animals-as-properties argument and given virtually no opposing arguments, it looks like "common sense"/the natural way of treating animals even though it is just a social construction, just like slavery used to be. Animals-as-holders-of-rights arguments may sound "extreme", only because the mainstream media treats them as extreme views not worth listening to; not because it is ethically wrong.