(Recieved this morning)

Dear Ms. Donnelly,

I am writing in response to your complaint regarding our coverage of the rescue of 60 huskies from the Creston area. We have received a number of complaints regarding this issue. I have investigated the situation fully, and have taken steps to correct any inaccurate information.

The crux of the complaint concerns the introduction to the story of the dog rescue which inadvertently gave credit to the SPCA for the rescue, rather than PAWS. Once we realized our error, I instructed our weekend producers to run a full story, updating the situation, in the same slot during the following Saturday newscast. In that follow-up, we stated the dogs were "rescued by Creston PAWS society - and not by the SPCA as was earlier reported."

We also mentioned the fact that Creston PAWS had racked-up a huge bill helping to save the dogs and encouraged viewers to attend a car wash in Vancouver in aid of Creston PAWS, running a billboard on air.

BCTV News on Global did run a number of stories on the weekend on the dogs, trying to find them homes, which was our main intent. From the feedback this past week, it was obvious that PAWS felt slighted by the mistake. Let me reassure you that it was an innoncent error, without malice.

We have since carried several stories on Paws, and have mentioned on a number of occasions that they were indeed the organization responsible for the rescue in Creston.

On August 1, 2002, for instance, a story by Randene Neill included several mentions of PAWS and PAWS volunteers. We also gave significant mention of Big Dog Rescue, the group in the Lower Mainland assisting the dogs, including its email address and posted its website on canada.com, which has a clear link to the Creston :PAWS site.

I hope this clarifies the situation. We will continue to update the story over the next few weeks.

Yours, truly,

(dictated for delivery via e-mail)

Ian Haysom
News Director