National Public Radio (NPR) aired a segment on its Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! show on Saturday, September 5, 2015, praising deadly horse racing as the “sport of kings,” joking about dog racing and hare coursing (in which live rabbits are torn apart by dogs), and even guffawing it up with a guest chef who talked about cruel frog gigging and admitted, “I just naturally gravitate towards, you know, killing small animals.”

NPR’s own ethics handbook states, “Everyone affected by our journalism deserves to be treated with decency and compassion. … We minimize undue harm and take special care with those who are vulnerable or suffering.” However, making light of and promoting activities that involve harming animals and causing them to suffer is anything but decent and compassionate.

More than 24 horses die on racetracks every week in the U.S., and greyhounds used for racing are often kept confined to their cages for 20 or more hours per day and then cruelly killed, sold for laboratory experiments, or abandoned when they do not perform well. Horses used in racing are commonly drugged to mask injuries and push them past their natural capabilities, and thousands end up in slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada when they fail to win. A total of 12,189 greyhound injuries were documented on U.S. racetracks from January 2008 through May 2015, and nearly 1,000 horses died on U.S. racetracks in 2014.

Please urge NPR never to promote the abuse of animals for “entertainment” again!