Media and Public Perception
While small, and often avoiding media coverage, furry conventions have increasingly become a topic of attention for the news and mass media:
- The Commercial Appeal covered Mephit FurMeet 7 in September 2003. Two years later, The Memphis Flyer did a piece about MFM 2005.
- An October 2003 episode of CSI featured PafCon, a fictional furry convention held in Las Vegas. Reactions to the show were varied.
- A CBC Newsworld episode of Culture Shock about furries spent much of its time covering Howloween 2003 in November.
- The News Tribune of Tacoma wrote a short article about Conifur Northwest 2004.
- The Financial Times Weekend Magazine took a look at Anthrocon 2005.
- The Corner News of Auburn, Alabama covered Rocket City FurMeet 2006.
- Several newspapers were invited to attend Anthrocon 2006, including the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Pittsburgh City Paper, which printed both a preview and an extensive review. When local television station KDKA-TV showed up, chairman Samuel Conway gave a short television interview outside the convention hotel. There was similar coverage in 2007.
- The Montreal Gazette covered Anthrofest 2007.
- Eurofurence 13 received extensive coverage by several regional newspapers in Thuringia.
- An undercover reporter from Hartford Advocate attended FurFright 2007 and published her findings
One public perception — popularized by the CSI episode "Fur and Loathing" — is that furry conventions are places for people to dress up as animals and perform sexual acts with each other. In an article about furries, Vanity Fair described some hotel guests as "stunned", with some calling convention-goers "freaks", "blatant homosexuals", and various derogatory terms. Some U.S. Army personnel present during the same convention described attendees as "a little unusual" and "people that have problems", while others considered the event "something nice to bring kids to."
Read more about this topic: Furry Convention
Famous quotes containing the words media and, media, public and/or perception:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“I leave the governor’s office next week, and with it public life ... [which] has been on the whole a pleasant one. But for ten years and over my salaries have not equalled my expenses, and there has been a feeling of responsibility, a lack of independence, and a necessary neglect of my family and personal interests and comfort, which make the prospect of a change comfortable to think of.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“What, then, is the basic difference between today’s computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern—a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.”
—Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)