LOS ANGELES: Animal rights TV news network UnchainedTV has announced the launch of alive trial coverage with expert panels to bring the public “news they are not getting on mainstream television.”
The streaming network’s trial coverage will be hosted by founder Jane Velez-Mitchell, who formerly worked for Court TV and on HLN, aka CNN Headline News, the network said in a press statement on Friday.
The live trial coverage will inform viewers about cases involving “animals trapped in the industralized factory farming system and the people trying to save them,” the statement added.
UnchainedTV recently ran daily, hours-long coverage of the trial of former “Baywatch” actress Alexandra Paul and her co-defendant Alicia Santurio.
Paul and Santurio were each facing up to six months in jail on charges of theft for removing two chickens from of a slaughter truck in rural California.
A jury returned a verdict of not guilty after the women’s defense attorney, Wayne Hsiung, argued that the chickens were sick and were of no value to the company.
The network’s coverage of the case drew 55,423 viewers across all platforms, including the streaming network itself, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Hsiung, who is also an activist, was recently acquitted, along with a co-defendant, by a Utah jury of taking two sick piglets from a Utah factory farm.
UnchainedTV said in its statement that it was “transparent about its belief that animals are not mere property like cans or cars, as prosecutors in these cases have asserted, but rather, sentient beings deserving of protection and legal standing in court.”
Velez-Mitchell added: “Given that corporations now have a degree of personhood in the courts, animals certainly should,”
She added: “At UnchainedTV we are filling the gap and doing an end-run around the mainstream media blackout on these vital issues.”
“Industrialized animal agriculture needs to be more thoroughly scrutinized by journalists,” she said. “It impacts food safety, climate change, drought, pollution, human health, habitat destruction, wildlife extinction and more.
“We give this industry a pass at our own peril.”
