At tonight’s Oscar awards, a documentary film entitled “The Cove” won the coveted best documentary award. A star from the film, Ric O’Barry, responded to the victory by raising a sign towards television cameras, which caused the cameras to change angles. While some might speculate that this sign had questionable content on it, it was nothing more than a call for action. This particular documentary dealt with the killing of Dolphins in Japan, and on the sign Barry encouraged audience members to text the word “Dolphin” to a specific number. If you happen to be interested, that number was 44144. It is unclear at this point why this message wasn’t broadcast.

The 2009 documentary, filmed on location in Japan, exposed the world to the brutal rituals executed Taiji, Wakayama that are estimated to cost the death of over 20,000 dolphins and porpoises. The hunting method is particularly disturbing – the dolphins are forced into caves where they are massacred in large numbers. This is not the first award this revealing documentary has received. At the Sundance Film festival, it was awarded the U.S. Audience award.

This controversy over the cameras cutting away will surely be explored by media outlets in the coming days. However, it’s unlikely that ABC will receive any major backlash for making the decision to cut from the shot. We will just have to wait and see.