"An Angry Cow is Not a Good Eating Experience" How US and Spanish media are shifting from crude to camouflaged speciesism in concealing nonhuman perspectives (original) (raw)
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Journalism Studies, 2016
Recent developments in the ideology of speciesism (meaning bias against members of other animal species) within the media deserve analysis. Such discussion is important because speciesism is a major ethical concern. Nonhuman animals suffer massive harm within the industrial farming complex, confined throughout their lives and a high proportion killed while still infants or juveniles. The joint efforts of material institutions, cultural narratives and embodied affects conceal this from the public. As research on this topic is scarce, this study aims to provide tools to improve the quality of journalism regarding ethical issues that concern our relationship with nonhuman animals. We hope to help to formulate an emerging critical animal studies perspective on journalism studies. This article explores the role of news media in constructing perceptions of nonhumans used for food and their treatment. We compare 60 articles from The New York Times (United States) and El País (Spain) over a two-year time frame (2011–2013) using a critical discourse analysis. Our results show that, while both newspapers play a major role in concealing the nonhumans' cruel reality, a distinction can be drawn between the crude speciesism of El País and the camouflaged, more deceptive style of The New York Times.
Journalism Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: Recent developments in the ideology of speciesism (meaning bias against members of other animal species) within the media deserve analysis. Such discussion is important because speciesism is a major ethical concern. Nonhuman animals suffer massive harm within the industrial farming complex, confined throughout their lives and a high proportion killed while still infants or juveniles. The joint efforts of material institutions, cultural narratives and embodied affects conceal this from the public. As research on this topic is scarce, this study aims to provide tools to improve the quality of journalism regarding ethical issues that concern our relationship with nonhuman animals. We hope to help to formulate an emerging critical animal studies perspective on journalism studies. This article explores the role of news media in constructing perceptions of nonhumans used for food and their treatment. We compare 60 articles from The New York Times (United States) and El País (Spain) over a two-year time frame (2011–2013) using a critical discourse analysis. Our results show that, while both newspapers play a major role in concealing the nonhumans' cruel reality, a distinction can be drawn between the crude speciesism of El País and the camouflaged, more deceptive style of The New York Times.
“An Angry Cow is Not a Good Eating Experience”
Journalism Studies, 2014
Recent developments in the ideology of speciesism (meaning bias against members of other animal species) within the media deserve analysis. Such discussion is important because speciesism is a major ethical concern. Nonhuman animals suffer massive harm within the industrial farming complex, confined throughout their lives and a high proportion killed while still infants or juveniles. The joint efforts of material institutions, cultural narratives and embodied affects conceal this from the public. As research on this topic is scarce, this study aims to provide tools to improve the quality of journalism regarding ethical issues that concern our relationship with nonhuman animals. We hope to help to formulate an emerging critical animal studies perspective on journalism studies. This article explores the role of news media in constructing perceptions of nonhumans used for food and their treatment. We compare 60 articles from The New York Times (United States) and El País (Spain) over a two-year time frame (2011-2013) using a critical discourse analysis. Our results show that, while both newspapers play a major role in concealing the nonhumans' cruel reality, a distinction can be drawn between the crude speciesism of El País and the camouflaged, more deceptive style of The New York Times.
Frontiers in Communication, 2022
With a focus on journalistic discourse, this paper argues for a re-envisioning of food-system communication that takes non-human animals into account as stakeholders in systems that commodify them. This is especially urgent in light of the global pandemic, which has laid bare the vulnerability to crisis inherent in animal-based food production. As a case study to illustrate the need for a just and non-human inclusive orientation to food-systems communication, the paper performs a qualitative rhetorical examination, me critical discourse analysis and critical animal studies, of a series of articles in major U.S. news sources in May of 2020, a few months into the economic shutdown in the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, millions of pigs were brutally killed on U.S. farms due to the impossibility of killing them in slaughterhouses overrun with COVID-19 outbreaks. The analysis finds that media reporting legitimated violence against pigs by framing narratives from...
Where injustices (fail to) meet: newspaper coverage of speciesism, animal rights, and racism
Frontiers in Communication , 2024
This study examines the ways widely circulated U.S. newspapers have articulated the idea of "speciesism" and its associated idea "animal rights" in relation to "racism" to understand how powerful news media helps to shape the public understanding of the interlocking systems of oppression that cuts across the human and the more-than-human world. The archives (1987 to 2023) of three U.S. newspapers -The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post -were analyzed, using qualitative content analysis. The ideas of articulation, symbolic annihilation, erasure, and discursive closure served as the analytical guides for the analysis. The analysis shows that there is gross underrepresentation of speciesism and even far less representation of the relationship between speciesism and racism and between animal rights and anti-racism. When represented, the articulations showed problematic patterns of erasure of those concepts and relationships. The paper ends with the implications of the findings.
The "Animal-Based Food Taboo." Climate Change Denial and Deontological Codes in Journalism (2020)
Frontiers in Communication, 2020
In spite of the well-documented links between global warming and the animal-based diet, human dietary choices have been only timidly problematized by legacy media in the recent decades. Research on news reporting of the connection between the animal-based diet and climate change shows a clear coverage deficit in traditional journalism. In order to reflect on the reasons for this failure, this paper discusses moral anthropocentrism as the human-supremacist moral stance at the roots of mainstream ethics and the climate crisis. Accordingly, the animal-based food taboo is defined here as our reluctance not only to change but to even discuss changing our food habits, a strong evidence that moral anthropocentrism is not addressed as a problem, which amounts to a type of denial. Through a literature review conducted on the most relevant comparative studies of deontological codes, this paper shows that codes of journalism do not escape moral anthropocentrism, and thus contribute to prevent journalists from stressing the relevant role diet plays in our ethics and sustainability efforts. The paper ends by suggesting ways to expand and update media ethics and deontological codes in journalism to dismantle both the taboo and the moral anthropocentric stance it is based on.
European Journal of Communication , 2018
Critical and communication studies have traditionally neglected the oppression conducted by humans towards other animals. However, our (mis)treatment of other animals is the result of public consent supported by a morally speciesist-anthropocentric system of values. Speciesism or anthroparchy, as much as any other mainstream ideologies, feed the media and at the same time are perpetuated by them. The goal of this paper is to remedy this neglect by introducing the subdiscipline of Critical Animal and Media Studies (CAMS). CAMS takes inspiration both from critical animal studies, which is so far the most consolidated critical field of research in the social sciences addressing our exploitation of other animals, and the normative-moral stance rooted in the cornerstones of traditional critical media studies. The authors argue that the CAMS approach is an unavoidable step forward for critical media and communication studies to engage with the expanded circle of concerns of contemporary ethical thinking.
Giving Voice to the Voiceless: Incorporating Nonhuman Animal Perspectives as Journalistic Sources
Journalism Studies, 2011
As part of journalism's commitment to truth and justice by providing a diversity of relevant points of view, journalists have an obligation to provide the perspective of nonhuman animals in everyday stories that influence the animals’ and our lives. This essay provides justification and guidance on why and how this can be accomplished, recommending that, when writing about nonhuman animals or issues, journalists should: (1) observe, listen to, and communicate with animals and convey this information to audiences via detailed descriptions and audiovisual media, (2) interpret nonhuman animal behavior and communication to provide context and meaning, and (3) incorporate the animals’ stories and perspectives, and consider what is in their best interest. To fairly balance animal-industry sources and the anthropocentric biases that are traditionally inherent in news requires that journalists select less objectifying language and more appropriate human sources without a vested interest in how animals are used.
European Journal of Communication, 2018
Critical and communication studies have traditionally neglected the oppression conducted by humans towards other animals. However, our (mis)treatment of other animals is the result of public consent supported by a morally speciesist-anthropocentric system of values. Speciesism or anthroparchy, as much as any other mainstream ideologies, feeds the media and at the same time is perpetuated by them. The goal of this article is to remedy this neglect by introducing the subdiscipline of Critical Animal and Media Studies. Critical Animal and Media Studies takes inspiration both from critical animal studies – which is so far the most consolidated critical field of research in the social sciences addressing our exploitation of other animals – and from the normative-moral stance rooted in the cornerstones of traditional critical media studies. The authors argue that the Critical Animal and Media Studies approach is an unavoidable step forward for critical media and communication studies to e...
It's the Speciesism, Stupid!: Animal Abolitionism, Environmentalism, and the Mass Media
2018
In a time of intense instrumentalization of life, nature becomes a mere factory from which natural resources are withdrawn. This system is causing immense social, ethical and environmental impacts, and livestock raising is at the core of these problems. The concept of speciesism – a prejudice concerning nonhuman animals, analogous to racism and sexism – is paramount in this realm. This chapter analyses the role of the mass media in perpetuating speciesist values and the urgent need for a paradigm shift. A genuine concern about the future of the planet and nonhuman animals involves questioning our speciesism and our narrow instrumental and economic paradigms.