Disengaged Journalism & The Disparagement & Disappearance of Animals
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Karen Davis, PhD, UPC United Poultry Concerns
December 2017

Even when horrific animal suffering is being recounted, the tone of certain “esteemed” columnists toward the animals is often disengaged, even cavalier on occasion. An attitude is wrapped around and inserted into the information that diminishes it, distancing people from the animals and encouraging public passivism and ethical inertia.

Chicken and Karen Davis
Photo by Frank Johnston, The Washington Post

“At least consider the sad life history of Sunday dinner before tucking in.”“At least consider the sad life history of Sunday dinner before tucking in.”

Many people consider any media coverage of nonhuman animals to be better than none. This is debatable. A close reading of media coverage often discloses both subtle and unsubtle strategies for disengaging people from the animals and the reality of their lives and situations.

Even when horrific animal suffering is being recounted, the tone of certain “esteemed” columnists toward the animals is often disengaged, even cavalier on occasion. An attitude is wrapped around and inserted into the information that diminishes it, distancing people from the animals and encouraging public passivism and ethical inertia.

I wrote the following article for a book being published in 2018. Towards Trans-Species Social Justice, edited by Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, is a Critical Animal Studies anthology published by Rowland Littlefield International.

I hope my discussion of disengaged journalism, focusing on the journalistic treatment of farmed animals, particularly birds, in both broadcast and print media, will be of interest to everyone committed to justice and respect for our fellow creatures.

Our animal victims, in spite of “progress,” continue to be patronized and diminished in much media coverage, to which our own manner of advocating for animals and conversing with journalists does, on occasion, contribute.

I am grateful to the editors for allowing me to publish my article in advance of its appearance in Towards Trans-Species Social Justice.

– Karen Davis

Read THE DISENGAGEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE ABOUT NONHUMAN ANIMALS: AN ANALYSIS [PDF] 


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