This Little Piggy Went to Press: The American News Media's Construction of Animals in Agriculture

Abstract

This textual analysis examines the representations of farmed animals in national print and broadcast news discourse in over 100 stories published from 2000 to 2003. Findings show these American news media largely support the speciesist status quo by favoring elite viewpoints and failing to provide balance. Although exceptions are provided, news media often objectify nonhuman animals discursively through: 1) commodification, 2) failure to acknowledge their emotional perspectives, and 3) failure to describe them as inherently valuable individuals.

Notes

1. Source: phone conversations with both groups in the spring of 2005.

2. Specifically, the passage of the Humane Slaughter Act in the ‘50s, the Animal Welfare Act in the ‘60s, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the ‘70s (Jones, 1996).

3. With mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease articles in the NYT, there were a lot of stories that came out consecutively, and I excluded only those that basically repeated the same information as other stories I had included on the outbreak. Additionally, some excluded stories were short and did not provide any new language or information to analyze. While these exclusions regrettably did keep the sample from being a census, I made these cuts in order to keep the sample size manageable for an in-depth qualitative study. If I felt their exclusion would have significantly affected the findings, I would have included them despite sample size.

4. It may often be the case that owners of animal laboratories or factory farms do not allow cameras inside to document the conditions. If so, reporters should mention it within the article so questions can be raised about why visual access is denied to the public.

5. An exception to the rule was a NYT story explaining interesting facts about how the Patagonian Toothfish (served as “sea bass”) can survive in extremely cold water and live for up to 50 years (Revkin, 2002, May 21 p. F4).