Mainstream media refuses to document the food system truthfully and accurately. It’s our responsibility to hold them accountable.
Andrew Kelly for Reuters
Jun Cen for The New York Times
On May 21, 2020, The New York Times published an opinion piece titled “The
End of Meat Is Here” written by Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating
Animals and We Are the Weather. As if the headline and general topic were
not shocking enough, the article debuted an image displaying something that
is typically neglected by the media—animal slaughter. “Meat piled in a
delivery truck in Manhattan on May 9” was the description under the image by
Andrew Kelly of Reuters.
The article was shared thousands of times across social media platforms and
was trending on Twitter. A tweet by The New York Times—showing a butchered
piece of meat as the preview image—has accrued over 16,000 likes and over
10,000 retweets thus far. Animal advocates and meat industry watchdogs
responded empathically.
Deena Shanker, a food reporter for Bloomberg, also applauded the Times’
image selection, tweeting: “while I don’t expect meat consumption to
significantly drop from COVID19, I have to say, images like this—with
eyes-in carcasses—in a major paper are unusual, so kudos to the NYT for
showing the reality of how animals become meat.”
But that was before the image changed. Less than 24 hours after the op-ed
was published, the Times swapped out the featured image for a less gory,
more abstract illustration depicting a human figure emerging from a swirling
mess of meaty sinews into a green, grassy pasture. Overlooking the online
success of the initial image, the Times went ahead and printed the new image
in its Sunday paper, which is distributed to more than a million subscribers
around the world.
Whether the Times editor decided to change the image because they received a
specific complaint or because the story’s traffic numbers were down remains
unclear. What we do know is that changing the image fundamentally changes
the story: from a scathing critique that the food system is failing to a
haphazard warning that the meat industry, as we know it, might be coming to
an end. Although Foer’s text was unchanged, there is no question that the
new image, at first glance, softens the story. If we’ve learned anything
from the Times’ approach to visual storytelling, it’s that burgers, animal
parts, and other processed meats can make the headlines, but a pile of
bloodied food animals—with eyes still on their bodies—will not.
An abstract illustration is no doubt more palatable and without questions
misses, or at least obscures Foer’s point: “We cannot protect against
pandemics while continuing to eat meat regularly. Much attention has been
paid to wet markets, but factory farms, specifically poultry farms, are a
more important breeding ground for pandemics. Further, the C.D.C. reports
that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic—the
result of our broken relationship with animals.”
Leaning on strong, structured evidence, Foer asks readers to take a step
back and review their lifestyle choices. Bari Weiss, the Times’ opinion
editor, even took to Twitter to acknowledge her new outlook: “I love
burgers. Love. But working on this piece reminded me of what I try to avoid:
eating them comes with too high a cost. Renewing efforts to wean myself off
meat.” This probably holds true for most of us. Research shows that
consumers understand the ethical, environmental, or health issues associated
with eating meat but do their best to suppress these facts out of
convenience, cost, or habit.
The animal agriculture industry is rife with disinformation. But never has
the information gap between producers and consumers been more apparent than
during the current crisis. According to Sentient Media’s latest research,
most mainstream media outlets neglect to report on the connection between
COVID-19 and the human exploitation of nonhuman animals.
Covering the mayhem of packed hospitals, barren grocery store shelves, and
rising death counts makes for more relatable news headlines than unveiling
the uncomfortable truths residing within our global food system. The current
lack of reporting on the zoonotic origins of the coronavirus in the news is
so severe that we know almost as little about wet markets in Asia as we do
factory farms in America. In fact, only 10 to 20 percent of people in the
U.S. understand the animal-based origins of the virus.
Let’s be clear: The COVID-19 outbreak was caused by humans. Without a demand
for wildlife products, we would not have the novel coronavirus. Unless we
start reporting on the true cause of this pandemic and its implications for
animal agriculture, we’ll never be able to make the changes necessary to
prevent the next outbreak.
The story behind the story
Beginning in March, we surveyed five of the largest journalism organizations
in the world—NPR, BBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York
Times—to find out how they’re reporting on coronavirus.
We specifically looked for mentions of the words “animal” and “origin” in
trend stories and overview pieces about the pandemic, as both reflect the
kind of comprehensive coverage that should mention COVID-19’s animal link.
What we found is that while at the time roughly 70 percent of the articles
we surveyed explained where the virus originated, often using sparse
language like “it came from animals,” very few made the connection to the
cause of the outbreak. Only 15 out of the 50 most popular articles we
surveyed accurately explained humans’ culpability in the spread of the
virus.
Along with media coverage, we monitored the social media accounts of three
top news organizations—The New York Times, The Washington Post, and
HuffPost—to better understand their potential impact on the publics’
understanding of COVID-19’s origins. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center
study, over half of American adults consume the majority of their news from
social media.
These three news outlets have the combined potential to reach over 116
million people—around two-thirds of the U.S. population—across Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram. After reviewing their social channels, we found
that the presence of wildlife market imagery and photos of factory farms,
which could be harboring the next pandemic much closer to home, was nearly
non-existent.
Mainstream media has the potential to reach millions, even billions of
people around the globe each day through print and online articles, blogs,
and social media. The public trusts these outlets to report the whole truth
and operate in their best interests, but that is not always the case. As we
have seen with COVID-19 coverage, these outlets are neglecting to show the
main reason why we are in this pandemic in the first place. Documenting
animal exploitation within our food system is difficult but necessary if we
want the public to understand how to prevent the next outbreak.
Holding publishers accountable
The New York Times has over 70 million followers across Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter. NYT has covered wet markets on its website, but their social
media platforms are lacking in photos that show Asia’s wet markets and more
specifically, photos of the animals being bought and sold at these markets.
In 2006, NYT suggested visiting wet markets as a tourist destination.
The Washington Post has 23 million followers across the same three
platforms. Not only are images of wet markets neglected on WashPo’s social
channels, but the website’s overall coverage of wet markets is thin. One
article mentions the plummeting chicken prices in India, as many consumers
are no longer purchasing mnoneat from wet markets, but not a single photo of
wet markets is present. An article about the Chinese food system’s role in
pandemic prevention seemed promising, but instead of gruesome wet market
photos, the article displays three grinning men holding live goats in their
arms. This image far from captures the fear, confusion, and pain animals
endure inside wet markets.
HuffPost has over 11 million followers on Twitter alone and more than 23
million across all three major platforms. Unsurprisingly, on HuffPost’s
social media channels, there is a severe lack of multimedia reporting on wet
markets. Their Instagram page shows no visible representation of farmed
animals whatsoever (although there are plenty of penguins, llamas, and
cats). If you search “wet markets” on HuffPost’s website, the lack of search
results is also concerning. One article mentions wet markets, and even
provides a photo of seafood being sold—which is commendable—but the image
does not fully capture the disarray of Asia’s wildlife markets.
The need for honest, fact-driven news coverage has never been greater. What
is being made rapidly apparent during the pandemic is that the need for news
monitoring is just as great. Over the past three months, most major news
outlets have failed to cover COVID-19’s animal angle responsibly. It’s up to
us to hold them accountable for the spread of inaccurate or incomplete
information about the overwhelming threat the factory farming industry poses
to public health and the stability of the global food supply chain before
the next virus hits.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
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0 camels / camelids