{"id":772356,"date":"2023-05-02T08:17:53","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T12:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=772356"},"modified":"2023-05-02T08:54:51","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T12:54:51","slug":"dominance-through-mentioning-the-fiction-of-fair-coverage-of-farmed-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=772356","title":{"rendered":"‘Dominance Through Mentioning’: The fiction of fair coverage of farmed animals"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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The media practice of ignoring, trivializing and demeaning farmed animals is a strategy that is characterized by the phrase 'Dominance Through Mentioning'. In it, disturbing truths and unorthodox viewpoints are 'mentioned' so that the press can claim 'balanced' coverage, without having to disturb the dominant worldview.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

KAREN DAVIS:<\/strong> The media practice of ignoring, trivializing and demeaning farmed animals is a strategy that is well characterized by the phrase \u201cDominance Through Mentioning.\u201d In Dominance Through Mentioning, disturbing truths and unorthodox viewpoints are \u201cmentioned\u201d so that the press can claim \u201cbalanced\u201d coverage, without having to disturb the dominant worldview. In particular, Dominance Through Mentioning is the attitude of the coverage toward the information presented that constitutes the \u201cdominance”…<\/em><\/p>\n

The strategy of Dominance Through Mentioning appeared in Canadian filmmaker John Kastner\u2019s documentary Chickens are People Too, which aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Company\u2019s weekly television show Witness on November 14, 2000. Kastner and his crew spent three days filming our chicken sanctuary here in Virginia, for the purpose of creating what Kastner called a \u201cdialogue\u201d between our perspective and sanctuary versus the point of view and violence of the poultry and egg industries. Hatchery operators, chicken farmers and chicken catchers freely acknowledge in the film their lack of compassion for the chickens.<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite scenes of horrific cruelty to the chickens along with images of the chickens in our sanctuary, Kastner manipulated the \u201cdialogue\u201d by gorging on eggs and chicken parts in almost every scene. The show ends with him sitting in a tree with a bucket of fried chicken, listening in his head to our slogan, \u201cDon\u2019t just switch from beef to chicken \u2013 get the slaughterhouse out of your kitchen.\u201d The shape of the show circles back to the beginning without any notable change of attitude or behavior in the investigator. His mockery dominates and surrounds the \u201cmentioning\u201d of the chickens.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a review of Chickens are People Too, television critic Tony Atherton mimicked Kastner\u2019s mocking tone. Kastner, he joked, \u201cforces inveterate chicken eaters, like himself, to at least consider the sad life history of Sunday dinner before tucking in”…<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2007, 2015, and 2022-2023, articles about the avian influenza epidemic have ignored or totally underplayed the torture of millions of birds by the poultry and egg industries, focusing instead on the \u201csuffering\u201d of consumers deprived of the usual abundance of cheap eggs. Birds being agonized to death by agribusiness killing crews are falsely said to be \u201ceuthanized”…<\/em><\/p>\n

Thus are the victims \u201cmentioned\u201d (\u201cA hen\u2019s egg production\u201d) in a dominant narrative by corporate media siding with agribusiness to ensure public ignorance and apathy toward the brutal massacres, while hyping consumer distress over egg shortages. In 2015, chickens sickened by avian influenza were called by The New York Times the \u201clive inventory\u201d:\u201d Farmers, we were told, were \u201cforced to euthanize their own live inventory.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Animal advocates are understandably happy when a Letter to the Editor or an Op-Ed focuses attention on the animals themselves, particularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. While we are thankful for these additions and challenges to the dominant narrative, in terms of both information and attitude, we must understand that they are \u201cmentionings\u201d \u2013 inserted into coverage that overwhelmingly ignores and trivializes the animals and their experience. SOURCE…<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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