The Nonlinear Library EA - How can we get the world to talk about factory farming? by LewisBollard
Jun 27, 2024
10:45
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How can we get the world to talk about factory farming?, published by LewisBollard on June 27, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
Silence favors the status quo, which doesn't favor animals
It's easy to ignore factory farming. Inflation sparks public debates about the economy. Natural disasters spur news stories on climate change. Advances in artificial intelligence prompt discussion of its risks. But abuses on factory farms go ignored.
An analysis by my colleague Emma Buckland found that, since 2010, global English-language print and online news coverage of factory farming has only grown in line with other reporting on agriculture (see graph below). By contrast, coverage of climate change has grown two to three times faster. Google News lists 0.02 - 0.4% as many articles in the last week on factory farming as on climate change.
Undercover investigations once broke this media silence. In the decade up to 2018, top US media outlets, like
CBS,
CNN, and
NBC, routinely covered their findings. Since then, they seldom have. Before 2018, 27 undercover investigations from the top
three
investigative
groups surpassed 500,000 views on YouTube. Since then, none have.
This matters because factory farming thrives in the dark. Many industry practices are publicly indefensible, so the industry prefer to not publicly discuss them at all. And when the media ignores factory farming, politicians and corporate leaders can too.
A 2022 Faunalytics
study tested the impact of various advocacy tactics on 2,405 people. News articles and social media posts most reduced self-reported animal product consumption and improved attitudes toward farm animal welfare. (Though the impact of all tactics was small.) They also didn't trigger a backlash, as more confrontational tactics like disruptive protests did.
Why is factory farming so rarely publicly discussed? Some blame industry capture of the media. But the industry struggles to get news coverage too. The US chicken industry's main communications initiative,
Chicken Check-In, appears to have never secured a story in a mainstream news outlet or many "likes" on its
social
media posts. The problem is not media bias, but media indifference.
That indifference likely has many causes. Factory farming's horrors aren't new, so they're not "news." The topic is too obscure for most newspapers, too gruesome for most television shows, and too mundane for most online culture warriors. It doesn't help that animals can't speak, so they can't squawk about their plight online.
The decline in coverage of undercover investigations is more mysterious. It may have to do with
ag-gag laws, the collapse of investigative journalism, or the media's obsession with US politics. But it may also be thanks to
pink slime. ABC News' reporting on that meat-derived goo ensnared it in a lawsuit, which led to a record defamation settlement of
$177M in 2017. Soon afterward, media coverage of factory farm investigations began to decline.
The story on social media is even less clear. The algorithms likely changed, but we don't know how or why. We may be victims of the social media giants' 2016 post-election crack-down on distressing videos. Or the algorithms may just have mastered what people really want to watch - and the answer is
kittens in a maze, not tortured chickens.
What can we do about this? I'm no PR expert, so I asked some movement leaders who are, plus a few friends in the media. They had lots of ideas - far too many to list here. So I focus below on some broad points of agreement across three areas: media, influencers, and narrative. (A disclaimer: this is a list of int...
Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
Silence favors the status quo, which doesn't favor animals
It's easy to ignore factory farming. Inflation sparks public debates about the economy. Natural disasters spur news stories on climate change. Advances in artificial intelligence prompt discussion of its risks. But abuses on factory farms go ignored.
An analysis by my colleague Emma Buckland found that, since 2010, global English-language print and online news coverage of factory farming has only grown in line with other reporting on agriculture (see graph below). By contrast, coverage of climate change has grown two to three times faster. Google News lists 0.02 - 0.4% as many articles in the last week on factory farming as on climate change.
Undercover investigations once broke this media silence. In the decade up to 2018, top US media outlets, like
CBS,
CNN, and
NBC, routinely covered their findings. Since then, they seldom have. Before 2018, 27 undercover investigations from the top
three
investigative
groups surpassed 500,000 views on YouTube. Since then, none have.
This matters because factory farming thrives in the dark. Many industry practices are publicly indefensible, so the industry prefer to not publicly discuss them at all. And when the media ignores factory farming, politicians and corporate leaders can too.
A 2022 Faunalytics
study tested the impact of various advocacy tactics on 2,405 people. News articles and social media posts most reduced self-reported animal product consumption and improved attitudes toward farm animal welfare. (Though the impact of all tactics was small.) They also didn't trigger a backlash, as more confrontational tactics like disruptive protests did.
Why is factory farming so rarely publicly discussed? Some blame industry capture of the media. But the industry struggles to get news coverage too. The US chicken industry's main communications initiative,
Chicken Check-In, appears to have never secured a story in a mainstream news outlet or many "likes" on its
social
media posts. The problem is not media bias, but media indifference.
That indifference likely has many causes. Factory farming's horrors aren't new, so they're not "news." The topic is too obscure for most newspapers, too gruesome for most television shows, and too mundane for most online culture warriors. It doesn't help that animals can't speak, so they can't squawk about their plight online.
The decline in coverage of undercover investigations is more mysterious. It may have to do with
ag-gag laws, the collapse of investigative journalism, or the media's obsession with US politics. But it may also be thanks to
pink slime. ABC News' reporting on that meat-derived goo ensnared it in a lawsuit, which led to a record defamation settlement of
$177M in 2017. Soon afterward, media coverage of factory farm investigations began to decline.
The story on social media is even less clear. The algorithms likely changed, but we don't know how or why. We may be victims of the social media giants' 2016 post-election crack-down on distressing videos. Or the algorithms may just have mastered what people really want to watch - and the answer is
kittens in a maze, not tortured chickens.
What can we do about this? I'm no PR expert, so I asked some movement leaders who are, plus a few friends in the media. They had lots of ideas - far too many to list here. So I focus below on some broad points of agreement across three areas: media, influencers, and narrative. (A disclaimer: this is a list of int...