McDonalds, Cattle and the Media
The Twitter comment caught my attention.
It said: “@McDonalds #MeetTheFarmers mcd.to/zlfnM1” FUCKING BULLSHIT. How could meat which sells for less then a dollar live open ranged?@peta
I followed a link and ended up watching a McDonalds advertisement from a “Meet the Farmers” series. This particular one featured a beef producer in Illinois.
One thing struck me when the video was done playing: McDonalds had never claimed the meat was raised open range.
So why was this guy on Twitter so mad about a standard publicity move - showing the source of the product - by the restaurant chain?
Because of the disconnect; Americans seem to want, more than ever, to know where their food is coming from, but few have true access or connections to farms. One result is misunderstandings.
In this case, what most people with a farm background would have recognized was that the video not only didn’t describe the farm as a "open-range" operation, but it specifically showed the cattle being fed at a feed bunk. Yes, it showed some shots in a grassy pasture, but it also showed the cattle in the stubble that remains in an already harvested cornfield.
My guess is this farmer grazes his cattle in those pastures, but also appears to supplement with silage, a grain-plant feed mixture. Or he may feed some or many of his cattle in a feedlot exclusively with grain or silage. They don’t ever claim otherwise in the commercial.
Give McDonalds credit; they could have eliminated the shots of the kids walking along the long line of cattle being fed grain, they could have eliminated the shot of the cattle in the cornfield, and they could have only included shots in the pastures. That would have been misleading. But they didn’t cut those shots. Check out the video yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sjPnA...
Unfortunately, judging from this one person’s reaction on Twitter, it might not matter that they appear to have refrained from implying the cattle were purely grass fed. Not with the disconnect between farmers and others. And it doesn’t just go one way. Farmers aren’t always understanding their non-farm peers, either.
This is what prompted me to look at how we deliver messages in the media. After all, journalists are part of the public, biased by our own backgrounds and sometimes careless with assumptions or incomplete information. In this case, our view of a farm story is colored by our exposure or lack thereof to farms. Are we journalists contributing to misunderstandings, or at least failing to address them?
Can we do a better job of really helping people understand both sides of all kinds of issues? Even in this era of Tweets and 20-second soundbites?
I hope so. In summer 2012, I plan to launch a web-based video project, www.SkewTutor.com, which will examine how media coverage can become slanted, even without the journalist necessarily realizing it.
It said: “@McDonalds #MeetTheFarmers mcd.to/zlfnM1” FUCKING BULLSHIT. How could meat which sells for less then a dollar live open ranged?@peta
I followed a link and ended up watching a McDonalds advertisement from a “Meet the Farmers” series. This particular one featured a beef producer in Illinois.
One thing struck me when the video was done playing: McDonalds had never claimed the meat was raised open range.
So why was this guy on Twitter so mad about a standard publicity move - showing the source of the product - by the restaurant chain?
Because of the disconnect; Americans seem to want, more than ever, to know where their food is coming from, but few have true access or connections to farms. One result is misunderstandings.
In this case, what most people with a farm background would have recognized was that the video not only didn’t describe the farm as a "open-range" operation, but it specifically showed the cattle being fed at a feed bunk. Yes, it showed some shots in a grassy pasture, but it also showed the cattle in the stubble that remains in an already harvested cornfield.
My guess is this farmer grazes his cattle in those pastures, but also appears to supplement with silage, a grain-plant feed mixture. Or he may feed some or many of his cattle in a feedlot exclusively with grain or silage. They don’t ever claim otherwise in the commercial.
Give McDonalds credit; they could have eliminated the shots of the kids walking along the long line of cattle being fed grain, they could have eliminated the shot of the cattle in the cornfield, and they could have only included shots in the pastures. That would have been misleading. But they didn’t cut those shots. Check out the video yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sjPnA...
Unfortunately, judging from this one person’s reaction on Twitter, it might not matter that they appear to have refrained from implying the cattle were purely grass fed. Not with the disconnect between farmers and others. And it doesn’t just go one way. Farmers aren’t always understanding their non-farm peers, either.
This is what prompted me to look at how we deliver messages in the media. After all, journalists are part of the public, biased by our own backgrounds and sometimes careless with assumptions or incomplete information. In this case, our view of a farm story is colored by our exposure or lack thereof to farms. Are we journalists contributing to misunderstandings, or at least failing to address them?
Can we do a better job of really helping people understand both sides of all kinds of issues? Even in this era of Tweets and 20-second soundbites?
I hope so. In summer 2012, I plan to launch a web-based video project, www.SkewTutor.com, which will examine how media coverage can become slanted, even without the journalist necessarily realizing it.
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