Respectful Representation: An Animal Issues Style Guide for All Media Practitioners

Abstract

Media studies scholar Carrie Freeman teamed up with biologists Marc Bekoff and Sarah Bexell to assess the United States’ Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) code of ethics, particularly its mandate for journalists to “give voice to the voiceless” (SPJ, 2014). The resulting scholarly paper, “Giving voice to the voiceless: Incorporating nonhuman voices as journalistic sources,” declared that “as part of journalism’s commitment to truth and justice by providing a multiplicity of relevant perspectives, journalists have an obligation to provide the perspective of nonhuman animals (NHA) in stories that affect them” (Freeman, Bekoff, & Bexell, 2011, p. 2). In particular, they invoked SPJ’s emphasis on “truth in relation to inclusion and diversity” (p. 2). While the code was designed to be inclusive of human groups, the authors argued that NHAs have interests and feelings regarding issues impacting them and, therefore, news sources and voices should not end at the species boundary.

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