{"id":597,"date":"2015-02-07T16:23:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T21:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=597"},"modified":"2016-01-06T08:59:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T13:59:23","slug":"the-media-adores-ranchers-heres-why-they-shouldnt-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=597","title":{"rendered":"The Media Adores Ranchers. Here\u2019s Why They Shouldn\u2019t."},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>

The US livestock industry has\u00a0enormous economic and political clout. But news reports consistently highlight a small segment of it\u00a0\u2014 ranchers grazing livestock\u00a0on federally-managed western grasslands \u2014 as news sources, granting them undue influence on policy issues in which they have a\u00a0large economic\u00a0stake.<\/p>\n

This bias has occurred despite a decade\u2019s worth of empirical evidence showing that public-lands ranchers \u2014 who rely on hundreds of millions of dollars in\u00a0taxpayer subsidies but represent only 2.7 percent of the nation\u2019s total livestock operators \u2014 fleece US taxpayers, public lands and protected species in order to graze livestock (mostly cattle)\u00a0on the cheap.<\/p>\n

The media bias seems endemic. Whether discussing\u00a0wild horses, bison, predator species (wolves, coyote, cougars and bears), sage grouse or desert tortoises, livestock operators\u00a0and lawmakers from western\u00a0states are consistently allowed to present themselves in news reports as stewards of 230 million acres of grasslands, forest and wildlife habitat that nearly everyone agrees have been compromised. And they do this while suing the federal government to remove wildlife at public expense<\/a>,\u00a0block\u00a0wildlife protections<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0gain control of federal land<\/a>. Check out the linked articles and see for yourself.<\/p>\n

The federal grazing subsidy gives them\u00a0the\u00a0political and environmental power they’re currently exploiting.\u00a0But the media doesn’t mention it\u00a0\u2014 and the ranchers never bring it up.<\/p>\n

A lot of studies have, however, going back quite a few years. Just last month, The Center For Biological Diversity put out a report:\u00a0 Costs and Consequences: The Real Price of Livestock Grazing on America\u2019s Public Lands<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Randi Spivak, Director, Public Lands Program for the Center of Biological Diversity, told me that she sent the report to 100 journalists, both nationally and in Western newsrooms. Only three outlets provided coverage: E&E News (a news bulletin covering energy and environmental policy and markets); the Idaho Mountain Express<\/a>; and the Sierra Sun Times<\/a>, Spivak said.<\/p>\n

The rest? Radio silence.<\/p>\n

For the media, the cowboy myth lives on.<\/p>\n

This is Part I of a four-part SourceWatch\u00a0<\/em>series on ranchers in the media.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coming up:<\/p>\n

Part II:\u00a0Sustainable Cowboys or Welfare Ranchers of the American West?<\/i>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 (an economic analysis of subsidized public lands ranching; contains reading list of source materials)
\nPart III:\u00a0Bad Ranchers, Bad Cows<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(peer-reviewed study of damage caused by cattle grazing in a national wildlife refuge)
\nPart IV:\u00a0Forbes Billionaires Top US Welfare Ranchers List<\/a>\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US livestock industry has\u00a0enormous economic and political clout. But news reports consistently highlight a small segment of it\u00a0\u2014 ranchers grazing livestock\u00a0on federally-managed western grasslands \u2014 as news sources, granting them undue influence on policy issues in which they have a\u00a0large economic\u00a0stake. This bias has occurred despite a decade\u2019s worth of empirical evidence showing that public-lands ranchers \u2014 who rely on hundreds of millions of dollars in\u00a0taxpayer subsidies but represent only 2.7 percent of the nation\u2019s total livestock operators \u2014 fleece US taxpayers, public lands and protected species in order to graze livestock (mostly cattle)\u00a0on the cheap. The media bias seems endemic. Whether discussing\u00a0wild horses, bison, predator species (wolves, coyote, cougars and bears), sage grouse or desert tortoises, livestock operators\u00a0and lawmakers from western\u00a0states are consistently allowed to present themselves in news reports as stewards of 230 million acres of grasslands, forest and wildlife habitat that nearly everyone agrees have been compromised. And they do this while suing the federal government to remove wildlife at public expense,\u00a0block\u00a0wildlife protections\u00a0and\u00a0gain control of federal land. Check out the linked articles and see for yourself. The federal grazing subsidy gives them\u00a0the\u00a0political and environmental power they’re currently exploiting.\u00a0But the media doesn’t mention it\u00a0\u2014 and the ranchers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90],"tags":[104,33,70,71,105,23],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sourcewatch","tag-federal-grazing-program","tag-grazing","tag-livestock","tag-ranchers","tag-the-center-for-biological-diversity","tag-wild-horses"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/rancher-1a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54Vzk-9D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1033,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/1033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}