With veganuary and the pandemic, veganism is popping up more and more in mainstream media. This is potentially great news, but not when organisations like the BBC are oblivious to what they say and how they act.
I won’t bang on too much here, as these examples speak for themselves but twice over the last few weeks, the BBC have hurt rather than helped veganism or even given it a fair shot.
The first was during veganuary with Alex Jones and Ronan Keating hosting The One Show. Alex was admirably doing veganuary. On opening the show however, she was nothing but doom and gloom about it. Her decision to try veganuary was not given any airtime, just that she wasn’t really enjoying it. To add to this, the producers used the chance for banter letting Ronan talk about his giant sharing steak, even showing a picture to allow Alex to regret her decision. The mind boggles, it really does. The show chose to give airtime for the promotion of animal exploitation and murder, even making it about the benefits to their tastebuds but gave nothing to veganism except negativity.
The second instance was the Today Show on BBC Radio 4. The show was discussing the COVID vaccine. During a Q&A with a couple of medical experts a question came in from a vegan. The question was if animals made up any part of the vaccine, citing the issue with horseshoe crab blood in some vaccines. The question had barely finished being read out and the experts and presenter were in fits of laughter. They not only showed zero respect, but their lack of empathy was abundantly clear. To add to the situation one expert didn’t hear over her own laughing and thought the question cited horse blood. They found this even funnier and suggested that horse blood was somehow more unacceptable, great, specisim. The final nail in the coffin of this awful section was the immediate rejection of this theory and that no it wasn’t in the vaccine. That wasn’t the question (another example that non-vegans don’t see the full picture), they just considered animals being ingredients in the vaccine. Horseshoe crab blood does in fact play a part in vaccines as it is used in testing to check safety, particularly in America. Guess where I learnt that, the BBC website. Ironic yeah?
Until mainstream media stops playing the popular vote, veganism will always be an uphill struggle.