Hope is hosting Compassionate Living’s Humane Hoax Online Conference on March 17, 2026 and to entice you to register, we are replaying a fantastic conversation from Episode 81 on humanewashing in journalism. Lisa Barca is one of the 18 contributing authors to Hope’s anthology The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy and Ethical Eggs and they had an insightful conversation that we wanted to share again. The theme of this year's Humane Hoax Online Conference is language and narrative, so this conversation reflects our focus for the conference and we hope that you will register! The link is below. 

Lisa has fascinating insights into the portrayal of farmers, farmed animals, and our relationship to animals in her chapter and discusses them with Hope in this conversation. She explains the “absent referent,” or the erasing or hiding of animal’s identities and how it relates to the humane hoax. She also talks about how the new “humane” do-it-yourself slaughter normalizes violence toward animals and she offers advice to journalists, and to us all, on language that helps the animals to be seen and heard in media stories about them.

Lisa Barca is a lecturer in the Honors College at Arizona State University, where she teaches humanities, writing courses, and seminars on the ethics of humans’ relationships with other animals. Her current research centers on critical animal studies, media ethics, rhetoric and ideology, and the intersections of feminism and animal rights. She holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures and is a contributing author to the volume Meatsplaining: The Meat Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial and also to The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs.

Resources:

Humane Hoax Online Conference Information

Conference Registration

Order Hope Bohanec’s Book: The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs