A Famine of Media Literacy
On green chemistry, global events, and how to read the news.
This past week in my Green Chemistry course I decided to have my students do an exercise in media analysis. Despite the fact that I was teaching graduate students in STEM, people who should be excellent at critical thinking, it went…okay.
If you weren’t aware, earlier this year the EPA proposed new restrictions on the use of methylene chloride, a solvent used in paint strippers and the manufacturing of some pharmaceuticals and refrigerants. The chemical causes extreme harm to workers, including nervous system damage and cancer, hence the new restrictions, which include much lower OSHA exposure limits than previously instated. In general, the use of volatile and toxic solvents is a green chemistry no-no; there’s an entire Green Chemistry Principle (#5) devoted entirely to solvent use since they’re incredibly harmful to workers, result in a lot of chemical waste that has to be separated downstream (which requires massive amounts of energy, which means fossil fuel use), and contribute heavily to smog formation.
If you read about the environmental, health, and safety impacts of methylene chloride, limiting its use (if not banning it entirely) seems like a no-brainer. However, most chemists and chemical engineers aren’t exposed to this information. Rather, they’re exposed to articles like this one from Bloomberg Law, with headlines like: “EPA Solvent Rule Said to Signal Hurdles Ahead for US Industries”.
The article spends about one half of a sentence on the toxicity of methylene chloride, simply calling it “potentially deadly” before spending the next 1,000 words on the concerns of the chemical industry (derogatory). Specifically, concerns about how harsh the bans are, how the proposed rules are more strict than other countries, how difficult the rule would be to enforce, how little time they’re being given to transition away from the solvent (~15 months), how the rule might impact supply chains, and how this might cause a domino effect leading to the ban of other solvents like perchloroethylene (another carcinogen that causes nervous system damage).
I’d like to stress that these concerns have some validity—it will definitely take some effort by engineers to figure out how to transition away from this chemical—but as critical media consumers, we must ask questions like: “What argument is the article making about the new solvent rule? What does it say about the author that so little time is spent on the toxicity of the solvent, while much more time is devoted to sharing perspectives of industry-heads who think the bans are unreasonable, or too much too soon?”
To be clear, this article didn’t lie about anything; everything presented here is 100% factual. However, the media-illiterate (and/or the heavily-biased) might read this article, take it at face value, and come away with a particular opinion about the solvent rule, based entirely on which facts were presented and which facts were omitted.
So, I gave my students a second article to read. This Washington Post article (sorry about the paywall, UMass students can access it for free) also talks about the solvent rule, but from a different set of perspectives. It includes voices from EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the mother of a worker who lost his life to methylene chloride exposure, and even activist group Earthjustice who say the rule is a great first step but that an outright ban is needed. The article also places the new rule in historical context, elaborating that the new solvent rule is the result of a new extension of the Toxic Substances Control Act from 2016 (during the Obama administration), which was then rolled back a bit under Trump in 2019, and is now being pushed further under Biden, implying that this new solvent rule has been a long time coming. Most importantly, it actually spends time explaining the toxicity of the chemical in simple terms, including the reality that even workers who wear the appropriate PPE can still face deadly levels of exposure.
Here are some notable key quotes from the second article:
“can poison the nervous system”
“exemptions in the rule would allow certain uses of methylene chloride to continue for a decade or more, leaving workers, service members, and communities at risk”
“would go much further than past efforts, though it falls short of a total ban some health groups have called for in the past”
“‘No mother should have to face that,’ Hartley said of her son’s death.”
Compare these one-to-one with phrases from the first article:
“Supply Chain Impacts”
“bans likely to challenge industries”
“[the proposed limits are] less than the limits in some other industrialized countries”
“[the] EPA has not established the necessity to set an additional, independent, occupational exposure limit in addition to those already in place.”
Even just the difference in headlines and subheaders tell completely different stories.
“EPA Solvent Rule Said to Signal Hurdles Ahead for US Industries; Worker exposure limits, bans likely to challenge industries; Perchloroethylene proposal expected next”
“EPA proposes to ban most uses of methylene chloride, a toxic solvent; Used as a paint stripper, methylene chloride can poison the nervous system and is the second chemical the agency is targeting under a 2016 law update”
The point of my little lesson is this: it’s only by placing these two articles in conversation with each other that we’re able to get the full picture. Reading each article alone might tell you facts about the new EPA rule, but it’s a lot easier to see the arguments that each article is making when you have an understanding of both “sides”. With both articles in mind, the first article shows just how much the chemical industry seems to fold its arms and kick its feet at the idea of implementing greener chemistries, as well as just how much the forces of profit-driven capitalism motivate the industry. Engineers do need to confront the reality that, yes, green chemistry is difficult and it will take time and effort to transition the industry away from toxic chemicals. At the same time, they should also acknowledge that we must make this transition for the good of humanity, and that we should constantly be pushing ourselves to go further and further at protecting human life.
In short, I got my students to read this two articles about the same situation from two different perspectives, and through a discussion of both, we were able to synthesize the “truth” of the situation and assess what “arguments” both authors were making. I asked questions like, “What motivations does each author seem to have? Which article seems to be more pro-worker? What does this say about how the industry talks about itself (vs how outsiders talk about it)? What does this tell us about how green chemistry is implemented at a massive scale?”
My students seemed to understand the importance of this activity, but one follow-up question I asked seemed to make them shift in their seats with guilt. I asked if they did this sort of thing regularly—compare two sources of information side-by-side to synthesize truth—and none of them said yes. I even asked, “Where do you all get your news from?” and the answers haunted me.
“Twitter”
“the Google homepage”
“Facebook and Instagram, I guess”
All of my students get their news from algorithmically-curated sources. I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me that much, since at least half of U.S. adults get at least some of their news from social media. Maybe I just expected better from PhD students, who are training to be able to research topics with some degree of academic rigor. No shade to these students—it’s difficult to find reputable news sources and readings many sources just to find a simple answer can be time-consuming. My worry is about the disconnect between the different realities that we’re living in.
Imagine a world where people within the chemical industry only read news written by and for the chemical industry, like this Bloomberg Law article, and people outside the industry (toxicologists, climate activists, and the general public) only read articles about how the chemical industry is killing the planet, like this Washington Post article, and the two groups never exchange ideas or even cross paths. Actually, scratch that, I don’t have to imagine that world, because that’s the world we’re already living in.
Despite recent advancements towards interdisciplinary research, we’re still at a point where different fields of study can be completely siloed off from one another. Chemical engineers almost never talk to toxicologists; I might be the first in my department to establish a connection between ours and the Environmental Health Sciences department, who here at UMass literally have their offices one floor above ours. Polymer scientists are often unconcerned with plastic pollution, and when they are, they’re invested in researching remediation strategies like recycling rather than challenging the root causes of pollution (capitalism & colonialism).
This is my work as someone who lies at the center of these two worlds, who works at the intersection of STEM and social justice. What I can tell you is, we need more people who can talk to both engineers and activists. We need more people who can bridge the gap between the chemical industry and the people whose lives they’re destroying. We need more people power, more worker power, to keep the petrochemical industry from making the world uninhabitable. And most of all, we need more media literacy all around—among engineers and everyday people—to be able to combat these problems.
I care deeply about media literacy, having performed numerous analyses of popular media myself and having written about anti-trans media bias numerous times on this very newsletter.
And I dunno, something about this past week has got me to care a lot more about media literacy than normal…
Let’s start here: As a white American who has never so much as set foot in the Middle East, you should by no means look to me for advice on the Israel-Palestine conflict. For most of my life, the conflict has been in the periphery of my political world, which reflects my extreme privilege as a person living within the imperial core who benefits hugely from violence overseas simply by living in the country I’m in. The main reason I can type this newsletter comfortably from my home in Massachusetts, a home that has never in my country’s history been under threat of bombing from a foreign power, is because of the hard work of American imperialists and colonizers keeping underdeveloped countries from self-governing. While I have learned a lot about settler-colonialism from Indigenous people here in America and from some African scholars over the past few years, I am no authority on how this translates to Palestinian liberation or what that would entail.
With that out of the way, let me not bury the lead any further: It’s “Free Palestine”, it’s always been “Free Palestine”, and it’s always gonna be “Free Palestine”.
Despite the limitations of my perspective, it should not take any background knowledge on geopolitics to condemn a genocide. What Israel is doing to Palestine is a genocide, in fact is has been for a very long time, and it reflects an ideology of settler-colonialism. Palestinians have been dehumanized, persecuted, and directly murdered by Israeli people on the basis of being Palestinian. Palestinians have fought back, as is their right according to international law, but the conflict is very one-sided considering that Israel (1) has the power to shut off their water and electricity, thanks in part to previous colonial violence enacted by them, and (2) has the support of the American military, the largest military in the world and it’s not even close.
It also shouldn’t be complicated to have conversations about this violence without leaning into antisemitism and Islamophobia, but unfortunately, we live in a deeply racist country with no education on media literacy or cultural competency. Obviously, antisemitism sucks, and everyone who is bringing up “but you killed Jesus!” or any other sort of pointless, bigoted remarks in the face of this genocide should be summarily discredited. In fact, Jewish people seem to largely do not want this conflict to happen, and as a group they’re currently mourning the lost lives of both their Jewish community members and Palestinians. In general, aside from extreme racists and those that benefit financially from the military industrial complex, The People don’t want this genocide. For the past few weeks, and this weekend especially, we’ve seen mass protests around the world against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which have been incredibly encouraging in the face of violent imperialism.
With all of that said, I want to stress as much as possible that I am still learning about all of this in real-time. I may have even made mistakes in this very post; please correct me on those, by the way! I can synthesize what I know about American violence and what I’ve been reading about into an opinion, but I should not present that opinion as being equally valid as insight from actual Middle Eastern people or the experts who have been studying this conflict for much longer.
So, instead of writing an article about something I know very little about—Middle Eastern politics—allow me to point my audience in the direction of resources on how to effectively read the news.
Lesson 1: Don’t Be An Asshole
Fuck antisemitism! And also, fuck Islamophobia! We must be clear to not attack all Jewish people or all Muslim people when talking about this genocide. Both of these groups are marginalized people who have faced many forms of violence over many generations, and we always need to be sympathetic to that.
Allow me to share Solutions Not Sides’ guide on “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Hate Speech”…
Be clear about what you mean when using labels:
Jewish and Muslim refers to two minority groups in Europe and some other regions who experience racism, and this tends to get worse when violence in the Middle East hits our news headlines
Palestinian or Israeli are national identities
Zionism is the belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination (and not all people who call themselves Zionist share the same opinion about the exact territory, principles, etc. of the state of Israel). ‘Zionist’ or ‘Zio’ should not be used as a term of abuse
Arab is a grouping of people whose mother tongue is Arabic and there is great diversity across the Arab World (e.g. Jordan can’t simply become Palestine just because they are Arabs)
Islamism is an academic term with French origins that refers to a broad spectrum of political ideologies. Islamism is not a synonym for terrorism and should not be used as such
Do not hold Jews responsible for the decisions of the Israeli leaders, or Muslims responsible for the decisions of the Palestinian leaders
Do not demand that Jews or Muslims must take a certain political position on the issue
Do not assume that all Palestinians or Israelis support the actions of their governments
Anti-Zionism is not always antisemitic (for example if someone is generally anti-nationalism and believes in abolishing nation-states), but it can be, for example if criticism of Israel goes beyond that of its government policies and uses antisemitic tropes
Do not state that Muslims should leave Palestine because they have the whole of the rest of the Middle East or that Israeli Jews should ‘go back to where they came from’
Israel is not a conspiracy to take over the Middle East or the World, and Palestine is not a conspiracy to enforce a Caliphate on Israel/Europe/the World. These are two national identities who both want to exist in the same piece of land
Israel is not Nazi Germany. Palestine is not Daesh/ISIS.
Israelis and Palestinians are human beings, therefore celebrating their suffering and death is not acceptable
Be sensitive towards people who are pro-Israel and/or pro-Palestine at this time - they may have friends/family involved in the situation, or Israel/Palestine may represent something important to them such as their own sense of struggle or oppression or a place of safety in times of persecution. Solidarity with one side or the other is not a crime, they can be pro-Israel/pro-Palestine and still be pro-solution
Lesson 2: Be Wary of Passive Language
Here in America, following the murders of Black Americans by racist police officers, we often see headlines reading something along the lines of “A Bullet Was Fired From A Gun Owned By A Police Officer Which Made Impact With A Black Man, After Which He Died”. This is a case of passive language, which is often used by mainstream news media to lift blame from aggressors, most often police officers and other people with power.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in Western reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israeli people are killed, Palestinians die. Hamas’ attack on Israel are almost never presented in the context of generations of Israeli violence on Palestinians, and you’ll often see the total “both sides” death count from the conflict without the added context of how many Israeli lives have been lost vs how many Palestinian lives have been lost. Obviously, all murder is wrong, this is all terrible and all lives lost should be mourned. All of this sucks and I wish none of this violence was happening at all. But please be wary of which side is being favored by the language of the news.
Lesson 3: Don’t Trust Western Mainstream Media
You may have heard the claim that Hamas forces “beheaded 40 babies” this past week, a clearly barbaric act. While horrendous violence has been carried out by both sides here, this particular claim was never substantiated by multiple sources. Here’s what really went down: the claim was given to i24News reporter Nicole Zedeck by David Ben Zion, a Zionist Israeli solider and extremist who has every incentive to make Palestinians out to be sub-human. Zedeck reported the claim, but no other news source has been able to verify it, including the Israeli government itself. Nonetheless, mainstream news ran with it, and the story spread across mainstream news and social media. To quote this Al Jazeera op-ed as to why: “The babies story fed into a narrative that is common in US foreign policy – that Washington supports good guys with high national values, and fights bad guys whose actions are brutal, even savage, and must be eradicated.”
As with other recent world events, we’re also seeing plenty of cases of pictures and videos of cities in ruin that are years old alongside headlines claiming that these are “new” images from Gaza. These are just two examples of misinformation in mainstream news, to say nothing of Western media’s heavy bias towards maintaining the current power relations which Palestine is trying to be liberate itself from. Even words choices like calling the situation a “war” vs a “genocide” have a massive impact on how these stories get represented.
It’s important to trust experts, and it’s important to read mainstream media and not just what you see on social media. That said, we should always be skeptical and try to back claims up with multiple sources, especially when it comes to wars and genocides. As much as I hate the term “both sides” and the centrism it digs up, it is objectively true that all sources are capable of creating and spreading mis/disinformation. When reading any news article, ask yourself how this headline/article positions one group as sub-human and the other as heroes. Just like with the green chemistry example from earlier, if you hear about a particular story, you can read multiple articles about it and try to (a) synthesize the truth from the commonalities from all the pieces and (b) try to understand what “arguments” all the articles are making. And if you really want to stay informed on everything, maybe avoid American outlets entirely, and #ChangeYourAlgorithm to include Middle Eastern news sources and creators who are actually there.
Lesson 4: Don’t Trust Social Media Either
Just as often as bad reporting is the omission of good reporting. Social media, by virtue of its ability to show you live, unfiltered, on-the-ground video as well as the perspectives of activists, can be hugely helpful in figuring out what’s actually going on. I’ve read many an Instagram infographic breaking down the settler-colonialism of the situation, a type of analysis that you’d never get from CNN.
All that being said, it’s important not to get all your information from social media either. While social media has been a fantastic means for the marginalized to get their voices heard, this lack of restriction also means that there are zero checks and balances in place to prevent mis/disinformation from being created and spreading. Recognize that even outlets that present themselves as progressive/leftist/feminist/etc. are capable of promoting a racist or imperialist bias.
One situation that stands out to me is the viral headline that MSNBC suspended 3 of its Muslim anchors following the recent happenings in Gaza, preventing them from appearing on the news and giving their perspectives. This would certainly support my own beliefs about mainstream media (how they’re Islamophobic, imperial, and making the same mistakes as they did post-9/11), so when I first read this (probably on Instagram), I took this at face value. However, looking into it now, it’s unclear whether they actually haven’t appeared on the air lately purely because of the conflict, or if it’s all merely coincidental, with the network opting to air breaking news coverage instead of these anchors timeslots. Even for events happening in America, it’s hard to know the truth, and it’s easy to let your (my) own biases seep in.
The best thing you can do is read a variety of sources and be skeptical of everything you see, especially when it’s coming from the imperial core and not voices on the ground of a conflict. There are many guides on how to do this that are worth re-upping on, one of which is the ability to SIFT through sources:
I pray that this violence ends, that Palestine can be free from outside oppression, and that not one more soul has to die. I pray for an end to all war everywhere, I pray that this genocide will be condemned, and that my tax dollars will stop fueling bloody murder. In the meantime, we should all stay vigilant, educate ourselves, and educate each other.
Take care of yourselves <3
Action Items
For U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australian readers: a masterdoc of actionable ways to support the Palestinians of Gaza
For U.S readers: contact your representatives via email or via phone call using Jewish Voice for Peace’s scripts
Currently Reading
“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other” by Arielle Angel
An Intercept article claiming that the FBI is targeting American Palestinians and Muslims in the wake of the Hamas attack
Watch History
From non-binary Indian-American creator Offbeat Kiki, the best video essay yet made about Velma, the often-lambasted Mindy Kaling project. This essay made me want to watch the show, despite many other sources getting me to believe it’s mid!
A fantastic deconstruction of modern American masculinity, through the lens of “Kenergy” (seriously).
James Stephanie Sterling’s coverage of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, which is sure to be highly disruptive and anti-trust.
A more lighthearted video about celebrity house tours, which was actually very revealing and enlightening!
Bops, Vibes, & Jams
Jenn Champion’s incredibly dark album, “The Last Night of Sadness”, really had me in my feelings. “Famous” is a fave, as well as “GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS (we're all gonna die)”
And now, your weekly Koko.
That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content.
In solidarity,
-Anna