Covering Hate

What many Americans still fail to face today, are the consistent hate crimes forced upon targeted Americans of certain color, religion and ethnicity.

In the wake of Barack Obama’s presidency, there was undoubtedly a sense of hope for living in a post racial America, finally breaking the boundary of racial division. However, hate organizations such as the KKK and neo-nazis, continue to promote their ideologies of white supremacy and racial hierarchy.

At the Excellence of Journalism Conference in Anaheim, California this past Friday, keynote speakers of the journalism profession discussed to a group of no more than 60 people, about the importance of an accurate coverage on the clashes between white nationalists and those who are not.

After the harsh events of Charlottesville, U.S. journalists are more dedicated than ever to broaden their audiences with awareness that we still continue to live in a racist country, filled with hate organizations that continue to attack. But what many American journalists are often faced with, is the heavy backlash regarding their reporting on such organizations.

“One of the criticisms we (journalists) often get, is ‘you’re trying to spread hate by doing this project about hate. Why don’t you cover something about love and people coming together?’” Rachel Glickhouse, partner manager for the Documenting Hate Project, told the audience.

With the hate crimes that appear in the media, reporters deal with the challenge of being extremely careful in not promoting the agendas of those involved in hate organizations. The KKK is often aggressive and persistence in terms of their promotion with the media, seeking worldwide coverage on their ideologies.

The groups has been seen to target university campus’ across the country claiming to recruit members, but in reality, they are trying to gain media attention; and it works very well.

“They’ll put up a bunch of flyer’s around campus causing the university to freak out. It get’s a ton of media coverage, and that’s exactly what they want,” Glickhouse adds. When reporting these types of actions, it takes journalists a delicate hand when doing so. American’s often refuse publications to produce content that has to deal with these types of acts, as they don’t want to admit to the fact that this isn’t just happening in one area, it’s happening all over the country every single day.

Ryan Lenz, the Senior Investigative Writer for the Southern Poverty law Center’s Intelligence Project, adds to the concern in being careful of giving spokespeople of these organizations too much publicity in terms of media coverage.

“What we (journalists) try to do, is to create an investigative project. We’re trying to write on a political class, and we have to be careful when exposing their beliefs.”

Lenz also makes a point in regards of the members that make up these organizations, and how many of them try to hide particular details about themselves due to their association with wrongful ideologies. “Many members are able to maintain a sense of respectability to the public, where their ideologies aren't clearly in the open.”

Many reporters are beginning to put more focus on the kind of person that is drawn to this kind of ideology, rather than putting all the focus on what ideologies make up this particular hate movement.

Marc Lacey, National Editor for The New York Times, adds in agreement to Lenz’s opinion and the issue with members hiding their true identities.

“There are a whole lot of people who are professionals, that don’t necessarily want the NY Times or other organization to say that they are members of these groups.” For these journalists, it’s a constant battle in finding and exposing true members of these hate organizations.

“It’s primarily about educating our audience,” Llia Calderon, Co-Anchor of Noticiero Univision, expresses. “We need to open the eyes of our audience and let them understand that this is a problem that continues to affect us. For us (reporters), we are focused on educating our audiences as much as we can.”

Llia and other journalists are aiming to teach their audiences the same message when talking about these hate organizations, one message in particular being the fine line between freedom of speech, and freedom of “hate speech.”

“There’s a fine line between the first amendment and spreading hate,” Llia continues. “When we inform, we have to make that difference, because hate is unacceptable.”

The debate of the first amendment is ongoing, as Americans often argue on what is acceptable as freedom of speech and what is not.

“It’s an ugly reality,” Lanez adds to the debate. “By law, it’s protected by the first amendment.” This is only one of the many issues that lie within these hate organizations that journalists are often covering.

However, according to Rachel Glickhouse, covering these hate organizations is all about the numbers. “What we as journalists are trying to do is get numbers on it, we want to show how people all over the country are getting victimized by these organizations.”

Although this is a topic that is often difficult when approaching audiences, journalists are striving to publicize this issue without promoting the hate ideologies of these hate groups that continue to spread vandalism, aggression, and physical violence to people of different ethnicities.