No man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare Hatred, or Contempt of another.
—Thomas Hobbes1
We must not content ourselves with the narrow measures of bare justice; charity, bounty, and liberality must be added to it.
—John Locke2
In the next two chapters, I explain how the idea of democratically engaged journalism applies to practical issues for journalism, especially in a time of Net-powered extremism and disinformation. I show (1) that democratically engaged journalism entails ethically attractive approaches to these issues and (2) that these approaches lead to guidelines for practice.
In this chapter, I look at questions attached to the issue of hate speech, causing offense, and freedom of expression. Should extreme populists, and others, enjoy the full protections of a free society, despite the odious nature and consequences of many of their comments? How should responsible journalists deal with their public actions? How should journalists understand these issues and then design new guidelines?
The guidelines below will apply to both extreme and hate speech. As I said in chapter 1, the difference between strong, extreme, and hate speech is a matter of degree. Hate speech, properly speaking, is the deliberate, virulent, and sustained attempt to attack, demean, or dehumanize groups based on racial, ethnic, religious, or other grounds, often attended by a lurking or explicit threat of violence. In law, hate speech is usually associated with speech that is likely to incite violent or discriminatory actions against some group. Hate speech is a form of extreme speech. It is an extreme form of extreme speech. Hate speech includes much more than verbal communication. It includes images, texts, sounds, signs and symbols, banners, and dramatic actions such as burning crosses. The speech may not be “loud,” created by shouting. It can be relatively calm and rational-sounding yet still induce social alienation.
For brevity, I will use “hate speech” to cover both extreme speech and hate speech since both raise similar problems. Both are based on hatred toward some group. My guidelines apply to both forms of speech
In the past, we may have thought of extreme speech and hate speech as the infrequent actions of a “crazed” minor group on the fringes of society, such as neo-Nazis. Things have changed dramatically. Today, extreme and hate speech is used frequently by extreme populists, strong right-wing candidates, and intolerant citizens on social media. Moreover, the extreme groups are no longer “minor” but have gained popular support. Journalists in a populist era need guidelines on how to report extreme speech, especially where it becomes hate speech.
Be forewarned: These issues are complex. The problem of extreme speech by demagogues and intolerant groups is hardly new, as our history has shown. But the problem is especially acute (and transformed) as a result of Net populism. There are better or worse positions, but no simple answers. In fact, one of the problems is that people think there are unequivocal answers that can be easily formulated. For instance, some people in the United States appear to think that free speech is an absolute right, with almost no valid restrictions. In this view, hate speech is a regrettable fact of life that free societies must endure.
The issues are complex because they involve a tension among central values and beliefs, each of which has some merit. Free speech is a great value, but so is living without hate speech. Does your belief in democracy entail unrestricted freedom of speech, or does your belief system make room for equality and civility? Such tensions are a feature of all ethical and political thought. But the tensions are especially difficult when dealing with fundamental, emotional questions such as free speech and the protection of minorities. Hate speech prompts dark mental images for many people in an era that remembers the Holocaust and has witnessed, in recent years, genocides by hate-speaking, weapon-wielding groups.
The best I can do is to put forward a plausible view of how these tensions should be balanced by ethical news media. I proceed by explaining my ethical perspective. Then I provide practical guidelines.
Let me state my position from the start: Hate speech, or what used to be called calumny, is a serious moral wrong. It is a pernicious obstacle to creating and maintaining a tolerant democratic society. Citizens and the state have a negative duty to refrain from (and condemn) hate speech. Groups are not to be persecuted or maligned, physically or verbally, to the point where the conduct becomes hate speech, and a hate crime. The absence of persecution and violence is a necessary condition for tolerant democracy.
But it is not sufficient.
Citizens and the state have a positive duty to take steps to develop a society marked by a thoroughgoing tolerance and respect for others, in deed and in word. We have a positive duty to interact in open and generous ways with groups who have different beliefs and practices. Therefore, I support hate speech laws. Carefully constructed, they are not a threat to a society that values free speech and flourishing for all citizens.
The Idea of Hate Speech
Here are two examples of hate speech, the first from legal scholar Jeremy Waldron.
A man out walking with his seven-year-son and his ten-year-old daughter turns a corner on a city street in New Jersey and is confronted by a sign. It says: “Muslims and 9/11! Don’t serve them, don’t speak to them, and don’t let them in.” The daughter says, “What does it mean, papa?” Her father, who is a Muslim—the whole family is Muslim—doesn’t know what to say. He hurries the children on, hoping they will not come across any more of the signs. Other days he has seen them on the streets: a large photograph of Muslim children with the slogan “They are all called Osama,” and a poster on the outside wall of a mosque which reads “Jihad Central.”3
Now imagine a small town in Alberta, Canada, where the local newspaper starts an antigay campaign on its front page, in its news stories, and in its images. The paper declares that gays violate God’s commands, that they endanger society, that they will sexually attack children. The paper starts to name the gays and to publish their home addresses. It publishes photos of people on the list. For the town’s gay minority, such stories do more than profoundly offend them. The stories cause them harm and set back their interests. The publicity creates a climate of fear and intimidation. It causes extreme anxiety with physical effects on their health. Some gays stop going to public events. They are passed over for jobs, and their children are shunned in school.
What are the messages of the communicators in the two examples? For the groups under attack, the messages are twofold:
The message for the public is this: Those of you who agree with our messaging—you are not alone. Your frustrations and views are shared by a potentially powerful group.
These messages are an intentional, calculated attempt to deny the four levels of the human good explained in chapter 4, especially the social and political goods. Hate speech is toxic, a polluting of the social environment, encouraging scapegoating, shunning, and restrictions on liberties. It undermines democratic, dialogic political culture. It is an authoritarian use of the freedom of speech: to use such freedom to deny full life and liberty to others, to keep minority groups and religions in their place or, by opposing immigration, out of the country.
Waldron argues that this denial of dignity, and its many negative consequences for the attacked groups, is the harm in hate speech. It is the use of public communication and media to deny a great public good: the right to enjoy a social reputation that allows citizens to be treated as equals in the “ordinary operations of society.”4 I agree. The consequences of hate speech are the issue, and it is a deep moral and political wrong.
Many Western nations, committed to free speech, have come to recognize the danger of hate speech at work among plural populations. Canada, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, among others, have hate crime laws. In Canada, hate speech provisions of the Criminal Code, Section 319(1), prohibit public statements that “incite hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace.” Denmark’s Criminal Code (Article 266b) opposes statements by which “a group of people are threatened, insulted or degraded on account of their race, colour, national or ethnic origin, religion, or sexual inclination.” In Germany, the penal code [Section 130(1)] prohibits speech that “assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning” groups or individuals. New Zealand’s Human Rights Act [Section 61(1)] prohibits “matter or words likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt any group of persons in or who may be coming to New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins of that group of persons.”
These laws cannot be dismissed as anti–free speech measures imposed by a number of narrow-minded bureaucrats. The laws have general support in these countries and were instituted after serious examples of hate speech arose in the public sphere. The laws reflect two valid concerns: (1) that hate speech can incite violence and public disorder; and, more positively, (2) that restrictions on hate speech express a social commitment to human dignity, respect, and the right of all citizens to flourish. Supporters of hate speech laws can ask critics this question: Why does the freedom to say whatever you like, in any manner or context, always trump the right of the person demeaned to live freely and without fear? How can you not take into consideration the very real consequences of hate speech?
Emergence of Tolerance
To appreciate the fragility of tolerance, we only have to consult history. In Europe, until about the seventeenth century, it seemed natural to think about society as intolerant toward minority groups, beliefs, and new religions. Groups at the top of hierarchical society practiced a self-interested intolerance against minority groups, such as new Christian sects. For example, England set up a state-protected “established” Church of England that was part of society-wide discrimination against Puritans, Catholics, and other religions. Even John Locke, in his famous Letter Concerning Toleration, did not extend toleration to Catholics, because he believed they were loyal to a foreign power, the Pope.5 High court jurists judged cases as to whether the matters that came before them were consistent with their Christian religion. There was no “wall” between church and state.6
The idea that society should tolerate different religious groups only emerged after European countries had worn themselves out in bloody wars of religion. The endless religious hatreds and competition between sects, promoted by fiery and intolerant “hate speech” from the pulpits, prompted Locke, Pierre Bayle, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, and other Enlightenment figures to write about the need for toleration in religion. These works are the ground for modern writings on the need for toleration beyond religious differences, such as race, ethnicity, and ideology.
To get a sense of what an intolerant society in Enlightenment Europe was like, consider a case from England: In 1732, someone identified in law reports as Osborne published a broadsheet claiming that the Jews, newly arrived from Portugal, were guilty of the infamous “blood crime” of Jews, perhaps Western society’s oldest conspiracy theory. The broadsheet claimed the Jews burnt to death a woman and an infant because the infant’s father was not Jewish. Even worse, this crime was being committed regularly. The report inflamed anti-Semitic sentiments in London. Law reports tell us that “Jews were attacked by the multitudes in several parts of the city, barbarously treated and threatened with death, in case they were found abroad anymore.” When a Jewish prosecutor laid a libel charge against Osborne, the former was mercilessly beaten within an inch of his life.7 The public can surely be a mob seething with hate when fueled by “fake news.”
The use of untruthful hate speech to attack Jews carried on. It was on display in Nazi Germany, inciting street fights, attacks on shops, and eventually the “final solution.” In recent history, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 saw Hutu gangs, stirred by hate speech on radio (among other factors), slaughter more than 500,000 Tutsi. Reports of hate crimes have increased of late in North America, Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. In America, the Anti-Defamation League has reported an upswing in the use of large highway banners to spread racist messages against Muslims.8 The United States has a long history of hate speech and violence, from lynching and state-enforced racial segregation to firebombings and mass murder attacks on churches. President Trump during the 2016 election campaign refused to explicitly disavow support from the KKK and neo-Nazis groups. One could also say much the same about the hate speech record of other countries. To use a phrase from John Stuart Mill, there is no guarantee whether our attempt at free and tolerant societies, this “experiment in living,” will prevail or decline.9
On Not Intervening: Misunderstandings
Many people in Western democracies become upset, or intensely worried, when there is any mention of restraining hate speech. Some people will say they dislike and are offended by hate speech but disapprove of restrictions on the right to express oneself. One source of this attitude is the aforementioned idea that the right to freedom of expression is absolute. Restraints constitute odious censorship and are contrary to democratic society. I will set aside the rejoinder that, in fact, freedom of expression is not absolute in the United States, or in any country of which I am aware. There are many reasonable restrictions, such as prohibitions of “fighting words” that incite violence and laws that require advertisements to be truthful. I am interested not in the particulars of law but in the attitude that opposes doing anything significant about hate speech aside from complaining about it.
There are a number of misunderstandings that support this reticence about intervention:
It’s about Worldly Consequences, Not What’s inside Your Mind
Restraining hate speech is not about mind control by Big Brother or any other entity. It is not about somehow “reaching” into people minds and changing their beliefs. Part of the problem is the term hate speech, which suggests that hate speech is something mental or internal, and therefore negligible in impact. After all, hate is a mental attitude, and speech suggests that hate speech is “only” about words or what I happen to say. Neither my mental attitudes nor my words can harm you the way fists, boots, and guns can harm. Recall that childhood bravado when we dismissed someone calling us names by saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
But speech is a form of action that affects others vitally. It is false that the public use of extreme words cannot cause serious harm. Just consider the two examples above. I hate hate speech; I literally hate such demeaning thoughts and their expression. But my main objection to hate speech is not what is in someone’s mind. My objection is based on the nonmental, and very real, social consequences for the groups maligned.10
A Slippery Slope to Censored Society
Another misunderstanding is that extreme speech restraints are (necessarily?) the first step down a slippery slope to an unfree society, a highly censored polity. The slippery slope argument is so abused in political argument that no one should accept uncritically any such claim. People exaggerate the negative effects of policies they dislike. Therefore, the free speech advocate who wishes to claim a slippery slope must show a strong cause-and-effect linkage between free speech restraints and a spiral downward to censored society. Empirically, the claim is false. There are many nations, some of them named above, that have had speech restrictions for many years and have not spiraled downward to censored society. True, hate speech restrictions need to be carefully worded so as to not impinge unduly on robust free speech. But that can be said of many laws. The idea that we must fight, with our First Amendment backs to the proverbial wall, any attempt to restrain hate speech or we are doomed to be censored citizens is a false dilemma. There is a much room between totally free and totally censored public spheres. Moreover, although it sounds paradoxical, less free speech can mean more free speech overall and in the long run. It has long been recognized that, without some restraints, loud and powerful voices shut down citizens from less powerful and vulnerable groups. The public sphere is too fearful a place to go toe-to-toe verbally with media-savvy members of the majority.
Hate Speech Restraint Is Not Political Correctness
The restraints I support do not amount to political correctness. Since the 1980s, the charge of political correctness has been so abused that I cringe when I hear anyone base their argument on the scornful phrase “Well, that’s just political correctness.” The phrase simply registers disagreement with some idea. Political correctness has been “weaponized” so that people (and leaders) of different ideologies can quickly reject the views of others without bothering to argue seriously or fairly.
Yet there is one valid sense of political correctness. Some people are so legislative and sensitive about what words people use, or beliefs they hold, that it restricts frank discussion. For example, in academia, the attempt to set up “safe” places is valid if this means spaces where people are safe from assault or discrimination. But it is not valid if it is used to apply to rational debate, especially in universities, and if it attempts to prevent discussion of certain ideas. Fortunately, hate speech resistance is not about protecting you from ideas and attitudes, even if they are controversial. The goal is to restrain hate speech within a society whose public debate is robust, honest, and, to a large degree, unrestrained. Hate speech is about reducing the actual harm caused by truly extreme speech.
We should not let our frustration with overzealous, politically correct people blind us to the importance of improving the language we use to describe others, and the progress that has occurred in this area. For example, it is altogether beneficial that many citizens, especially members of the news media, no longer describe American blacks as “niggers,” the Japanese as “Japs,” and so on for Native Americans and other minorities. This is not political correctness; it is the avoidance of demeaning (and inaccurate) stereotypes. The capacity of words to act as a slur on a group is evident, for example, in the long and disgraceful history of war propaganda, using dehumanizing images, speech, and stereotypes to stoke warmongering among the public.
It’s about Harm, Not Taking Offense
Hate speech should not be identified with any public communication that offends someone, for whatever reason. Hate speech is about harm to groups, not individual responses. The idea of not causing offense should not be a liberty-restricting principle in a free and democratic society. What offends people can be trivial, fleeting, and subjective. I have a friend who is so homophobic that seeing gays kiss on television offends him terribly. He would like to see such images restricted from broadcasts. That is why liberal and legal philosophers such as Mill and Joel Feinberg11 think that causing harm to others is a reason to restrict liberty. But they do not make causing offense a harm. Instead, they wisely define harm more narrowly. Harm is defined as a serious setback to someone’s interests over the long term. If I pinch you on the arm, I cause an unpleasant sensation but it does not amount to harm. If I offend you by swearing when I stub my toe, I do not harm you. However, if I drink and drive my car and hit a pedestrian, then I cause harm. If the pedestrian is a young baseball pitcher with a great professional career ahead of him, and I break his pitching arm, then I have seriously set back his interests.
Just Get Used to It?
Another justification for not actively opposing hate speech is to reduce it to the status of an irritant that one should accept. The advice to the demeaned is: Just get used to it. We should develop a thicker skin to insults and negative attitudes. The best remedy, if we wish to do anything, is “more speech”—rebut the claims in public. This is the old liberal idea that a free “marketplace of ideas” where views clash can sort out most issues. Eventually someone will quote the most famous line that Voltaire never wrote—“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”12 The focus is on the rights of the hate speech perpetrator, not the victim.
The problems with this response are several: To begin with, who is the “we” in the preceding paragraph? When wealthy people, liberal professors like myself, and other elites provide this advice, the response from demeaned groups is typically this: It is all too easy for such people to counsel stoicism when stoicism costs them so little. They are not the ones under attack, and they have power and influence to deflect criticism directed at them. When it comes to hate speech, we must consider power. The worst victims of hate speech around the world tend to be women, immigrants, refugees, and vulnerable minorities. Should the Muslim father mentioned above, trying to explain to his children the hatred directed at them, be told that there is not much that can be done. Just get used to it? Is this an adequate response to the fear instilled into the gays of that small Alberta town by its newspaper? Easy for us—the non-attacked majority—to say so. It is true that for ordinary, robust public exchanges we need to put up with sharp comments. But when people use hate speech to vehemently attack certain groups and threaten their welfare, such advice sounds callous, arrogant, and out of touch.
Further, the idea of “more speech,” by itself, is not a sufficient remedy for the social degradation of hate speech. The tactic of “more speech” does help to challenge errors, and there are benefits in putting ideas to the test in a marketplace of ideas. But this testing only makes sense, and is only fair, where the rival voices are approximately equal in social status and/or the capacity to use media. Too often the playing field for public debate in the media is slanted against poor or neglected populations.
Those who challenge hate speech restrainers, like myself, fail to meet our arguments head-on by worrying about mind control or focusing on political correctness. What they must explain is this: Why are valid concerns about the social harm of hate speech not something society should attempt to mitigate? Also, why should society not be as concerned about the rights of targets of hate speech as it is concerned about the rights of hate speech perpetrators?
The Best Reason to Restrain Hate Speech
Before I turn to hate speech and journalism, I want to deepen my position. I provide what I consider to be the best reason for opposing extreme and hate speech.
The duty to create a tolerant, nontoxic social environment—a duty of special importance to journalists—goes to the very foundations of human morality: the right of all humans to flourish and to realize the four levels of the human good, unrestricted by grave intolerance, discrimination, and hate. As I said earlier, the moral injunction against intolerant communication is not only a negative injunction to not do something—to not disparage or threaten another person and their social standing. We also have an obligation to act in positive and charitable ways toward our fellow human beings, while avoiding unjustified harm.
This duty to cooperate and respect others, rather than harm them, is a central teaching of major ethical systems and religions. It is not possible to place one’s political speech in one compartment and one’s ethical and religious views in another compartment. The hostile and derogatory verbal treatment of others does not occur in some realm where morality does not apply. Speech matters, crucially, in all domains of life. Ironically, some people who use social media to maliciously attack the character of other people or to spread conspiracy theories about Jews or Muslims are violating the Christian (or other) values they hold. Somehow, this dissonance is ignored.
The idea that ethics is central to communication takes its inspiration from Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers who ushered in a new thinking about tolerance and peaceful republics. Machiavelli, who was personally acquainted with the nastiness of factions, believed that “detestable calumnies”—false accusations circulated in an irresponsible way—should be prohibited to maintain order in a republic.13 Hobbes, who watched the English Civil War play havoc with his country, knew well the link between words and violence, warning that “all signs of hatred, or contempt, provoke a fight.”14
For Locke and the French philosophes, a “minimalist” view of a tolerant society is not enough. It is not enough that people not be persecuted, i.e., that people refrain from violence and threats against religious groups. Citizens must also refrain from expressions of hatred and loathing. We do not need to love everyone in society, and we can disagree with other people’s beliefs or practices. But we do need to interact with people in a civil manner. Waldron provides a good description: “The guarantee of dignity is what enables a person to walk down the street without fear of insult or humiliation, to find the shops and exchanges open to him, and to proceed with an implicit assurance of being able to interact with others without being treated as a pariah.”15
Locke, in A Letter Concerning Toleration, writes about clergy and churches that punish “heretics” and force individuals to affirm their religious beliefs—nominally, and paternalistically, to save their souls. Locke will have none of this hypocrisy, pointedly saying that this zealotry is intolerance for the sake of dominion over others. He decries the “burning zeal” of religious leaders to use “fire and faggot” to harass, intimidate, torture, and even kill others in the name of a Christian religion that presumably requires utmost charity and meekness.16 Any true Christian church, government, or public has a duty of toleration to others.17 Citizens are bound by a duty to “charity, bounty, and liberality” due to that “natural fellowship” that exists between all humans, regardless of their faith. Even when a church excommunicates a member, Locke insists they use no “rough usage of word of action” to attack the person or their estate. Locke’s treatment of tolerance presumes a Christian foundation, but it can be applied to non-Christian contexts.
Similarly, Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary on These Words of the Gospel, Luke 14:23 in 1686, published a few years before Locke’s Letter, argues that intolerant speech causes serious harm.18 Bayle says religious authorities condemn other sects by “smiting and slaying Men, blackening ’em by all manner of Calumny, betraying ’em by false Oaths,” which are the signs of members of a false church. Slander is “that Pest of Civil Society,” and its use is never justified to convert people to one’s religion. Similarly, Diderot, in “Intolerance”—one of his entries in the famous Encyclopedia, a principal work of the Enlightenment—describes intolerance as a “savage passion that leads us to hate and persecute those in error.” If we adopt the views of these writers, then the ranting and vicious attacks in today’s social and partisan media are a morally objectionable (and socially toxic) intolerance of others.
We can summarize the ethics of hate speech by noting Locke’s three features of a tolerant society: (1) public expressions of hatred and vilification are typical of intolerant societies, and tolerant societies lack them, in large part; (2) there is a specific duty to refrain from “rough usage” of words and actions if calculated to damage a person or a group; and (3) there is a duty of toleration bound up with a duty to charity, civility, and good fellowship. A country’s political morality is incomplete if it thinks it should only restrain violence and coercion but does not deal with hatred and social exclusion.
I have been arguing against a laissez-faire attitude toward hate speech and for a duty of toleration. So far, I have spoken of citizens publishing hate speech. But what about journalists? Let us assume there are journalists who are not extremists and do not wish to spread hate speech, nor assist far-right or far-left groups. They want to practice a fair, accurate, and responsible journalism that assists democracy as a whole, not divides it. Two major questions confront such journalists: (1) Should they avoid coverage of all extreme speech or actions? Or should they not cover, selectively, particular cases of extreme speech? (2) If they cover extreme speech, how should they report it?
Don’t Cover?
One might say that news media should never publish any hate speech because news media should avoid causing harm and not give publicity to extremists. But that position is too sweeping. The premise that journalists should never cause harm is not credible. News media do harm every day, and a good deal of it is justifiable.19 The types of harm that journalists do include physical harm (my report on malpractice causes a doctor to commit suicide, or I fail to protect the identity of a source on biker gangs who is then attacked by bikers); financial harm (my report accuses a hamburger chain of unsanitary conditions, prompting lower sales); psychological harm (my images of a soldier killed in war cause pain for the soldier’s family); and social harm (my biased reporting about some vulnerable group leads to violence).
These forms of media harm are justified ethically if the reports are truthful and accurate and are part of journalism’s social role in democracy, e.g., to inform the public about the abuse of power or the reality of war. Also, it may be argued, in utilitarian fashion, that the harm that is done is less than the overall good of reporting stories of that type. In the same way, we justify harmful acts by other professionals, such as the judge who sends a criminal to prison for life, the policeman who physically overwhelms a shooter at a shopping mall, or the teacher who must give a student a fair but low grade on an important exam. However, even where journalists are justified in reporting, this does not give them the right to report in any manner. Journalism ethics requires journalists to minimize the harm of reporting, especially for children, innocent people, and vulnerable groups. In so many cases, journalism ethics is about how one reports.
So journalists can cause harm that is justifiable under certain conditions. But this reasoning does not justify journalists who themselves publish hate speech. The harm caused by maliciously attacking groups is not part of journalism’s role in society. But what about non-extreme journalists who cover hate speech? They are justified in reporting on hate speech if the speech is significant enough that it is the journalist’s duty to cover. However, journalists should cover the event in a manner that minimizes harms and gives the public a full and accurate idea of the meaning of the event. Journalists violate the duties of tolerance and of informing the public if they uncritically repeat what extreme groups say, and then compound the problem by giving them a prominence undeserved because of the sensational nature of their statements.
However, someone might raise a different objection. In covering the event are you not being manipulated or “used” by obnoxious groups? Are you not giving them “free” publicity? Are you complicit in the harm of publishing hateful views? Tough questions. The straightforward reply is that news media are “used” every day by groups for publicity and to promote their causes and interests. News media, in a manner of speaking, give “free” publicity to everyone they cover in the news, every day. But this does not by itself amount to improper manipulation if journalists can ethically justify shining the news spotlight on an event and they cover the event critically and contextually. If Canadian aboriginals stage a protest outside a meeting of the federal cabinet to pressure government to provide more assistance to poor members of their tribes, this event is staged for the media. Should the media feel manipulated? Should they ignore these “media attention seekers”? No, because the protest is a valid form of drawing public attention to a serious issue. Everything hangs on whether the event is socially and politically significant and should not be ignored. For example, news media should report that a leading politician spoke at a KKK rally; that a prominent right-wing evangelist has announced that his church will mount a campaign against gays and lesbians, who are, he says, perverted “devils” who should be denied certain rights, such as adopting a child; and that a far-right group received substantial popular support in a federal election.
Cover Everything, or Inform?
The opposite of the “don’t cover” argument is the “cover everything” counterargument that supports reporting on all, or almost all, controversial people and events, an argument popular among some journalists. At first, the argument strikes one as clear and plausible. The journalist’s job is (at least) to chronicle events in the world and then let the public draw their own conclusions. As a newsroom editor used to tell me: “Report and let the chips fall where they may.” To act otherwise is to restrict a free press and not inform the people.
How to respond to this argument? By pointing out that chronicling and informing are not the same thing. Also, given the power of the media, the decision on what to chronicle needs to be guided by ethical principles. Chronicling, in a journalistic context, means description, i.e., reporting what happens in front of you without much testing of the data, images, or statements provided. Chronicling resembles the stenographer in a court who records what is said and done without judgment. Informing, however, is judgmental. It is normative, selective, and tests the data. Journalists have a duty to inform according to the standards and guidelines of good journalism, that is, to inform in a manner that is truthful, accurate, and verifiable. Informing cannot ignore questions of journalism ethics: of truth or falsity, of the evidence for statements, of the motivation and credibility of sources, of the harmful consequences of publishing and the need to minimize harm, and of being accountable. Journalists are not informing the public if they echo the extremist’s remarks or cause people to believe in conspiracy theories or false depictions of issues. Journalists are not informing the public if they simply provide for public consumption an extremist’s view of some issue that departs from reality or ignores our best available knowledge. The duty to inform does not require journalists to cover something because someone may be interested in it or it may boost ratings. The impulse to report an event because it is dramatic, or audience-grabbing, is a commercial imperative.
Moreover, when it comes to speech about religious, ethnic, or other groups, there is no duty to repeat people’s calumny, slander, or libel; misrepresentations of minorities; or provocative statements calculated to make headlines or inflame tensions within communities. In fact, the duty is the opposite: to not simply repeat and circulate such materials. The duty to inform obliges journalists to consider the impact on the peace, tolerance, and civility of a democracy. Journalists have a prima facie duty to report on events in the world. But this duty is not absolute, or unrestrained, especially in a world where facts are manufactured and journalists are the target of the greatest manipulators on the planet. Hence we arrive at the following principle: Journalists should honor their duty to inform in a manner that is truthful, accurate, verifiable, and responsible in its depiction of groups so as to promote democratic tolerance.
So, honoring this general principle, how should journalists cover hate speech? What are the best practices and guidelines?
Guidelines for Hate Speech Reporting
When journalists decide to cover events or groups that use hate speech, they should consider the questions and recommended actions in the six areas below.
Six Areas for Hate Speech Reporting
Area 1: Who Is the Speaker or Actor?
Journalists should always consider the credibility of sources and spokespersons when reporting an event, even more so when they cover strong statements that affect relations among groups. Reports should include information on the speakers and their backgrounds:
Area 2: What Is the Aim of the Speech?
By considering the statements and context, seek to determine:
Area 3: Affiliation and Sources of Support
Journalists should report on the speaker’s group:
Area 4: Content of Statements and Coverage
What is the content and style of the speech?
Area 5: Testing of Facts and for Evidence
For stories on hate speech, journalists incur an extra duty to test dubious claims and question any allegedly “scientific” studies cited. Fact-check vigorously.
Area 6: Consequences for Political Culture
To promote a tolerant society, journalists should ask these questions:
Given these six areas, we can construct a review worksheet for coverage of hate speech:
Overall, the questions in the six areas convey a strong and unwavering message to journalists with regard to hate speech: If you must cover it, then you have a duty to do so critically, self-consciously, and contextually. Remember that you are not simply a chronicler or stenographer; you are a member of a democratic institution that informs critically and promotes tolerance so that a dialogic democracy can be sustained.
Hate Speech Reporting
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Review six areas: |
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1. Who is the speaker? |
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• Bio and affiliation of speaker |
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2. Aim of speech |
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• To stir trouble? |
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• To attack specific groups? |
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3. Affiliation |
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• History of speaker’s group |
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• Sources of financial and political support |
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4. Content of speech and coverage choices |
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• Levels of extremity |
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• Manner in which groups are maligned (beliefs, practices, moral character?) |
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• What to report directly? |
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• Prominence and proportionality |
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5. Testing of facts and for evidence |
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• Factual representation of others |
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• Validity of claimed empirical facts |
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• Factuality of portrayal of issues |
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• Check techniques of persuasion |
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6. Context, impact, and culture |
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• Harm to maligned groups? |
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• Harm to political culture and tolerance? |
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• Accountability and transparency for the report? |
Extreme Speech and Extreme Offense
As we approach the end of the chapter, I want to return to an issue mentioned earlier: the idea that news media may offend people. More needs to be said.
I have explained why Mill and Feinberg use a narrow definition of harm that does not regard trivial offenses as harms that should be legally prohibited. The trouble is that not all cases of being offended are trivial. People, and news media, can cause profound offense. Conduct that causes profound offense is more than a nuisance or a momentary attack on one’s sensibilities. It offends people’s most profound values, symbols, and sources of identity. Examples of profound offense include hateful speech about someone’s religious beliefs, race, gender, or sexual orientation. The Alberta paper caused profound offense. Profound offense occurs when a neo-Nazi group decides to march through a community of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.
Here is an anecdote from my family history. When my father converted to Catholicism to marry my Catholic mother, some of my father’s Protestant family and friends were upset. When my family visited their homes, they would mock, in front of us, Catholic beliefs and practices, such as the belief that the host becomes the body of Christ during mass, the confessionals, the Pope, the incense, and other rituals. My family stopped visiting these people. It created a lasting rift between families. My parents were profoundly offended. Something similar happens when, today, media commentators mock Muslim beliefs and practices. The offense is so personal that some people believe it should be classified as a serious harm, in Mill’s sense, and they would like to see legal penalties for this class of offense.
My view is that profound offense can be a form of extreme speech that rises to the level of harm. It is a moral wrong to be criticized. Moreover, some acts of profound offense, such as the Alberta newspaper’s actions, are socially alienating forms of hate speech. Not only do they cause harm, but society has the right to consider legally restraining such conduct. However, I do insist that only the most egregious forms of profound offense be considered as harms requiring legal remedy. In a free society, we want to leave plenty of room for robust, strong, and even insulting criticism of beliefs and practices. There should be a large zone in the public sphere where people can disagree strenuously about ideas, beliefs, and practices without descending into attacks on the integrity, intelligence, or moral character of the people with whom we disagree. If broad laws restricting criticism of beliefs were instituted, journalists and citizens would be tightly confined in what they could say or publish about controversial issues. Coverage would be confined to a rather small and safe zone of inoffensive stories. But I draw the line where the debate turns into sustained and virulent hate speech, especially where the groups attacked are vulnerable. In such cases, I favor the application of hate speech laws, although I would hope other measures, such as education, moral suasion, ethical condemnation, and dialogue across divides, might address the problem.
Discussion of provocative stories that deeply offend would not be complete unless some reference was made to the famous publication of cartoons of Mohammed by a Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten. Although it occurred over a decade ago, it still is a good test for a theory of profoundly offensive media.
On September 30, 2005, the paper published twelve editorial cartoons, some of which depicted the Islamic prophet. The newspaper announced that this publication was an attempt to test the limits of free speech in Denmark. The cartoons were reprinted in newspapers in more than fifty other countries. The visual depiction of Mohammed—at times seemingly as a terrorist—was profoundly offensive to Muslims and sparked protests and violence.
The cartoons were not consistent with journalism ethics. They were legally permissible but ethically wrong. They were irresponsible. The publication amounted to unjustified profound offense. If news media wish to explore limits of free speech involving a plurality of groups with different views, the ethical approach is to foster frank but respectful dialogue, not to prompt religious anger. This was the point that Locke and the other Enlightenment writers insisted on, knowing how religious disagreement can turn violent. The publication of the cartoons was almost certain to provoke protest and violent reactions. Some journalists have said the offended Muslims failed to see that the cartoons contained elements of social humor or satire. But it is unreasonable to expect that many Muslims would pick up on these nuances. Nor are these nuances relevant to the ethical analysis. What is relevant is that the publication of the cartoons represented the equivalent of sticking a finger in someone’s eye to see if they recoil in pain and anger.
The cartoons were a reckless and clumsy attempt to stir up debate. It downplayed (or ignored) the consequences of publication and made no attempt to minimize harm. The cartoons did not attempt to promote deliberation on cultural differences and free speech. If the paper wanted to test views or start a dialogue, almost any other method would have been better than publishing the cartoons. It could have published a series of stories presenting views from the main parties to the problem, accompanied by informed analysis of Islam and its views on free speech. Instead, it resorted to images that would only increase fears and social tensions. Nothing justified the violent reaction to the cartoons; but neither is the publication of the cartoons an example of responsible journalism. Lastly, other news organizations were under no ethical obligation to reprint the cartoons. News organizations had a right to come to the legal defense of the Danish paper and to argue against censorship. But they were not compelled to republish the cartoons if they regarded them as ethically questionable material.
Global Offense and Attention-Seekers
Consider another type of case: profound offense generated by someone who seeks media attention.
In the summer of 2010, the minister of a small Florida church warned that his church members would burn copies of the Koran as America approached the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Rev. Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center announced in July 2010 that the burnings would proclaim the evil of Islam. By August the pastor bathed in a global media spotlight. His unholy plan was top of the news around the world, sparking riots and prompting widespread criticism. On one day alone in late August, Jones’s blatant media manipulation garnered front-page coverage in more than fifty U.S. daily papers.
The questions asked repeatedly on media programs were: How did this little-known pastor get so much news coverage? Should the media have given him a global platform for his questionable views and potentially harmful actions? From the view of media ethics, the question is: What guidelines can help newsrooms respond responsibly to a Terry Jones? How should journalists deal with media attention-seekers?
In the Jones story, the question of responsible news selection involved two different time periods: in the summer, when the plan was first announced, and in late August, when the story had gone viral. In the early weeks, newsrooms should have ignored Jones’s plan. There was no justification for selecting Jones’s announcement as an important news story. At the very most, the announcement merited an initial item on the controversial pastor from Gainesville, Florida.
What should responsible editors do when the media system turns the story into an ugly global incident, with the news story starting to cause riots in many countries? Caught inside a media maelstrom, responsible editors may feel they cannot completely ignore the story. There are no easy answers. But media ethics does counsel that news organizations should minimize harm and exert their editorial independence by not playing media games such as that initiated by Jones.
Here are guidelines on how to exert that editorial independence:
Democracy needs intelligent news selection: A democracy whose media is distracted by sensational events is headed for trouble. A news media that does not—or will not—distinguish between trivial and essential news, or between genuine newsmakers and media manipulators, creates a society that is underinformed on the crucial issues that define its future. It is to embrace the “cover all” argument and report on whatever pleases the audience or the whims of the journalists. Journalists should base their news selection on a sober assessment of what really is important—developments in the political, economic, legal, and social arenas of the body politic. When a Terry Jones gets too much air time, or when an actor’s latest personal faux pas trends on Twitter—and the blogosphere is abuzz—this is exactly the time when journalists must push back in the opposite direction. They must question a news selection that feeds this media circus. Media should cover pop culture and the merely novel or amusing, but the media’s news selection should not be hostage to manipulators or entertainment values.
Go hard on manipulators: News selection should be guided by who is seeking media attention and why. Jones guessed correctly that a book burning would get attention. He loved appearing before the cameras and toying with reporters. Editors have every right to work against a manipulator’s media strategy by providing critical coverage. It is not the job of journalists to provide unthinking coverage of events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and cause harm.
Swim against the flow by doing good journalism: Even if a story is too big to ignore, journalists and newsrooms are not helpless victims of a faceless media world. When confronted by a Terry Jones, they can avoid the drama or practice proportionality, i.e., reduce the quantity of coverage and reduce the prominence of the story. For example, in the lead-up to September 11, the Associated Press announced that it would reduce the number of stories it would do on the Jones affair and would not distribute images or audio that showed Korans being burned.
Relentlessly provide context: Widen the story by avoiding a narrow focus on the event in question. For example, in the case of a Terry Jones, media should not follow his every move or gather outside his church. Media need to explain who the provocateur is. In the case of Jones, this meant noting the small size of his following. It meant noting Jones’s previous attempts to get media attention and questioning whether his views are affirmed by many Americans. On a number of days, The New York Times reduced the impact of the Jones story by folding the event into larger explanatory stories of how Americans were approaching the 9/11 anniversary.
Be a catalyst for informed discussion: When manipulators arise, journalists can water down their impact by expanding and deepening the sources of the story. In the case of Jones, some news media included other voices, such as moderate Muslim leaders and interfaith associations that were rallying against Jones. Use the moment to bring intolerant views about Islam out into the open for rigorous review. Rather than try to pretend that people like Jones don’t exist, use this shabby affair as an opportunity to spark a more reasoned and intelligent discussion of religion. Meet intolerant, uninformed speech with tolerant, informed speech. Here, the “more speech” strategy can help.
Let us fast-forward from Reverend Jones to President Trump communicating his thoughts and policy decisions on Twitter and other social media. Trump, like Jones, wants (and perhaps craves) media attention, despite his harsh criticism of the media.
Like Jones, Trump hopes to manipulate not only public opinion but the mainstream news media. Trump knows that, because he is president, the mainstream media will not ignore his remarks on social media. And he knows that by constantly creating controversy and chaos through strong statements and unpredictable decisions, he will control much of the news agenda each day.
In terms of numbers, the strategy appears to have worked well. His Twitter feed is read by millions. Moreover, speaking through social media is less risky than defending one’s views in situations where journalists can ask tough questions, such as at news conferences.
This leadership-through-Twitter strategy is an authoritarian, top-down method for telling the masses what you think. It presumes, dogmatically, that one already knows the answers. Trump’s leadership-through-Twitter uses extreme speech to get attention, simplify issues, and fire up his right-wing political base. The president can portray issues and groups in racist, near-racist, and stereotypical terms. He can lie, exaggerate, and not care about the truth—all that matters is that the speech in question have the intended political effect. When maligned groups respond negatively, the president dismisses their views as fake news.
Therefore, news media should respond to this strategy, exerting their editorial independence. Since a president’s public assertions cannot be ignored easily, what can the media do? Journalists can combine my recommendations on combating hate speech and media attention-seekers, as follows:
1. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin Books, 1968), chapter 15, 210–211.
2. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 124.
3. Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 1.
4. Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, 5.
5. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 145.
6. Thomas Jefferson popularized the phrase, but English theologian Richard Hooker used the term in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity of 1594, a founding document of Anglicism and a critique of Puritanism. Hooker opposed a wall.
7. See Waldron’s account, The Harm of Hate Speech, 204–205.
8. See the League’s report, “New White Supremist Tactic: Banners of Hate,” March 14, 2018, accessed March 27, 2018, https://www.adl.org/blog/new-white-supremacist-tactic-banners-of-hate.
9. Mill speaks approvingly of forms of societies as “experiments in living” in On Liberty and the Subjection of Women (London: Penguin Classics, 2006), 65.
10. Author Anthony Lewis made the same mistake when he called his otherwise erudite book in 2007 Freedom for the Thought That We Hate. It is not the thought that we hate so much as the harmful consequences of hate speech.
11. See Mill, On Liberty; and Joel Feinberg, Offence to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
12. Voltaire supported the freedom to publish, but this line was written in 1906 by Evelyn Beatrice Hall (pseud. S. G. Tallentyre) in the biography The Friends of Voltaire. The author did not attribute the words to Voltaire. She used it to sum up Voltaire’s attitude on free speech.
13. Cited in Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, 277.
14. Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 15, 210.
15. Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, 220.
16. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 116.
17. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 123.
18. Luke 14:23, in the King James Version of the Bible, says: “And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” Locke’s Letter was composed in about 1667 but was not published for political reasons until 1689. Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary of 1697, a huge and incredible collection of topics from skepticism to obscenity, made Bayle one of the most widely read philosophers of his era. See Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections, trans. Richard Popkin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1991).
19. For an extended treatment of media harm, see my Ethics and the Media: An Introduction (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), chapter 5, 161–206.