With the advertising slide forcing media organizations to overhaul their news gathering operations (maybe youâve heard? newspapers are closing), youâd have to be crazy to think newspapers and television networks are being told to invest in another costly reporting endeavor. But are you not crazy, and this is happening anyway. Someone had the bright idea to suggest the media create an entire beat out of ⌠hate. Yup, hate, that thing that causes so much violence in the world. It could be its own newspaper section!
Charles Davis, who teaches at the University of Missouriâs journalism school and is executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, says ever since Barack Obama went to the White House, hate âis back with a vengeance.â As if it ever went anywhere!
But we hear what Davis is saying. If the past few weeks are any indication, Nazism and monkey jokes are reasonable punchlines these days. And Davis, as a j-school prof would suggest, thinks the whole phenomenon should be reasonably covered as its own meme.
As a near-absolutist First Amendment advocate, my prescription for hate speech is always more speech: Give the bigot a microphone as big as the hatred, I say, and watch as the marketplace of ideas works its magic.
Perhaps thatâs why I worry, as I watch an emboldened mob grow more irresponsible with each passing day, that the mainstream media fails to give hate the coverage it deserves today.
My proposition is simple: Major news organizations need to cover hate the way they once did â as a standalone beat.
I was reminded of the way the news media once treated old-fashioned hate the other day while reading a PBS discussion of a fabulous book, âThe Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.â The Race Beat, co-authored by Hank Klibanoff and Gene Roberts, documents the coverage of the civil rights movement in the South and chronicles in chilling detail what we now recall was a watershed in the treatment of hate as, well, morally repugnant behavior that we as a nation just werenât going to stand for.
This could be interesting. Particularly because the homos are lobbying their legislators to pass hate crimes legislation that protects include LGBTs. Particularly because anti-gay violence in schools is so. hot. right. now. Particularly because of Glenn Beck.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Now, are hate stories going to hit the New York Times front page and jump to, uh, section H13? Not in the near future. But we like this idea of news organizations paying attention to this destructive force. Cable nets like CNN and MSNBC have lots of programming hours to fill, and certainly some of them could be turned over to admonishing hate groups.
The only problem we see in all this? Most hate groups are also religious institutions. And the media do a pretty terrible job of covering that beat already.
Chance
“Most hate groups are also religious institutions. And the media do a pretty terrible job of covering that beat already.”
Thank you! Exactly right!
Brian
RELIGION = HATE
ALL RELIGIONS.
edgyguy1426
we always get lumped in with religions but I’d like to think of mine as more of a philosophy.
hyhybt
@Brian: YOu seem to have an ample supply of hate yourself đ
M Shane
No. 4 ¡ hyhybt; From my experience, most gay people have more than enough reason to be rageful at this Society; Either you live in an Ivory tower all your life or , not feeling hateful, we repress what we feeland turn the feelings inward.
Bush harnessed peoples fear and hate to his & friends profit, getting everyone to fear and hate foreigners for Corporate profit.
Now , singe that turns sour people put it on fags, socialists,progressives and our ilk.
The mentality is a lot like Pre WW2 Nazi popularized hate. Bush& the Neocons made hating a national pastime. We have every reason to be on our guard.
adolf
@M shane
bush didnt start this national past time of hate. and he def was not the first one to turn it into profit, cuban missile crises, bomb shelters spring to mind. and before that we can list it
blacks
Japanese (put into interment camps in WW2)
irish
communist
mexican immigrants
etc
etc
etc
this list could go on for miles.
bystander
While I am sure hate groups have been more active since the election, I think its a gross mis-characterization to say that the mainstream opposition to Obama is hateful.
When did it become ok to equate disagreement with hate? Bush didn’t in any way advocate hate towards anyone, quite the opposite i think. What he did do is advocate policies with which many of us disagree. That’s a disagreement not hate on one side. Bad policy is often a function not of hate but of ignorance.
Any time spent wallowing in defeat and demonizing people who have opposing views is wasted time. There are plenty of excellent arguments to be made for gay marriage, but attacking people who oppose it as hateful bigots en mass is unproductive and only turns people off.
alicia banks
bush was referred to as hitler for 8 yrs
obama is gwb 2.0
pbama has earned the duplicate slur due to his duplicate actions as the new blackish face of the new world order
so be it
see much more on obama as hitler at
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