CB284414@ohio.edu
As journalists we need to ask ourselves do we take hate crimes seriously enough? Do we portray white supremacists and home-grown terrorists accurately? The answers don't come easy and when we reflect, it seems that in many cases we have failed to reach an ethical standard to adhere to.
We can see that not enough attention has been given to hate crimes in regards to documenting the amount and even what exactly a hate crime is. In some states a crime can be considered a hate crime if it are against religion, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, and even disability as is the case with Hawaii and California. Not all states are this progressive with what they will call a hate crime. Ohio, South Dakota and Idaho are examples of states who only say hate crimes are based around religion and ethnicity. At least it's better than Arkansas, which does not have a hate crime law, though there have been attempts to incorporate one. When it comes to documenting hate crimes we are struggling. ProPublica reports that "The FBI counts 6,121 hate crimes 2016, and the BJS [Bureau of Justice Statistics] estimates 250,00 hate crimes a year". There is always an argument saying one side is more accurate than the other, but I think what should really be taken away from these statistics is that we as a national community really have no idea how many hate crimes happen per year. I believe it is imperative that we make the definition of hate crime to expand the truth of who can be affected by one.
What can we do as journalists? To begin, we need to stop being afraid of being the opposite of these white supremacists and terrorists. We can't continue trying to humanize them because we already know that they're human, and still capable of inflicting pain on other humans. Quartz's article about the New York Times portrayal of White Nationalist Tony Hovater shows what happens when a publication misses the mark with their rhetoric about a White Supremacist. Hovater was the co-founder of an extremist party that marched on Charlottesville, you know, the ones seen putting tiki torches out of style forever. This man is known for rallying a group that seeks to place people of color in separate housing after creating an "ethnostate". The New York Times piece stated earlier decided to talk about Hovater's wedding registry, his love for NPR, and even his cats.
It seems to me that we can do better as journalists. That we could dedicate time and effort into reporting these groups and their actions correctly and avoid doing their PR for them. A Poynter article written by Al Tompkins and Kelly McBride discusses areas of improvement for journalists. One of these areas is language, the articles states that "precision is critical" and that we should describe what protesters are doing an not by titles that may have an adverse effect on how they are viewed. Another area is the use of image and video which is covered in the article by talking about when it is appropriate to air the uncut audio of a riot and to choose images that help bring context and accurately portray a situation regarding these types of groups.
If journalists can band together and help communities understand hate crimes and their effect while accurately portraying the people involved, than I believe that we will see a ripple effect that begins to change the very essence of what it means to cover these hard situations.
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