Claire Schiopota
cs123719@ohio.edu
In the age of Black Lives Matter and white supremacy, current news outlets have had to take a special look into how they cover hate crimes. Finding a balance between reporting on these issues without giving controversy a platform to thrive on comes with experience over time. Today, many reporters struggle with this concept.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of hate crime victims don't file reports to the police (What We Discovered During a Year of Documenting Hate — ProPublica). Last year almost 90% of local law enforcement agencies reported having zero hate crimes in their communities. Ultimately, this all shows that hate crimes already lack accurate coverage. The media must pay extra attention to the actions they take with this in mind.
While there are many things in journalism that must be closely payed attention to, there must be a special emphasis on journalism rules when reporting on hate crimes.
The language must be extremely precise as to not sway the audience to one side or another. The Poynter (How journalists should handle racist words, images and violence in Charlottesville – Poynter) said, "Be wary of subjective adjectives and unclear labels, like far-right or alt-right. Instead, describe what protestors were doing, what they were saying and what they were demanding. Be precise. It is not enough to simply call the marchers White nationalists." Journalists have often found themselves caught up in corrections for incorrectly naming or grouping individuals.
Every photo and video used in association with the story also must be given for context for use. The Poynter said, "It may be tempting to omit from coverage instances of violence committed by counter-protesters because their side is standing against racism, but video shows violence from both camps. It's not always clear who is on what side. Use captions and narration to make it clear." Both sides of the story needs to be told and accurately represented. Just like journalists need to watch the words they use, they also need to watch the images and videos they show. It carries just as much weight, if not more.
When we report on hate crime, we always run the chance of giving a platform for white supremacy and other controversial perspectives. There always may people who had never heard of these issues until we report on them, but if we inform our audiences accurately and effectively, we did the best we can to avoid this problem.
As a student journalist, I haven't had many opportunities to cover hate crimes, but it's important for me to inform myself now before I have to do so in my future, as I'm sure I will have to.
Hi Claire! I thoroughly enjoyed your take on how hate crimes and their coverage in the media. I agree that covering these situations require careful and precise language to provide accurate information that doesn't sway the audience into a certain opinion. I think the most important thing that we can do as student journalists is to be open-minded and to be open to criticism. It it through the mistakes we make that we ultimately learn, but educating ourselves early in our career is exactly how we can prepare ourselves.
ReplyDeleteClaire, I really liked your post. I do think hate crimes are sensitive topics that become tricky to report on. I think constantly educating ourselves and learning from our mistakes and not repeating them is the best way to handle these situations. Minimizing harm is also very important to keep in mind with these but also making sure that we get out the truthful information to inform the public.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post, Claire. I agree with you on the fact that hate crimes do take a lot of focus and specific language when reporting on them because they are such a sensitive topic. I believe that education ourselves on best practices, and learning from past mistakes made my yourself or other reporters is the easiest way to ensure that you are appropriately addressing the situation to the public.
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