‘Shine
a light’on hate groups, speaker says
By Dorie Turner, editor,
The Daily Beacon
When hate crimes occur in
a community, it seems appropriate for the media to ignore them to prevent
fueling the criminal’s fire. But according to Mark Potok from the Southern
Poverty Law Center, addressing the issue on both the news and editorial
pages is the best way for the media to deal with hate crimes.
“It’s better to shine a light on these groups and then criticize them
on the editorial page instead of screaming ‘racist!’ and ignoring them,”
Potok said.
Potok’s work with the SPLC as a First Amendment advocate — and what he
calls an “absolutist”— has put him in more than a few uncomfortable and
threatening situations with hate groups. His strategy is to allow the
groups to say and do whatever they want, but to keep them within the realm
of the law and to criticize them heavily in public forums.
Despite the pain hate groups and hate speech cause a community, protecting
the First Amendment is important, Potok said.
Paul McMasters, the ombudsman for the Freedom Forum, agrees. “The First
Amendment wasn’t drawn to protect the speech that we like and can live
with. It was protects the speech on the fringe,” he said. Both say that
by addressing hate crimes, the media can help communities begin the healing
process. Ignoring the crimes only perpetuates the problem. And encouraging
selective ignorance, Potok said, could result in further hate crimes.
“Another reason not to suppress this kind of speech is because the speech
is real,” he said. “It happens.”
Potok mentioned the Jasper, Texas, case where a group of white males dragged
a black male chained to the back of their pickup truck, killing him and
shocking the nation. But the media, who had difficulty knowing exactly
how to handle the situation, covered the event despite the public outcry
against publishing the murder.
“Jasper used the murder of James Bird Jr. to create a dialogue that had
never existed before,” Potok said. “These incidents are very often a catalyst
to do something about the hate.”
Questions from the audience turned to covering hate crimes on college
campuses because quite a few of the audience members had questions about
how to deal with hate in an intellectual environment like a university.
McMasters said the student newspaper aspect of hate-crime reporting can
play a vital role on campus.
“Students on college campuses are brought to the realization of these
problems by the student newspapers. They need to cover the issue and then
give it context editorially,” he said. “The student media can play a healing
role on campuses by covering hate crimes and bringing them to light.”
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