Transcripts For CSPAN Society Of Professional Journalists - Covering Hate 20171223

Times, huffington post, and Associated Press talk about the challenges of covering hate groups on College Campuses. They met for a discussion hosted by the society of professional journalists. It is just under two hours. Welcome. We have a lot to cover. We will allow time for questions at the end. Hashtag. I am your moderator alex , im the president elect of the society of professional journalists. Event withsting this the cuny graduate school of journalism. We have with us today, to my right marc lacey, the National News editor of the New York Times. A dozensponsible for bureaus and a team of new yorkbased correspondence. He also leads race related the times coverage of race related issues. Before that he was a correspondent and africa and latin america. Sitting next to him as the director of interactive journalism at the cuny graduate school of journalism. He began his career at the new a breaking news writer and editor. Then we happily ryland we rowl leave ryland lee who has served as lead counsel in federal federal First Amendment cases. Lenz, aher we have ryan Senior Investigative writer at the Southern Poverty Law Center intelligence project. He has traveled the country covering the growth of extremism. Before that he was a regional correspondent and in a rack war correspondent for the associated rest. Finally we have jessica schulberg, a reporter who covers Foreign Policy and National Security for the huffington post. She has written about this topic recently. Lets start with two lightning rounds. I will ask questions and we will go down the row and all of you can answer the same question. Beginning with the importance of terminology. Tell us what guidance and standards your organizations have an potentially loaded terms like altright plastic terrorist domestic terrorist. I spend my time as the National Editor talking to reporters about which terms to use or talking to readers who want to take issue with our use of various terms. We have none of these terms that are banned by the New York Times. Issued interesting guidance that says that altright should not be used except in quotation marks. We do use altright, but our standards editor has said we should attempt to define the term what we are talking about if we do use it. We use white supremacist, white nationalists, domestic terrorism , labeling something terrorism is another big challenge. Legal terms, are all of these are legal terms that really require they are essentially codified in our legal system. What i or the New York Times decide something is doesnt necessarily matter to the legal system. Another big challenge, we tend not to be out front declaring something an act of domestic terrorism and we tend to be waiting for the authorities to call it that. But i dont profess that the New York Times has the right formula. These are terms, especially altright, that none of us even year. Ard of last it did not exist in our vernacular. Media andes takes the the New York Times some time to come up with a definitive rule. I will pass it on. Index it is ae little different. We are not necessarily writing articles or stories about hate crimes or hate incidents. We are just compiling and aggregating information from other news sources and making it easy to find based on who was the victim, what their religion was, ethnicity, what kind of work they did, etc. Is,terms we wrestled with are we really just focused on hate crimes or hate incidents in general . That is something im sure you will be talking more about. Hate crime, as defined by legal authorities or police authorities, involves someone being attacked, hurt, and there being bias involved. Or if someone pots property is s property iseone damaged and there is bias. There is a fine line between crime and somebody calling someone a name. Is that a crime or is that free speech . We have to weigh that issue more closely. I am a lawyer, i am the token lawyer on the panel. Alex, you should never have more than one allowed to speak. Mine does not come from a journalism point of view, more a Public Education and civil liberty viewpoint. I think our caution is about using words that are often proxies for defining a category of speech that results in fewer liberties for those people. Some of these have illegal meetings and some of them dont. The tack that have legal meaning would be terrorism and hate crime. Those have legal meaning. If you commit an act of terror as defined by the lock you will get increased penalties, the same for Something Like a hate crime. From our work in National Security we know these labels are often applied to groups and very bad things flow from that. Environmental terrorist is the new term for environmental protesters. We work hard to watch those linguistics. Say it,an it, we can but not to use them lightly. Thatwo you will hear more dont have that same legal meaning are hate speech and hate group. Hate speech has no legal meaning. See peopleequently online saying hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. That is categorically incorrect. It is not true here in america. For that reason, as a lawyer i tend to avoid that phrase. Not because i dont believe that some speech is hateful, but simply because creating that category is less helpful from a legal standpoint because it has no meaning. I do think it is frequently molded, just like hate groups, by people in power. You will hear folks with lots of power in the department of Homeland Security refer to black lives matter as a hate group. That is objectively false from my point of view, but when you have that type of language that does not have a legal meeting, it allows people to abuse the language. Those are the things i tend to look at. Hate groups, hate crimes, altright, domestic terrorism, all of these terms are incredibly important right now. Fact, this ishe an extension of a conversation we started in anaheim regarding the importance of these terms. I work for the Southern Poverty Law Center which tracks hate groups, to find these organizations, and tries to understand the reach, scope, and depth of how deeply seated these ideologies become. Conceptt is not a new and ideology. It is just a new term for an old idea. White nationalism is the same as what the altright seems to a spouse, although the altright encompasses a whole bunch of different ideologies. It is important to remember why these terms are important area important. Years, better part of 60 since the civil rights movement, these are ideologies that have been focused on reasserting themselves in the mainstream. To get back into the house of power. To policy that reflects their interests. We have seen, or the course of two decades, efforts on the hardest of those all be part of those who espouse those ideologies to hide what they are about. They dont want to the klansmen or neonazis, they dont want to be known as white nationalists. I want to be known as the altright. Another conservative perspective and america, which is false and uphold it and how they are trying to make us believe this. Abbhorrentorrid and they are trying to make us believe this. There is no means in federal code to process a domestic terrorist. A federal charge exists only to charge those from foreign countries. Terrorism exists in federal code but only as a definition. You cannot be charge with it. What we are looking at is a complex system of ways to talk about something or to not talk about it. We know repeatedly that the federal government, we have repeated instances of the federal government and the department of justice choosing not to prosecute or even refer to ask of terrorism by becauseon as terrorists they were not perpetrated by someone who is black or brown. It becomes incredibly important right now to talk about these terms, to understand what they mean, because if we dont know what they mean or why they are being used your walking into a dark room blind. Also mark was saying, we have paid a lot of attention to the Ap Guidelines which say that you should stay away from the term altright, because it does not mean anything, it is a euphemism. We will use it if we are trying to explain who these people are, they identify as members of the altright, and what that means. Try not tot part, we let those people framed the narrative of the debate. We try not to let them decide what language they are described as. Them asto describe accurately as possible and as directly as possible. You have some people in the atright who say i am not White Supremacists, i dont think that white people are better than black people, i am just out of my european heritage and i want to exist in a nation with no black people. Right, youl that all can call that white nationalism, but in reality, anyone who thinks that line of logic is saying that white people are better than black people and are better than anyone else, so we call it White Supremacy. Every time i write a story where it says white supremacist i get so many correction emails. People send me Death Threats and they are note you, white supremacist because they are proud of where they came from. I dont mean to say that we take this lightly. We have had a lot of debates, we going tout when it is far and when it is losing its meaning. We do think about these things very seriously. I think at some point, if you look back at how the media started covering this one is all started becoming a big thing during the election, there was a lot of timid miss timidness to call it what it was. It was a very it is about time that we call things what they are. Jessica, you did a good job of setting up the next question. First, i want to follow on to something that ryan said about anaheim. Panel a very similar which i moderated at the National Society of professional Journalism Convention in anaheim. Amazingly, so much has happened since then, we can have an entirely different discussion with all new questions. This is just such a fastmoving topic. Second lightning round question. Some reporters have been assaulted while covering these incidents. People in some protests or counter protests have been too. I dont phrase the question in that way it is because covering these events can have a Chilling Effect. With that said, your vested by three reporters in the field or anyone knew who is just thinking or oneovering extremism of these rallies for the first time . Ryan, you are the pro ryan, there is nothing more dangerous than being a war correspondent. Is there anything you learned in iraq that helps you . Have the unique distinction as being the only person who exclusively covers hate and extremism. For sevenered it years. My name and photograph and address has been posted on god knows how many racist forums as have pictures of my parents and their home address. The number of emails, male threats i have gotten over the course of the years. Ande are cameras on my Home Security patrols and pass every 15 minutes. It is a very serious, dangerous thing to cover. You would not think it would be in a country like this, we are the United States of america, we are not wartorn. Ostensibly. Streets are the not fraught with armed bands of people coming out to kill you. But, the preparations that journalists need to take in covering this are very real. For a number of reasons. What we see now is manifesting as questions about the legitimacy of journalism. Fake news, youre not trying to represent you are trying to i have been trying to do this for seven years and ive sat down with extremist who will not let the Assault Rifle fall from to dolap if i refuse something. I have gone through endless rounds of negotiations to get to talk to someone because they think i am working for some secret jewish cabal trying to undermine them. It goes from the crazy to the silly and insane. The advice i would give anyone who is wanting to cover this is to take the precautions necessary as you would with any interview. Know what you are walking into, know who you are talking to, anticipate what they are most , andy to say to you furthermore, dont walk into a situation where you dont understand what you are walking into. Because it is incredibly important that we cover this. It is incredibly important that we talk to these people. What is happening politically in the country right now is this polarization where people are not willing to talk to each other about their ideas. Way, the bestst antiseptic for the rise of hate and intolerance is to talk about it. To make sure people know who espouses it, who is pushing it, find out what they believe and why. Historically, this was the best model to sort of address the rise of hate and extremism. When people are identified as a nazi or white nationalists, or extremist of any variety, they would generally face pressure from their social group. Do you really believe this . In the posttrumped era this is distinct we different. Nationalists believe they have an advocate in the federal government, and they do. White nationalists also believe that they are on the right side of history right now. Something i disagree with. Racist,ell every extremist, or radical. You and i will disagree, we do not see i to i on pretty much anything. That does not mean we cannot talk or have our perspectives exist in the same environment. I disagree with you completely and i will make you the world knows i disagree, but there is no reason you cant talk to me. And they do talk to me. Lets go back to you marc. Tell us what the you New York Times rides guys reporters with. Reportersre we send overseas we sent them to a hostile environment training. The one we typically use is taught by a former british marine. It is an intense thing, i went through it. Youre are not supposed to tell people what you went through so that you will be surprised when you go through it one day. We should start sending National Correspondents to hostile environment courses. It is dangerous out there on the streets covering these events, and reporters do need to be smart and take precautions. Tear gas is now a norm. People are brawling. It is unclear which side of the. Uthority is safer we basically tell people how to deal with if you are teargasse and to always have an escape route. I will never forsake corresponded to cover the stories. I always ask for i will never force a correspondent to cover the story. I always ask for volunteers. It is very dangerous. I can address more of the student perspective. We areurnalism school, trading student to report on this accurately and safely. , aserms of the hate index we compile this information, we publish within a month of the election in 2016. We talked our students about what kind of information they have about their selves on social media. Can people figure out where you live based on that, because you will be trolled. Within minutes of our site going live, it did go down and we kept having to add more servers and add more security. That was something that we talked about. We had to address that. Some of our students have children as well. Figure out where your kids go to school based on some of the social media posts . They are not going to war, they are taking International Reporting classes where they are trained or taught some of the things you are talking about. Not having british marines involved, but they are learning some of that. In this case, it was very important for us to make sure their social Media Presence was fairly clean so people cannot figure out where they lived. Say, i cannoty offer safety tips as i am not a reporter, but i would say that the safety considerations that accompany these High Pressure cooker events are standing just changing the nature of legal observing are changing the nature of legal observing. The aclu feels similarly about volunteers. We worry if we are going to put younger staff in harms way. Withe seeing that reaction a lot of groups calling for counter protests at a different place or a little later. With the university of florida, Richard Spencer visit this week. The president of uf said he told everyone to skip this. If you deprive it of oxygen it does not become a pressure cooker. It is changing the media environment. In addition to putting additional pressure on reporters. Been talkingso about doing some hostile environment training before we send reporters out to these protests. So far, it has been more of an ad hoc process. We have reporters bring a bandanna, some eyewash, and have an escape route. We have reporters go in pairs. It helps from a reporting standpoint. One person is listening to the main speech and somebody is reflecting on the crowd. It is good to have a body on hand nearby. There are a lot of dangers online. You have to be careful about your social Media Presence. Dont put your cell phone in your gmail signature, that is something i used to do. Signature, that is something that i used to do. You also have to learn how to sift through crazy, angry people on the internet. If you allow yourself to be consumed by every death threat that comes your way it can be paralyzing and can be terrifying. There are a lot of angry people on the internet who wont follow through on anything. Sometimes, if i have the energy im sorryand say you dont agree with me. 50 of the time when they realize you are a real person they apologize and built threaten to kill you. That is not to diminish the real threats. The three people arrested in gainesville who fired the shot toward the crowd of protesters, two of them were convicted felons. One of them was charged with aggravated assault at night point. Sorry aggravated kidnapping at knife point. It is no surprise that some of these people have a violent history. You do have to take that into consideration. You also have to keep yourself sane. This question is for ryan. I want to talk about the evolution of those crews. We talked about this at the last meeting in anaheim. They tend to get lumped together in the press, but over the years they have not liked each other that much. Takeeriously should we these groups . That is a really difficult question to answer. We start with what lets start with what unite the was. It was ostensibly the first major effort on the parts of the leaders of a bunch of disparate ideologies to present a unified front. To say that, now that we have passed through this election and is making aalism serious effort to become the mainstream, lets bring all of these disparate ideologies together, lets show the world that we are not a bunch of malignant contrarians and nihilists, lets show the world that we believe in something. , iont think its ironic think the way you write ended was unite the right and it was symbolic of what these ideologies will cause if they come together. These are not people who have called ideas. These are people these are not people who have calm ideas. Me to talk about is how, through the years, these ,roups have fragmented thought, disagreed, and reappeared as something new. We have seen the discord that exists within these groups from our own investigations and what we have seen in the aftermath of an event. There has been, for the better part of 60 years, a major effort itm his ideologies, whether is people wanting a southern secession, at no states tes, or, heaven for bit, a second holocaust. In the era of trump, there is a concerted effort on the part of the thought eaters leaders in this movement to bring everything together, to low longer no longer make enemies and gain political power at a time they believe they will get it. What about antifa . Centerthern poverty law does the summer Poverty Law Center Southern Poverty Law Center classify them as a hate group . We do not. Hate groups by definition are those that defame, bella by or on an groups of people muted characteristics, protected things about them. Whether it is religion, sexual orientation. The antifa movements filing an condemnable on that front. This violence is despicable, but they do not malign someone based on a protected characteristic. They are attacking people based on a political perspective which is different from hate and extremism, which is different from what i hate group is. What they are bringing to the streets is no doubt criminal, but it does not fall in the definition of a hate group. I would love to follow into what ryan is saying about how these groups are thought leaders trying to bring people together. It may be entirely from my own perspective as a freespeech attorney, but i see two strains of branding. Slightly less acceptable version of the right. The other is that we are the freespeech warriors and victims of censorship of prose. Of censorship approach. That is broader and includes people i would think of as more gardenvariety conservatives like a pension hero or livered ben shaprioiro shapiro or libertarians. I think this is the challenge. What we have here in the immediate aftermath of trumps election, every white nationalists in the world jumped out and said this is me and i believe i am better. The reality is, what they noticed after berkeley. If you dont recall, there were some serious protests in berkeley that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in Property Damage and lead to some very serious injuries and problems for the community. What the altright figured out after berkeley was that they were the persecuted. If they embraced the confrontation that they were facing, and somehow facilitated the confrontation, they can further cast about this narrative of being victims. In so doing, they could suddenly say we are not only victims, but you are violating our Constitutional Rights under the First Amendment. What they continue with that, they could say we are thought criminals. Once they could start to say that they are thought criminals, that becomes something they can market and sell and appeal to young people who are in college. Despite my understanding of what it was like to be in college 20 years ago, and how this counterculture of being a thought criminal or being outside the norm of what is accepted is appealing. They have managed to continue to hold these rallies. We are going to discuss those issues on the intersection of free speech. I do want to go back to where it really came into the public attention which is the recent incident in charlottesville. Marc, i want to ask you what this group of reporters that you organized to focus on these issues. Maybe you can start with that and tell about how your coverage of charlottesville evolved. Previously, up until this year, the New York Times did not have a hate beat. We do not have reporters assigned to this. Certainly do today. It is growing by the day. Who areer of people devoting their attention to this. It says something about the state of the country that we have specialists on the National Staff of the New York Times who are focusing. Ryan has been doing this for years and there is definitely been a topic that we have covered over the years, but it has not been a fulltime beat and it definitely is today. At this moment, we have happened doesnt reporters working we have half a dozen reporters working on deep stories on hate crimes, these organizations. Deeper thano much protests. Protests are exactly what these. Rganizations want they want every person in this room lined up at your desk at a protest with your notepad and lined up at a protest with your notepad and your camera. There are press releases and websites. Just berting should not going from protest to protest and covering the protest is , wething that makes me feel have to be there, but i am very conflicted about covering what is essentially theater for these organizations very for these organizations. Veryese organizations are media savvy. They profit off of this. They have books they are selling and video. How do you balance covering what they want you to cover, which is the protests and the messages, with sort of grassroots reporting on the rise of these groups and why they are prominent . We are using the protests that are going on. There will be a New York Times reporter in the crowds. We are not writing stories on every single one. If you dont see a story the next day, it does not mean we are derelict. , dont want the New York Times we are not covering them like sporting events. Not how many people were there, was it a tiki torch or some other thing that they were holding in the air. That is not good reporting. Our certre working on of deeper stories trying to understand the movement, the funding, and what their motives are. The conflict between these groups that are very real, you mentioned that earlier. We have a confidential tip line where anybody can send in an anonymous tip. We have some groups offering up tips about other groups. You sort of see it in real time how they are trying to outdo and outflank each other. It is a very challenging in a way whereer you feel you dont get dirty covering it yourself. You have to be careful. One more followup. Following up on what ryan said about antifa, is that one of the groups or movements that this group will monitor . Absolutely. Term, a brandnew movement that has come up in this climate that we are definitely following and want to understand and are trying to understand. And what itsit is Leadership Structure is and where the money is coming from. Trying to understand it because it did not exist, it was not on my radar screen before this. It is something that sort of came up in this very twisted environment of the country in 2017. Some of those aggressions against reporters have come from both sides, from protesters and antifa. , i thinkt think antifa the current iteration we see is something new, but the antifascist movement has been a long around as long as fascism has. Doing aur colleagues is longform piece on the history of split within the movement. You have veteran protesters who have been going in challenging every not to protest for 50 years, and they are quite. Isillusioned these guys are necessarily pacifist, but a lot of the veteran guys are not looking for the type of violent confrontation we have seen. That is not to say that you dont have people instigating or using violence and an aggressive is incorrectink it to say that it is a completely new phenomenon. I want to follow up on that. About howlittle coverage of charlottesville and leading up to charlottesville, and how that changed, i know you are primarily Foreign Policy and National Security, but you been doing a lot of the stories. Tell us how that coverage has built up and how that affected your beat. Theor my beat, i think reasons i was drawn to Foreign Policy are the reasons i find this work important. Andink before the trump era the rise of this blatant White Supremacy in this form, a lot of americas problems felt manageable. A lot of the problems abroad felt so overwhelming. It was so fascinating in many ways. Now we have these very violent, angry, predominantly men were trying to unravel the country in a way that we havent seen in a while. I havent covering a lot more of far right extremism in the u. S. And the way that says ties to the white house and the people who implement our Foreign Policy. The hudsonay in d. C. Institute had an event called counter and violent extremism where they talked about ironic ron, the muslim brotherhood, and how they are exporting terrorist. What of the headline speakers is steve bannon. Hellthinking what the does steve bannon know about. Mism we try to keep track of all these things and have somebody there. It does become a conflict of how you avoid being a propaganda tool for these guys. In the beginning of covering this i was a little surprised how easy it was to get in touch with these people. They will hand you their cell phone and email you back right away. I thought that having a very jewish last name would make people not answer me or verbally assault me and not answer my questions. That is typically not the case. These people want to get their message out there. They love having this platform. I think we felt that, on camera, it does feel propagandistic. To not take the most upsetting salacious quote they said even though that can be tempting. Patterns focus on the we see emerging, their funding sources, their ties to the white house. One of the things i have been interested in pursuing deeper is how these people get radicalized and hopefully eventually deradicalized. After charlotte still there was a father from a letter from the father of one of the men and he publicly disowned his son. The Washington Post had a good profile on him. We have been monitoring credit reddit to see people speaking out about family members they and getting in touch with them to get an understanding of where these people come from. With a triggered by certain events were they triggered by certain events . Bit like a cult, trying to get someone out of that mentality, even a loved one or child. One of the things were looking at is life after hate, one of the more prominent groups that does try to the radicalized white supremacist. It is made up of former neonazi it was founded by former neonazis. At her for countering violent extremism. The only group under the Obama Administration that was getting funding that was focusing expressively explicitly unwed extremism while other groups were focused on preventing isis recruitment. When the Trump Administration came in, they reevaluated grants and pull their funding. That ended up being a boon for their fund raising, i think they are fun raise more and are a lot more high profile. It was an interesting example of what this up in a strange ands priorities lie. Bring the Legal Expertise to this panel. You were speaking earlier about free speech, but also there is a question about when protected speech becomes an incitement to violence. We have obviously had some very Serious Violence after these protests. Legally, other things we can watch for to see where something is moving from speech . Absolutely. The biggest and most obvious point is that the Second Amendment is in a psychotic Inflection Point at this moment in history. We have to grapple with it and reconcile it with the first. , imhing that i remember not sure ive ever been as shocked as anything as i was during the 2016 Republican National convention in cleveland where they had basically a large security list and they had a list of prohibited items that included a literal soapbox that you can stand up. It could not have a stake because you could beat someone with a stick. You could have a gun. As long as you take your protest sign to the barrel of your long gun, you could have your signed show. This cant be real life. We are obviously through the Looking Glass with the first and Second Amendment. I am not a Second Amendment advocate, thank god, or i would have my hands full. , think we are already seeing and charlottesville they closed willthe general lee statue they make up interim rules. They are struggling. I have seen drafts. Some of them are valiant efforts. I think the Second Amendment should not, does not, and will not if we defended in court, stop the government from prohibiting weaponry. I dont mean to just talk about ones. A maze, a boards nails through it shouldhould not not violate the first or Second Amendment to limit those when a group of masses. Banningrest will be in those weapons on passions are high, that will run into tricky continental best constitutional areas. Constitutional areas. If you have 50 people, it is perfectly consistent with the First Amendment to say, if you have 50 people you a permit. That is true whether it is a ,arbecue, telethon, a marathon or if it is a protest. Guns andem is, we need weaponry regulated the same way. What about violent incidents that dont involve weaponry . Serious, and is obviously you have some conflict there between the first and Second Amendment the gun issue is serious, and obviously you have some conflict there between the first and Second Amendment. There areen obviously shots fired in florida after the spencer meeting. There have also been many violent incidences that did not involve guns. Line where protected freespeech becomes incitement to violence. Other magic words where if someone says this at a rally they can be held responsible are there magic words where someone says this at a rally they can be held responsible that we should be listening for . It is an admission that i nk the fix is me to become becoming in other places. Incitement is very high. People often refer to it as shouting fire in a crowded theater. We can do it. Do you feel like a felon . You should not. Obviously that is not illegal. You have to do it with an immediate intent that you intend for violence to immediately occur. That bar is so high. That bar was actually constructed on behalf of akaka kkk leadered of a called brandenburg. In brandenburg, when you read this opinion, you can feel the Supreme Court justices empathizing with this kkk leader. They actually find it, they struggle with how bad his words were. Difficult opinion to read. A few years later, the next incitement case that comes along is about naacp leader named Charles Evers who was rallying for a boycott of white racist owned businesses. He said if anyone breakup is boycott we will break your neck. Thises all the way up to Supreme Court because the white businesses sue him. Begrudgingly wring their hands and say i guess we have to protect this naacp leader. Which is astounding and feels backwards. It is that idea that things will come very naturally to a fascist supremacist state. And we ratchet those rights up for other people. At least it is the theory. In practice, we got that speech rights are not distributed evenly. That is the idea. Because itis so high literally means a kkk leader saying we should go out and hang black people. Is, that is so close to the current situation, the only obvious and notable. Ifferences one is the question of how the Second Amendment gets factored into your reasonable fear that you are about to be killed. It affects me. I have been yelled at by someone with a hand on their holster and it felt differently than someone without. Threatening objectively. The second is the expansion of White Supremacy to the white house. I think that is a different question. For example, the skokie case, that came out on carter was president. It is him is claimed to think of these people during the carter years being offended. We are in a different place. The problem is, that reality is unlikely to filter into inherently conservative justices. I think the answer is theoretically yes. The author is becoming legal incitement is low. The audits of this becoming legal incitement is low. Of thisudits odds becoming legal incitement is low. Sandeep, talking about incitement or violence leads us to your project. Tell us more about it. Election, after the streams of social media going through people talking about how at school there are a chance of build a wall and the numbers of there were chants build a wall. I thought about being a child back in california after the beingn hostage crisis and chased down the hallway being called a kind of things. What is going to happen to these muslim kids and hispanic kids in other parts of the country. We are going to start losing track of them because social media and news accounts are not compiled. As the numbers get large, they also become so abstract that you lose track of the story behind that number. What happened to that individual . I went and talked to my colleague and we gathered a group of students who are very inspired to help us out. We decided to compile every single hate incident or hate crime that we could find into a ble database of people can see where they personally fit in based on their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation. What has happened to people like them and one of the stories behind those individuals and what are the stories behind those individuals . We are still working on it. It is not a breaking news thing. We are not in a rush to make if the databases is filled october 22, we are making sure we take time to verify the information. Here have been some hoaxes if there is a hoax, it victimizes the victim twice, because perhaps now someone will be afraid to speak out because maybe they will be believed. The issue of hoaxes is very important. How do you investigate and verify to ensure that something is not a hoax . Thing we decided was that we cant just take weial media posts, because share so many of them they are hard to verify. The methodology is focused on news accounts. News accounts where a reporter or a publication has gone out and interviewed people, has talked to the victim, has talked to a manager in a store were some incident may have occurred. Based on that, they have written a piece. That right there narrows down the number of incidents that we can compile. There are probably a lot more than that. Probably a lot more that deserve they in the system, but are not because they were not reported by News Organization. About the question, it is great to be in the Media Capital here, it is nice to be around the city like indianapolis where there are some News Organizations and tv stations, but as you get into more remote areas, are there people who are being called something right to their face and even if they posted on social media, no News Organization is going to come knock on their door and asked to do a profile. We are missing a lot of things in that way. We did decide to step back and say that our methodology would only take verified posts. That does not mean that i have not discovered, or that our team has not discovered errors in news accounts. I will give you one quickly. A paper in new jersey talked car hadminister whose some homophobic stuff scratched into it. When i looked into that, it said , butit was in montclair there was no church there. I dug deeper and deeper. I reached out to the minister and he said, the newspaper took it from my Facebook Post and i posted it in montclair, but this is about a colleague of mine in boise, idaho. I had to dig for more details. What do you do when you find glaring errors . The report them . Do you report them . I know youre doing a database, but this is a journalism school. Have female people in the past wanting out certain errors. I have emailed people in the past about certain errors. One more question. When we are talking about hate who mightt everyone commit a violent act necessarily identifies with one of these groups, and many of the people who do identify with these groups might just be expressing an opinion and never move on from speech to violence. In your database, do you have any way to correlate between specific actions and identification with a group . We have different checkmarks. Off,ecked off we check we have perpetrators, we have victims, we have locations. Schools,middle elementary schools, airports, pressure points like that. In this case we have one for racist organizations. Is, we will only add them as a racist organization if they have left flyers or recruiting material at the places were they have committed these acts of bigotry. Also, wethat, there is have a category that we havent activated which involves tracking incidents, civil rights lawyers as well as activists. We do have a few numbers. Point when that flares up we will be activating that. That is good to know. A Good Research tool for some of the reporters here. Lee, i did want to ask you, because you mentioned berkeley. I do want to get to the implications, especially on , not only onses College Campuses, but a lot of your work has looked at the intersection of free speech and press activists with these groups. Just tell us about some of the First Amendment implications, either with people who have been denied access to speech or when they have been shouted down, some of the security implications. We talk about that, particularly on College Campuses . I will try to visa sank. Ive i will try to be succinct. Of First Amendment has a lot pretty clauses and it protects free speech and the rights of the press. You will know that there are no cases that uniquely protect the rights of the press, theyre all proxy for the public right to free speech or assembly. There is no special access for journalists, which means that when there are security crackdowns, when events are canceled, when they are shouting down the press as a proxy for the public and is real individual humans also are impacted. Those happen in very different ways. Just a few standouts recently. Most of them are campus. One that is not campus, but i , if the federal Aviation Administration becoming a player in the media landscape. Gets real on the ground they will put a nofly zone in the air. Important for people who might get news from a throne or nontraditional aerial sources. Some of them could be small plane operators. Most in standing rock, near standing rock, and last some third desk summer at the mall of america summer at the mall of america the faa entered a broad nofly zone at the request of. Aw enforcement they can do a diligent reporter, he sought the public records and found evidence that the blm one was made to keep out journalists. They had exemptions for every commercial aircraft to land, but once the media came they told them they were told to keep media out. That is a huge deal that all people need to know about. Not only in the air, but on the ground some journalists have been kept away from protests for safety reasons. Im going to give it brief plug for spj. We do have a legal fun and we are able to give money to people, particularly freelancers. Those who might be kept away from offense for their cameras have been taken. Talk a little about that. About the First Amendment implications there. I can talk on the ground and i will look at that to the campus lens. Security restrictions on either attendees or people nearby are also spilling out into journalists. Heatalists make it extra if they are in the band at a hostile rally come at trump rallies journalists have been singled out. Normal levelabout hostility that apply to everyone. You mentioned equipment and that is the exact right thing to mention. At the spencer speech, at Berkeley Free speech week, one of the First Security measures was that you cant have anything. Because there is no special press right, it does not mean you cannot have anything must you have a highpowered nikon, it does not work that way. Restriction is a restriction. You may be able to get press credentials and get special access to set up her press, but that typically does not happen at these events. Particularly at the campus events where they are not invited by a student, but rather have an open season on a campus building. Its is what happened at the university of florida. Somebody like Richard Spencer rents it for a private event. He gets to decide who comes in. It is a newsworthy event that has been privatized. Publicough it is on a university campus, when campuses decide to privatize a building, that has perverse implications for anything that goes on in there. I want to throw this out to the panel. What about prohibitive costs which can be pretty severe for small campuses . Uc berkeley has spent 10 times that they spent on security this year versus last year. Lee, do you want to address that . I will do that one very quickly. I think there might be a real collision and there will likely be a reckoning. The First Amendment case law that security costs cannot be passed on the protesters because they are often a proxy for discriminating a some controversy. That is actually true. Firebrandst liberal have been given super bills because they will be controversial. There is the complex question of who is going to be violent. It is tough to talk about it before slipping into rhetoric. At berkeley, a lot of those costs are because people in antifa came intending to engage in violence. I think the bar for selfdefense is lower than some people might be. Right now, the case law says you have to let them speak and you cannot pass the security costs onto them. That case law was made entirely in one office. There is not yet been a case for therek any federal has not been a case there is a part of me that believes those two realities cannot coexist. I think there is likely to be a reckoning. I dont have great prediction for what that will be. I think it will likely mean that there will be requirements on schools that security costs have to be as limited as possible and they have to be acutely defended by actual security risks and the schools of fish of their knots and schools have to show they are not spending more than necessary. I think there are going to be limits on repetition. Marc i saw you nodding your head,. We are lucky to have our own Inhouse Legal Team that helps our reporters get access deals with them when they get caught up by police as protesters. We have lawyers. Has anotherpondent lawyers cell phone in their phone. We are lucky that he works 24 hours and we note that there is a lawyer that has your back. It is really needed these days if youre covering these events. Anyone else want to jump in . One thing that i think is worth talking about. In boston at the freespeech there were protesters and counterprotesters. This is the most important thing i have to say. We know police were screening people to decide what group they would go into. They did not want White Supremacists at the real freespeech rally and they sneaking in. Ntifa there are trying to keep group separate with the constitution permits. What happens if you are a journalist . We heard that journalists were screened at the entrance to both pants and were told they are not members so they cant get in. I like Richard Spencer which is a private forum, that is not ok. It is not ok for them to tell members of the press they cannot cover it. One of the excuses that we heard is that the chief of police was citing the this is all part of the same narrative. Costs ity security costs can have a Chilling Effect on speech. That is an excellent point, because another issue that has been happening, reporters have not only been screened, they have been arrested. Anyone on the panel that has a vise on what to do to try to do . D you one more thing i want to discuss our the digital implications are the digital implications. Talking about a question that was as cut you cover klansman. He said use a sheet page he went on to say that the best way to do it is for longterm deep focus investigative reports. I know we have touched on that and supposedly what Walter Wright investigations in the 20s when he actually opposed because he was very lightskinned africanamerican he posed as a pro klansman and got interviews with clans people and was published in a chicago newspaper. That supposedly had more effect than the actual coverage. Shouldnt most of the effort be given in this instance so as not to give them a platform, but actually into deep focus and longterm Investigative Journalism . If that is possible. I want to direct that to you since you are assigning a team of reporters. Going to put on a sheet if that is what you are suggesting. I thought i talked about that before that there is something very unsatisfactory about thinking you are covering what is going on by going from protest to protest, the stories that really matter that you should be doing have nothing to do with these public displays. They are really issue leather and i follow ryans work. He is not running from protest to protest. It is connecting dots. It is reading documents. It is getting beneath the surface. You are right. Covering these events and saying reporting verbatim does so much in terms for confronting this reality in america. Lets understand who they are. Where are the back stories . Who is paying for this . Lets talk about fundamentally, is this mercer money or not . Lets talk about communications and how we say to one another when they think no one is looking. That is more of a revealing look than anything else. Look at the discord chats that were released after charlottesville to see they were talking about guns. I agree with you completely. Cover ne on the undercover, and it provides a complications. Now i go as me and find they will talk to me. Not,imes, more often than with a slip of the time by the right question, they reveal things they wish they hadnt area i just want to followup on the issue of undercover reporting. I think that there is a specific reporter who is honing that be bee ofbrr of doing doing those spirit i would say that raises red flags and i would encourage you to talk to your professors about it. Lying about your eye entity is not journalistically sound and it trays trust in the media and is not with the access you get. That as access for journalists becomes harder, there will be a greater temptation to bend the journalistic ethics rules. I think that is something that journalists will need to grapple with. I think it does bend the rules and i think we would need another twohour panel for that. Thank you very much for your time this evening. [applause] thank you for the excellent questions. Christmas day, on cspan networks, at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, clean elizabeth delivers a christmas message. At 8 00 p. M. Eastern, cornell alan dershowitzchlit compare israel. Forget theoing to very ugly realities in gaza and west bank . If you look at the u. N. Today, there is one country in the world that is the focused of 90 of you one resolutions, and that is israel. On book tv on cspan2 at 6 30 p. M. Eastern, World War Two veteran recalls Bombing Missions over japan with new book. 1, the squadron took. Ll and was led into a front 27 fighter planes went down. 25 guys were killed. He was killed in my airplane. It is hard to tell the truth then, i missed my airplane. We were there to protect our freedom and we were there to fight. And we did that. It was after the war that i suffered for 30 years. On American History tv on cspan3 at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, hamilton playwright and actor accepts the u. S. Capital historical societys 2017 freedom award. When you are a theater kid, you make friends from different social groups. You work too hard to create something greater than the sum of your parts. For the sake of making something great, you learn to trust your passion and let it lead the way. Watch monday, christmas day, on the cspan networks. Next, well spend some time at the white house looking at this years holiday treat lighting and other festivities, starting with the first lady making holiday decorations with children