Booktv. Org. Next, a look at the challenges of covering hate groups and their freedom of expression on College Campuses, at protests, and online. Hosted by the society of professional journalists, this is two hours. Welcome. We have a lot to cover. Lets get started. We will allow time for questions at the end. If anyone is like tweeting we , have a hashtag. I am your moderator alex tarquinio, im the president elect of the society of professional journalists. Through our new york city chapter, known as the deadline club, we are cohosting this event with 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. He is responsible for a dozen 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 in africa and latin america. Sitting next to him is the director of interactive journalism at the cuny graduate school of journalism. He began his career at the New York Times as a breaking news writer and editor. Then we have lee rowland who has served as lead counsel in federal First Amendment cases. Next to her we have ryan lenz, a 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 an iraq war correspondent for the associated pres associated press. 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 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. Ap has 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. Some of these are legal terms, 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 had heard of last year. It did not exist in our vernacular. It sometimes takes the media and the New York Times some time to come up with a definitive rule. I will pass it on. For the hate index it is a 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. The terms we wrestled with is, 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 someones property is 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. If we mean it, we can say it, but not to use them lightly. The two you will hear more that dont have that same legal meaning are hate speech and hate group. Hate speech has no legal meaning. You will frequently see people 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 meaning, 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. I think that the fact, this is 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. Altright is not a new concept 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. For the better part of 60 years, 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 in america, which is false and abhorrent and they are trying to make us believe this. There is no means in federal code to process a domestic terrorist. Terrorism as a federal charge exists only to charge those from foreign countries. Domestic 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 definition as terrorists because 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. As marc was saying, we also 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. For the most part, we try not to let those people framed the narrative of the debate. We try not to let them decide what language they are described as. We want to describe them as accurately as possible and as directly as possible. You have some people in the altright who say i am not a White Supremacists, i dont think that white people are better than black people, i am just proud of my european heritage and i want to exist in a nation with no black people. You can call that all right, you 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 say how dare you, they are not 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 argue about when it is going to 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. Because it was such a strange phenomenon to be grappling with this in this very strange public discourse. 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. We had a very similar panel 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. Obviously, some people in 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 about covering extremism or one of these rallies for the first time . Ryan, you are the pro. With ryan, there is nothing more dangerous than being a war correspondent. Is there anything you learned in iraq that helps you . Ryan i guess i have the unique distinction as being the only person who exclusively covers hate and extremism. I have covered it for seven 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. I cant count the number of emails, male threats i have gotten over the course of the years. There are cameras on my home and 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. We are not the streets are 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 conceal or obfuscate. 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 their lap if i refuse to do in case i try to do something stupid, or for that matter 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 likely to say to you, and furthermore, dont walk into a situation where you dont understand what you are walking into. I say this 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. I think the best way, the best 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 posttrump era this is distinctly different. White 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. Like i tell every racist, extremist, or radical. I say, you and i will disagree, we do not see eye to eye 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. Marc before we send reporters 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 authority is safer. We basically tell people how to deal with if you are teargassed and to always have an escape route. I will never forsake 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. As a journalism school, we are trading student to report on this accurately and safely. In terms of the hate index, as 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. Could somebody 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. I would only say, i cannot 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 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. We are seeing that reaction with 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. We have also been talking 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. Separately, there are a lot of dangers online. You have to be careful about your social Media Presence. Dont put your cell phone in your email 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. The truth is, there are a lot of angry people on the internet who wont follow through on anything. Sometimes, if i have the energy i respond and say im sorry 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. How seriously should we take these groups . That is a really difficult question to answer. Lets start with what unite the right 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 White Nationalism is making a 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. I dont think its ironic, i 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 calm ideas. These are people that are after a complete change in the order of things. What alex wants me to talk about is how, through the years, these groups 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 from his ideologies, whether it is people wanting a southern secession, or ethnostates, 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 what about antifa . The Southern Poverty Law Center classify them as a hate group . We do not. Hate groups by definition are those that defame, bella by or malign groups of people on a muted characteristics, protected things about them. Groups of people based on immutable characteristics whether it is their race, sexual orientation, religion, on and on. The antifa movements filing an and condemnable on that front. This violence is despicable, but they do not malign someone based on a protected characteristic. On something they cannot change. They are attacking people based on a political perspective which is different from hate and extremism, which is different from what a 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. One is the 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 or libertarians. We will get together and hate people. 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. Marc 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. The number of people who are devoting their attention to this. It says something about the state of the country that we have to 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 we have half a dozen reporters working on deep stories on hate crimes, these organizations. We want to go much deeper than protests. Protests are exactly what these organizations want. They want every person in this room lined up at your desk at a protest with your notepad and your camera. There are press releases and websites. Our reporting should not just be going from protest to protest and covering the protest is something that makes me feel, we have to be there, but i am very conflicted about covering what is essentially theater for these organizations. These organizations are very 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 . Marc 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. I 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. What we are working on our cert 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 movement to cover in a way where 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. A brandnew 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. What exactly it is and what its 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 dont think antifa, i think the current iteration we see is something new, but the antifascist movement has been a long around as long as fascism has. One of our colleagues is doing a longform piece on the history of antifa and the 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 disillusioned. 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 way, but i think it is incorrect to say that it is a completely new phenomenon. The type of violent confrontation we have seen. I want to follow up on that. Tell us a little about how 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. For my beat, i think the reasons i was drawn to Foreign Policy are the reasons i find this work important. I think before the trump era and 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. I think today in d. C. The Hudson Institute had an event called countering violent extremism where they talked about iran the , muslim brotherhood, and how they are exporting terrorist. What of the headline speakers is steve bannon. I am thinking what the hell does steve bannon know about extremism. There is this mind meld in the white house between news issues. That was on our radar for a while. 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. We tried to not take the most upsetting salacious quote they said even though that can be tempting. We try to focus on the patterns 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 have and getting in touch with them to get an understanding of where these people come from. Were they triggered by certain events . It is a 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. They were to get funding for a program countering violent extremism. They would be the only group under the Obama Administration that was getting funding that was focusing expressively explicitly on white 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 where the administrations priorities lie. Lee, you 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. One thing that i remember, im 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. I think we are already seeing, and charlottesville they closed down the general lee statue will 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 guns. A mace, a board with nails through it, it should not violate the first or Second Amendment to limit those when a large group mass. The interest will be in banning 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 barbecue, telethon, a marathon, or if it is a protest. The problem is, we need guns and weaponry regulated the same way. What about violent incidents that dont involve weaponry . The gun issue is serious, and 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 have been there are obviously shots fired in florida after the spencer meeting. There have also been many violent incidences that did not involve guns. Is there a 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 think the fix is me to become becoming in other places. The bar for 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 leader called of a kkk leader 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. I find it a 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. It goes all the way up to this Supreme Court because the white businesses sue him. They 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. Incitement is so high because it literally means a kkk leader saying we should go out and hang black people. The challenge is, that is so close to the current situation, the only obvious and notable differences. 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. It is 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 almost quaint to think of these people during the carter years being ascendant. 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 odds of this becoming legal incitement is low. We need to look more to the weaponry into incitement law. Sandeep, talking about incitement or violence leads us to your project. Tell us more about it. The day after the election, streams of social media going through people talking about how at school there are a chance of build a wall and the numbers were there were chants of build a wall. I thought about being a child back in california after the iranian hostage crisis and being chased down the hallway being called a kind of things. I thought 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 filterable 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 sure if the databases is filled october 22, we are making sure we take time to verify the information. There 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 . The first thing we decided was that we cant just take social media posts, because we 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 to be in the system, but they are not because they were not reported by News Organization. That brings 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 ask 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 about a minister whose car had some homophobic stuff scratched into it. When i looked into that, it said that it was in montclair, but 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 . Do you report them . I know youre doing a database, but this is a journalism school. I have emailed people in the past about certain errors. You can find other news accounts to link to and find verification as well usually. One more question. When we are talking about hate groups, not everyone who might 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. We check off, we have perpetrators, we have victims, we have locations. Schools, middle schools, elementary schools, airports, pressure points like that. In this case we have one for racist organizations. The only thing 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. There is that, there is also, we have a category that we havent activated which involves tracking incidents, civil rights lawyers as well as activists. We do have a few numbers. At some 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 College Campuses, not only on 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 be 68. The main takeaway is that the public, the First Amendment has a lot of 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 have to mention, if the federal Aviation Administration becoming a player in the media landscape. When shit gets real on the ground they will put a nofly zone in the air. That is 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 summer at the mall of america the faa entered a broad nofly zone at the request of law 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 fund 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. We also sign onto amicus briefs. 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. Necessarily, by the way. Journalists may get extra heat if they are in the band at a hostile rally come at trump rallies journalists have been singled out. I am talking about normal level 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. Even though it is on a Public 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 . Florida spent 600,000 for the event and uc berkeley has spent 10 times that they spent on security this year versus last year. Lee, do you want to address that . I want to go down and give everyone else a chance to comment. I will do that one very quickly. I think there might be a real collision course in the law and there might be a reckoning. The First Amendment case law basically says that security costs cannot be passed on the protesters because they are often a proxy for discriminating a some controversy. Based on controversy. That is actually true. We know that liberal firebrands 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 where any federal court has grappled with that. 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 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. Would you like to add to that . 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. Every correspondent has another 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 rally 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 didnt want antifa sneaking in. 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 and were told they are not members so they cant get in. Unlike Richard Spencer renting 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 selected to deprive it of oxygen because they did not want to spend the security costs to do it again. This is a new wrinkle that journalists will have to be raffling with. 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. Because of rounding up everyone in the. Do you have advice when they cover protests or anyone on the panel who has advice on what to do to try to avoid being reporters, you do . It is a big issue. Youre covering the action you it aware that the cattle will happen. The reporters get that benefit. One thing i do want to discuss are the digital implications for Digital Media and mark and ryan know because we know this. This is of interest to me. I became interested in this topic. With the movement of hate groups onto the web, the idea that this is an outlet to increase their risk reach and now we have social media and we are increasingly seeing signs that a lot of the instigation on social homegrown,act, not in fact exogenous. I do want to throw this out to the group. Maybe we could do one more lightning round on this one. And then throw it out. I will say quickly that if we think the number of people showing up at these protests is large and that is disputable, the number of people fund College Campuses, the real nowadays,e online and these organizations are not meeting in the woods in robes, they are meeting online in chat rooms. This is how they are reaching into peoples living rooms and doing recruiting and that is how all of this is organized. Social media and online is where these organizations are truly thriving and to cover these organizations, you have to the he covering them online. Cannot simply be covering the public face of them. I would just add one thing to that, really. There is so much data on social media today, and right now most of us are approaching social media and we see a post in which and we try to contact that one person and interview them and get more information on them. It is possible to start scraping all of the numbers and terms and starting to analyze them and become with much larger trends. Come up with much larger trends. We have to at some not just point think about interviewing people on social media, but interview the data itself that is being collected. Does anybody want to give a brief followup . You are looking this from a database perspective. Do you have any ways for looking at it to potentially see if something looks fake or if this is not really someone with extremist views but in fact someone with a political objective trying to stir up trouble . I have to tell you that because there is so much hate and nazi symbolism and swastikas online right now, we actually decided not to look at that in our database because that is all we would be doing is putting those numbers into that database. That was a definite decision to say we are going to look for hate and hate incidences in the physical world, between people and how people are affected and how their confidence of walking down the street is affected when someone comes up and punches them or says something them or says something to their children. That was a conscious decision. I will just briefly say that it takes me back to the first question about terminology. The internet has placed strains on all of our traditional values of free speech and privacy. We knew we would go back to free speech 101 in an internet era and visit all of these outcomes. What we all know to be true, whether it is trump winning or russia or white supremacist groups organizing online is that the internet creates an incredibly at the chamber powerfully echo chamber. Journalists struggle with how much attention to give these groups and how to cover them but using careful terminology and exposing this when they do venture out into the physical world and test the boundaries of civil society, which is what i think was going on in charlottesville. Lets bring this offline and see if it flies. You see the lack of anonymity. You saw people get fired and there were discussions in the crawled back into their shelf for a while. That is not a perfect solution, but the job that you will do is it essential to our ability to uproot this from the Digital World and force it into the light and confronted in the real world. Im going to push back on one point that you made briefly in the preface. I think the external factors that are playing into the National Debate certainly the russian collusion and suspicion around the election, there is not much evidence as suggestion that these entities are pushing extremist racist ideology as we know. There is suspicion that it has happened, but what we know for certain is there is a large version of racists and extremists that are online. It has been going on since aol went online in 2003. When they went online, the oldest and most prominent racist site goes on for it. Don black has been an advocate of the internet as a space to propagate and expand these ideologies forever. Where looking at a time we will be dealing with a space for years to come. If we are not dealing with them already. We have seen these ideologies move online, partially because it is safer there. It is safer for them. You can be totally anonymous short of a court order revealing your ip address. It is a battleground for the cultural war and the 20th century. The online world. I dont know what is going to happen to it and i am not an attorney and i cant speak to legal issues, but a fully expect in the years to come we will see back and forth between ideologies being expressed and embraced online and in the real world very dangerous consequences of that speech. That is an excellent set up for jessica. Jessica came to my attention because she wrote about storm front, something i wrote about in the 1980s. I talked to don black and he was the first guy online. Here you are writing about him and back then, he was being questioned which server he could be on. He was moving between services. The more things change, the more they stay the same. What are your comments on the digital side . One thing that made me laugh was saying that these guys are not meeting in the forest anymore. One thing i looked at with them was because they were having this meeting in a deciduous forest and they were talking about the vestidual forest and they were talking about that. The story youre referring to was more about how they got shut down and were in an desperate attempt to get back online after charlottesville. The daily stormer and storm front both got yanked online. I dont know if you saw clouds dflare. Which protects the website from getting taken down by hackers. They suspended service, which but the daily stormer offline and the ceo put out this very unusual statement where he said, i woke up one day and i was in a bad mood and they are jerks and i was like, we usually take a content neutral approach to customers but i am worried to going to take them offline. I was pretty impressed because he followed up your he said this is not good and this should not set a precedent. It should not be up to me and what mood im in to decide who gets to be online. We were covering that at the time and it put me in a strained situation where i found myself on the side of, let the nazi stay online. People will find a way to get their ideology out there. Some people on the panel might disagree. After the daily stormer got kicked offline, they kept reemergent in all sides of other different ip addresses and out of the country. Eventually they want into the dark web. It decreases the number of people that read them, but it does i dont think it has real longterm effect on their ability to get the message out. And then it also allows them to claim martyr status. This is what the Mainstream Media doesnt want you to see. At some point, if your strategy is to silence people versus prove why theyre wrong, you will lose. In the modern day, it is hard to silence people. I dont think that is something we want private Companies Taking upon themselves to do. It mightve been the aclu that put out a statement that today, the private companies are taking on the nazis. What about tomorrow when they take down black lives matter . You need to think about what precedent that is setting. Why do people do to use platforms to incite violence . Why are they still on facebook, why do the get to use these platforms . I dont think there is really much you can do about it. Indeed, servers in the u. S. Have actually provided the service for foreigners who have more limitations on speech. A principal in my thesis years ago was a german neonazi who was at that time living in canada and using a server in california to put speech online to people back in germany that would have been illegal in germany. That is often the world and the u. S. I can see you want to comment on that. I want to say one thing about the idea of a silencing people online or censoring them as they would have us believe. It is important to remember that these websites we go to our social media portals, facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat, all of them have terms of a service that we sign onto without reading. We say, sure i will agree to the rules of you that you have set forth as a private entity to not do this on your platform. It usually involves, i will not use it for pornography, and also says i will not use your site to propagate buys or prejudice, racism essentially. What is happening now is these companies are actually Holding People accountable to the terms of service they agreed to. It is not that people are being silenced by twitter, it is that twitter has always had the rules and twitter has been violating them and twitter has not really cared. Certainly in the violence and the aftermath, twitter and facebook are saying, ok we have a problem. So they are going back to get rid of them. A lot of people tell you that the terms of the service are completely subjective and trying to enforce them consistently is nearly impossible. In reality, the only thing they are really good about enforcing porn and because they dont want to get sued. It encourages neonazis to congregate and speak. That is already happening as well. Obviously these arent First Amendment indications implications because these are private and not government, but there are free speech entities. Do we want private, especially large, wealthy, powerful ones like facebook and twitter determining what speech is acceptable . Obviously, im not suggesting that we have a freeforall, but there is a path. I think there is a difference between social Media Companies and people that we feel are the backbone of the web. I think for social media groups, facebook has constituents. They want people to use their service. It will be hard to get jewish clients if you constantly see swastikas on facebook. There are many examples of that i can give. I actually think that is real. It is right for a company and they have every right to decide what terms of service to get what community they want. The problem is, because the Companies React to moral panics and put hundred percent of resources into censorship and zero into due process. Sure, they dont want nudity, but good luck getting an appeal if you are a Breast Feeding mother and your picture was taken down. And if youre able of color, who is recounting the experience of harassment, the hate crime you may have experienced that morning. People of color are more often shut down on facebook when they use a sword that was hurled against them. It is terrible how bad they are at censorship. It is very messy and very hard. When we have a constitutional regime we know it is messy and hard. That is why you get to appeal when the government messes it up but that does not have been. It may be censorship what that everybody wants. What about censorship that comes from algorithms rather than humans . That is, gated. We are working with the Racial Justice program to challenge a federal law that makes it a felony to do what rain described which is to violate terms of service and we are doing it on behalf of researchers that put it in fictitious names. Redlining. Racial the only way you know if you get a different credit offer if your qua, is monica or moni entering whichever name you want is a federal penalty. We dont want to give that kind of power to the government to start using the terms of service and speech rules against you in a criminal way. That, for us, is where we are holding a line. The rest of it, there are interesting conversations. At the end of the day, Something Like a cloud flare, i dont want them kicking nazis off because number one now they have their , it opens a gap. Own echo chamber. I dont think there is a value and were not looking at it. In hiding and driving it underground. Like cloudething flare we dont want them to play , that role for us. The obvious implication is that they then support the speech of the other people they post and that is a very dangerous road to walk. When you say cloud flair, you are using it as a proxy to talk about. The back of the internet and the Service Providers and Service Space and utilities. People who are creating a creative space. This is getting to how hard it is for Massive Companies to enforce this were dealing with in a smart way. We saw storm cloud get back on line and we reach out to them for comment and we found out who it was and we asked him why they decided to put storm front online. I have this woman on the phone yelling at me and said we put up a statement a month ago. I said i do not think so. She was talking about the daily stormer. They put out a statement about why they didnt want to do business with daily stormer. But they let the other storm online. This woman who was responsible to talking to the media did not realize they had gone back online because don black had registered through a proxy and they only found out that they were hosting his neonazis once the reporter called them. When you look at how ad hoc it is, it doesnt inspire confidence in these companies. To be regulate regulating such a difficult issue. Thats when you have the moral panic button . We are running long. I did promise there would be time for q a. If you can stay, bring the microphone. I saw several hands. You were first. And i think the woman at the back, i saw them in that order. Would anyone on the panel put together two pieces of the conversation from the beginning of the panel that dont seem to fit. On the one hand, youre getting used and schmoozed by the right. This is this new friendly approach. On the other hand, it is oldfashioned harassment up to Death Threats. Do you have a sense that sometimes it is one and the same person or groups, do they talk to one another and could you drill down on that seeming contradiction. Do you want to direct your question to someone specific on the panel . To whoever wants to take it. We can start with you. And then jessica. Essentially, you asking how this is a different now. And youre asking how it is meshing with the real violence. It is important to note that in this time we are seeing two streams of influence come together. We are seeing the old guard, the ideologues and true believers. The people who are out there and believe it thoroughly. Additionally you have these web savvy internet tend young people who got into this because they people off. They are trolls. Upsetting someone was noble. Making someone cry was beneficial or an achievement. You have a stream of people who are expounding races ideas because it is what they want the world to believe and they wont 12 chevy down your throat whether you want it or not. You have young people who want to upset you and who want to stand up and flip the middle finger to the establishment. They will shove it down your throat whether you want it or not. You have two streams of people who are coming together and mileg this new mill you u we are calling the altright. You are referring to the Richard Spencer type after getting out of single every hotel in washington invited people to his home. These are the type of people, he wears fancy vests and blazers and he is trying to put a good face on this ideology. That is the adapting. They do not want to look crazy. They want to look like smart, respectable, College Educated men who are upset they were losing their place in society. Pastill recall during the couple of years when these people were first coming up, it was the first time Richard Spencer had this big speech in d. C. And there are people doing the file have their sign and a lot of Mainstream Media outlets remarking on how cleancut he was and how well spoken he was and it was baffling. You would never have the dukeesy afforded to david and the ideology is not all that that is something reporters have different. That is something reporters have to be careful about. Cant that be a doubleedged sword . When you talk about someone is cleancut, youre saying you dont expect them to be cleancut or well spoken. That is one of the Biggest Challenges that journalists and americans is that we have a preconceived notion about what racists look like. They are missing teeth, wearing camouflage is someplace in the woods, not here. In fact, they are our teachers, cops, military, and they are everywhere. This election has done more to bring this to our attention as an undeniable truth and think thank god for that. And they are the same stereotypes that can be used by racists. Did you want to add something to that . I think ryans point is a good one. This is not a new thing. Think back to the and the 1960s protests to the streets of the south. There were klansmen and you had politicians who were in fancy suits who were just as racist on the floor of the senate and giving speeches. There has always been a dichotomy here and in the intellectuals and the folks of the thugs of the movement. Sometimes they are the same people but sometimes they are not. What you said about teachers and so forth, it shows it in the hate index. I was shocked to see the number of elementary and High School Teachers that said things to their children. It is important to note that this is not accidental. David duke and don black made a verbal decision and wrote down and talked about to do this when duke started running for congress. It was a plan and we are seeing the end of it. It was in the 1990s when many of you dont remember. When david duke decided to go the political path and don black was working with him. They did make that decision to go mainstream. As people ask questions, please indicate if there is a panelists that you want in particular. Aur next. I would say that folks of color are under no illusion of what racists may or may not look like and my question is in terms of access in two parts. Around the racial lens and look at the newsroom and where we begin with these access, in terms of what are some of the considerations and debates happening within your about whichs reporters cover these beats . Dive. You mentioned deep are there folks more suited i. E. Whites to get into places for an honest talk . Hearing you speak about it made me think of two towns of jasper talking with two different crews, one black, one white, going on and talking jameswhat went on with texas. And how is hate index addressing things like the restoration act . You get stories about folks who went into a restaurant and theyreserved because lgbtq . That show up on your index . Those are two different questions. Start with marc. Marc first question, question. G for me, i want reporters who want to cover this, who are eager and passionate about covering the topic. We have black reporters, White Christian wish, theres not a particular type. I think all of them there is no doubt we have had reporters who have been speaking to some white supremacist leader over the phone and the person has said, are you jewish . I am sure a black or White Reporter will have a different experience at some of these events. But i believe both can cover the event and both have covered the event. So we are not sort of picking reporters to get ready access. But it is an interesting question. Ryan we are about a month and a we are about a month and a half behind in compiling the but we do have servicees for denial of by a service provider, by airline attendant, a lot of those categories. We have gathered a few of those. As we look at the data coming out, it will have it jumped. There is a woman over here. Before we get another show of hands. Hi, thank you so much for being here. This is a sort of slightly question. I am a journalism student in columbia and i am looking to write a story on hate groups specifically in new york. I was wondering if you have any pro tips or leads for groups that i should be looking up. You were saying, jessica, that you find it really easy to get in touch with them. I have not had that experience so far. Any tips you have so far. As leads, i know theres a pretty good proud boys presence here. Listen toow if you that. I think American Life had a them. Good episode on i cant remember where it is. But there is a bar in brooklyn that is supposed to be the proud boys bar. I am sure someone else on the panel can give you the name of it. I think if you go in person, especially those guys are creepy women, so that is a horrible way to get someone to talk to you, but the reality is they will talk to you. Just tell someone where you are and go with someone else. Yeah, i would cast a wide net. I wouldnt be afraid to follow up. I would tell them more about what you are looking for and why you are interested. I think a lot of these people are eager to get their propaganda out there. If your geography extends upstate, there are a number of very active militias just north city. One of the largest groups at upstate. Sville is from another show of hands. I saw yours in the last round. Give it to her and her. Those two. Hi, jessica made the very good point. Youall made a lot of good points. Youspecifically, whenever said that not all anti phonetic are violent and there are peaceful nonviolent rallies. Kkk rally that was after charlottesville. And nothing came of it because nothing happened. I understand in part why it didnt wind up in the papers because that is a boring story as you tell it with an accent. But the thing about it is, what disservice do we do the theative when we leave out peaceful component or the notasradical components of any groups . Nvolved i would say a lot of the reason these groups have not gotten coverage is because the meetings have largely been fairly boring. Did you address that question to someone . I think thats what made my do this deept to antifa movement. He embedded a lot of the altright and got to know a lot of people on both sides through that. He did hear a lot of frustration hearing from people who you just said. Think that was his reason for doing the deep dive on that. I dont think there is necessarily a magic formula for knowing exactly which event will be a newsworthy event. I think charlottesville in particular, speaking to our this wasntility, even Jason Kesslers first rally to do the unite the right. Richard spencer went back to charlottesville to weeks later and almost zero Media Coverage of a boring event from a media point of view. Its obvious that the media is geared toward the newsworthy and violence is newsworthy. As a free speech expert, my grave concern is that the public begins to connect protests and violence because those are the only two data points that when they put together leads to a news story. There werent many stories about boston. 40,000 people got off there butts and said i guess White Supremacy is on the ascendance i should leave my house today. It is kind of a shame because no citizenship end at charlottesville. Do you want a quick followon . We have a number of questions, but it looks like you have thought about it. If youre talking about the klan marches every other day. The klan is out there, doing something to try to get their name in the news. They have been trying to do it since the 1960s. Lets be honest. Theyre on the border in robes handing out candy to children every week. Its important. Newsworthiness to it and a news judgment that takes place. Generally, before these events, you know the tone, tenor, and nature of the rhetoric you will hear about. You know if it is a Critical Mass of angry people or if it is something that is just going to be a malignant guy running around screaming about whatever. It is a challenge, and it is one that we address as journalists across the world trying to figure out what is important and what is not. And also, what is giving them an unnecessary platform. And whats not. That theye a risk learn they get coverage because theres violence . In the last months, there have been coverage because of violent acts. That presumes the violence happened because there is media there. Atont think thats true all. I think theres violence that happened because they brought in place too many people who they didnt know who they were bringing in. Some of whom were hell bent on doing what they did. Next question. Thank you. I have a question for lee, and then the whole panel. I would like to get your opinion about how selfconsciously the and neofascist elements are manipulating free speech right now. Theres no accident in them choosing berkley, the home of movement. Peech i work in pacific radio. I had people on the grounds event. G that they were talking about how much topsy was to sort of turvy that. I am curious what your attitudes are about that because they are very consciously manipulating free speech if you watch spencer in florida. He is basically lampooning everybody, youre denying my free speech. That resonating with the public . Secondly, the level of think pieces and depth of reporting on 88. I think is inadds the nazi party came up to new york in the 1950s and 1960s. Up here to do the exact same thing theyre doing in charlottesville. He came to union square and triggered Holocaust Survivors and American Jewish veterans to there and kick butts royally. Watched that in high school, thing, highly publicized. This is not new. The question of the relationship with things like the Civil Rights Movement and i am thinking about dan carters rage and politics of how the media and academia have ball for the past 50 years examining that in depth. Have to play catchup. Finally, the question of terminology. When does one call someone Walking Around with a swastika a neonazi as opposed to an altright person . So that is a question to lee. Term terminology. Start with lee. Thats a legal question. As far as how conscious these guys that they are manipulated s free speech, i would say 100 percent. This is their full goal right now. Our concern at the aclu is to make sure our brand isnt tarnished. Ad were people who have brand that includes representing nazis in highprofile cases, right . We are actually at a moment where it goes back to the question about budgets. I think this is performance art. Its iterative, right . For us at aclu, we are thoughtful about all of our cases. We have tons of people that have civil Rights Violations in the country and we have to make choices and priorities. Look, if the lot is not clear, we are going to be there. We have and will continue to help develop free speech laws in courts for years. Right now, free speech rights in question from a doctrinal point of view. Incitement is at that cras high bar. Thats not going to move. Folks know is that they have this high watermark they can float boats around under, and more power to them. I work for a living on free speech, so i support that. However, what they are doing now is not necessarily new but more insistent. They are like mosquitoes and testing it constantly. Way thats budgetary. That is not interesting from a legal point of view. It is factually oppressive. Not only do they know 100 what theyre doing. Free speech week, no one was giving a speech about contra right . , they were talking about hating black and brown people. Boston caused a lie to that. The events at berkley have given to that. Theyre not engage in deeper conversation, they are trying to the plantly of victimhood because their words selling. For i think there is hope in that. If they know that the only way they can embrace this dying gasp of their racist patriarchy is to pretend they are victims, cant we take a little bit of solace in that question mark they know the ideas in that . Their ideas arent sellable. Women raise their hands. Is anyone else burning to jump that . I think lee handled the last bit. Ok. Toase direct your question whomever you wish. I am grappling over the issue of free speech and you are an expert. I understand why we protect all of free speech and why hate groups are allowed to online. E bigotry but do we have to give them access to convert and recruit masses using popular mainstream platforms like twitter and facebook . Ryan brought up the point about how they have terms where you cant violate them and now there has been a large movement for citizens to make sure twitter and facebook in Silicon Valley are holding these people accountable when they do violate it. It sounded like when jessica was speaking that we want them we dont want them necessarily to use another dark channel to publicize their free speech. I just wanted maybe some clarification. Q a. Me of this before the was there anyone in particular to address that to . Whatever really wants it. I have a quick answer. Assumes that the presence online is radicalizing proof. Res zero there is not a single review study that online speech radicalizes. You want to jump in on that . In when i finish my thought. Largely this has been assumed as truth in online radicalization of online extremists. Countering violent extremism, they have assumed that if you are a muslim and you go online and see an iman ranting against america, you can be radicalized. Much of that has been based on fabricated evidence and studies. Truth. The radicalism to online domestically . I have a deeper fear of this nation. I believe in James Baldwin when he said that what is scaring us is a sense of our identity. I dont believe the online world has created racism in america. Thats nuts. We are gravely white supremacist nation and we always have been. What i believe in the online context is we are getting a peek into a window of it. I need a lot better proof to suggest that online speech is the cause of racism as opposed to our window into it. And how to confront it. Then we are getting into terms. Nces in to say someone has been radicalize online, yes there studies to suggest that its rampant. There are studies to suggest that its radicalizing people or helping them embrace ideas they possible,d, which is too. We do know people who have committed terrible acts of violence have encountered their first window into formalized racist thought has existed online and come about through online. Example, inoof, for the charleston massacre. Came abouthow he these ideas . He said i made a google search. Blackonwhite crime. It took him to the council of conservative nation. The internet did not give dylan roof that question. The Digital World in Silicon Valley has a responsibility in what answers it provides people who answer those questions. On the first page of that web search, that query, it gave him hate Group Responsible for the propagation and aolation of our principles of nation. Whether it said, hey, dont come on in and we will show you some thought she didnt have, that is another matter. So they may not become radicalize online, but they may discover research. We have a few questions. Can you pass the microphone . Yes. I read a report and i am wondering if, lee, you can corroborate if it is true that blm and other black protest groups have been theres been an attempt to legally classify them as extremist and hate groups. If that is true, what are the indications . You are sitting next to a woman who knows a lot more about this. My colleague helped draft our request on what we recently called black extremists identity extremists. Like theyre handing you the mic. She can tell you more about what we are looking for there. A couple of weeks ago, there was a report in Foreign Policy about the f. B. I. Putting out an about black identity extremists. Similar to what we have been hearing about, this isnt anything new. It appears to be another in a long line of attempts to say that there is some shared ideology among black people so that the government can further survey them. We have put out a request trying to find out more about this use of black identity extremists, but also the broader attempt to claim there is a purported shared ideology among black people who are perceiving racism, why would they be doing that these days . And that that is somehow reflective of ideology and an attempt to challenge the government or attack police officers. What vera said goes to the last question from you which was art of the belief why im true believer and do this week is i believe there is a power that are warped. I worry that giving more power to the power structure wont shake out how we think but will result in this kind of absurdity which is radicalization means a black power fist. Right . You see that and you become more active. It is not that i dont agree with you or ryan that these are real risks and its horrifying to see that. There will be correlation if not causation violentlyople who are speaking online and people who actually commit violence. Thats true. Is do wehe question want to give structures of power the ability to decide . Groups that risk radicalization and heres how were going to tweak your google results secretly. I think its my job to be really skeptical of that even if i understand how all right thinking people would be search Holocaust Denial and the first thing you get is a Holocaust Denial site. Thats warped but we have to be better consumers of that marketplace. We really are way over our time. Police in puerto rico are rounding up people and volunteers in the community and questioning them if they have ever raised their fist. And that sort of thing. So it is something that is happening. Horrifying. Thank you. I am not a journalist. I am a teacher. I am married to a journalist. The university of virginia. When these things happened in august in charlottesville, i like many other alums, especially alums of color, were appalled, devastated, outraged. One of the things that struck me was how vital firstperson accounts were in finding out what actually happened. I depended on my friends who are still in charlottesville, some fellow students who now work for uva to find out what really happened as opposed to what we are hearing and seeing reported, even in good media or media with high standards. So i think one of the things i was struck by was that you had doctored videos floating around. You had people claiming that this person started the violence and then these people responded to the violent. So of course, it was to selfdefense. It just sent a real chill down my spine to think that we had to rely on actually knowing people who were on the ground there. Not necessarily reporters. Did you want to ask one of the journalists about how they verify that . How they work with accounts on the ground . How do we as consumers of journalists ot speakers]ng one other question, aligned to that. Aboute lee has talked universities and the way that universities can or cannot police what happens on their campuses. And i think we were struck by the fact that Terry Sullivan did not or could not do anything to rallyt this particular from happening even though they torches. Ying i like to get marc a chance about how the New York Times handles that clarification on the ground. Marc its very challenging. I believe very little that i see on social media when there is a big news event unless it is verified, and that includes a mass shooting, a hurricane, protests. There are now professionals who enjoy putting things online that are from 10 years ago that are made up in a studio. Social media is full of this. So we have a forensic unit in our Video Department that now takes video and attempts to confirm it by finding other video that it matches with that does research. It is extremely challenging to know what is real and what is not on your facebook feed and whether it is someone who graduated from your university or not has little to do with that. But the New York Times did writing the. Grad story. But it is very hard to tell because everybody is sharing, and you have no idea what is true and what is not unless it is reputable and verified by someone on the ground who is saying that they took this themselves and you know them. It is hard. Lee, we talked about College Campuses, do you want to address . Thing id add is there are a couple of different ways that these speakers come to campus. I think a little differently about them. First is what i mentioned before. Privatizeersities their sites and make them available firstcome, to the highest payer. My sympathy is limited when people they dont like come to the facilities. That is what happened at uva. Maybe they could do without the in extra income and thats a policy choice. They only regretted after the obvious happens. A trickier problem is you allow students to invite who they want to invite. Thats what happened at berkley. The campus republicans have invited speakers time and time again. I dont think we should and preventstudents them from inviting invited on campus. That is a necessary part of the academic environment. I think there are steps you can the allseason runs on stuff. Thingshink you can do like equally hand out student grants to groups to help them them speakers and pay for and ensure a more event platform arent part ofat the student Enterprise Club that 5 million. I think there are practical things schools can do, but they actually have to sit down and think about it before richard town. R comes to i see two people who want to ask questions. You that were over. It. That is i think its just one person. Question. E last and please tell us who you want it to. Ct can you hear me now, yes . This. R wants to answer id like to preface it by saying aeres a story about journalist who wants to ask how andou cover neo nazis klansmen and he said with a sheet. He had absolutely no use for wayring he said the best to do it is for longterm, deep reports. Vestigative i know we have touched on that and supposedly what walter whites investigations in the 1920s when he actually posed because he was a lightskinned posed as arican, he proklansmen and got interviews with klanspeople and a chicagohed in 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. In the present environment. Question. Od i want to direct that to you, you are assigning a team of reporters. I am not going to put on a sheet if that is what you are suggesting. But absolutely. 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 shoe leather and ryan, whose work i follow. Ryan is not running from protest to protest. It is connecting dots. It is reading documents. It is getting beneath the surface. This. How to really cover if i can add one thing to that. Right. Covering these events and saying verbatim the cursory remarks they make make in a microphone does so much in confronting this reality in america. Its understand who they are. Where are the back stories . Who is paying for this . Where is the money coming from . Lets talk about fundamentally, is this mercer money or not . Is. Not suggesting it lets talk about their communications and what they 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. It goes on and on. I agree with you completely. And i agree with marc. I have gone undercover when i this but iting complications. Now i go as me and find they will talk to me. Sometimes, more often than not, with a slip of the time by the right question, they reveal things they wish they hadnt so i just want to followup on the issue of undercover reporting. Without naming names, there is a is honingeporter who that beat of doing these longterm investigative pieces of peoplethe group hes covering. Ryan alluded to, that i think redes a lot of journalistic flags. Think lying about your identity is not journalistically sound. Betrays trust in the media and is not worth the that you eventually get. I also think 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 ethics 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. On newsmakers this weekend, our guest is the founder of the need to impeach campaign. He talks about some of the reasons for wanting to impeach President Trump and the tactics he has been using to gain support. So far, he has spent 20 million on the effort. Watch the interview sunday at 10 a. M. And 6 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Tonight on cspan, we will take a look at Business Trends in the Technology Industry with our series, the communicators. First, Walt Mossburg talking about the top gadgets and tech issues he has covered. After that, aol cofounder steve case on the latest developments for the internet. And the western Governors Association looks at Forest Management andseries, the commu. First, walt mos Disaster Management prepared is at its annual winter meeting in arizona. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your provider. Atellite mossburg, in your code of ethics statement you write i am not an objective news reporter. I am a subjective opinion columnist. Walt right. Host what does that mean . Walt i am like a movie reviewer. They are not objective