Transcripts For CSPAN Society Of Professional Journalists - Covering Hate 20180102

Have a hashtag. I am your moderator. To our new york city chapter, we aredline club, meeting here today. We have to my right mark lacey, the National News leader of the New York Times. Related, racial issues. He was a correspondent. Sitting next to him, the director of interactive journalism, cofounder of the website the hate index. He began his career at the New York Times as a breaking news editor and writer on the website. Then we have a senior staff attorney with the aclu, speech, privacy and technology. Intelligence project. Countryraveled the following extremism. He was a regional correspondent and iraq war correspondent for the associated press. Finally, jessica schulberg. She has written about this topic recently. Thank you. Lets start with lightning rounds. I will ask questions. And everyone can ask the same question. The importance of terminology. Tell us what guidance your . Rganizations have starting with you. I spend a fairmount of my time as the national editor, talking to reporters about which term to use, or talking to readers who want to take issue with our use of various terms. Termse none of these banned by the New York Times. Ap has issued interesting guidance that says all to write should not be used except tatian marks. We do use all to write 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 for white nationalists, domestic terrorism. Challenge. Er big some of these are legal terms. All of these are legal terms that require they are 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 someone pots property is damaged 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 and 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 posttrumped era this is distinct we 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 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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 gmail signature, that is something i used to do. 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. We start with what 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 called ideas. These are people these are not people who have calm ideas. 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, at no states 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 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 . The Southern Poverty Law Center 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 villify or malign groups of people on a 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. 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. Censorship approach. That is broader and includes people i would think of as more gardenvariety conservatives like a pension hero or livered 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. Once 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 doesnt reporters working 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 lined up 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 very 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. 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 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. I am thinking what the hell does steve bannon know about extremism. 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. 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. With a triggered by certain events 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 got at her for countering violent extremism. They would be 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. 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 ones. A maze, a boards nails through it, that should not it should not violate the first or Second Amendment to limit those when a group of masses. 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. And the problem is, we need guns and weaponry regulated the same way. What about violent incidents that dont involve weaponry . I mean, the gun issue is serious, and obviously you have some conflict there between the first and Second Amendment. When you have them present at a rally that will change the dynamic. There have been there were obviously shots fired in florida after the spencer meeting. There have also been many violent incidences that did not involve guns. I mean, is there a line where protected freespeech becomes incitement to violence. Are there certain magic words 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 fixes need to come in other places. The bar for incitement is very high. People often refer to it as shouting fire in a crowded theater. But that is not accurate. We can all do it together. One, two, three. Fire 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 and violence to immediately occur. That bar is so, so, so high. That bar was actually constructed on behalf 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. Hes the kind of guy i have met at cocktail parties. 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 a naacp leader named Charles Evers who was rallying for a boycott of white racist owned businesses. He gets very worked up. He said if anyone breakup is boycott we will break your fin neck. It goes all the way up to this Supreme Court because the white businesses sue him. And begrudgingly these justices wring their hands and say i guess we have to protect this naacp leader, too. Which is astounding and feels backwards. It is that idea that things will come very naturally to a fascist and supremacist state. Which our judiciary is emphatically a part of. 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. But that is the idea. So incitement is so high because it literally means a kkk leader saying we should go out and hang black people. Which i assure you he used a slur for is not incitement. 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. And it affects me. I have been yelled at by someone with a hand on their holster and it felt differently than someone who does not. It is threatening objectively. The second is i think the expansion of White Supremacy to the walls of the white house. I think that is a different question. Forous precedence 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. And i think the problem is, that reality, as true as it is, is unlikely to filter into inherently conservative justices. I think the answer is theoretically yes. The odds of this actually becoming legal incitement is low. I think if we want to grapple with safety issues and arm people in a race war they want to start, i think we need to look more to the weaponry into incitement law. Sandeep, talking about potential incitement or violence leads us to your project. Tell us more about it. Sure. The day after the election, streams of social media going through people talking about how at school there were chants of build a wall. The numbers of that were growing every day. How it was great growing up in new york, thinking about being safe. I thought about being a child back in california after the iranian hostage crisis and being chased down the hallway being called all kinds 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 the numbers because social media and news accounts were not being compiled in any way. And as the numbers get large, they also become so abstract that you lose track of what is the story behind that number. What happened to that individual . So 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 so that people can see where they personally fit in based on their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation. What has happened to people like them and what are the stories behind those individuals . So we just started compiling this and it kind of took off. 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 to october 22, we are taking the time to verify the information. There have been some hoaxes. If there is a hoax, it kind of victimizes the victim twice, because perhaps now someone will be afraid to speak out because maybe they wont be believed. The issue of hoaxes is very important. Obviously this project is being done at a journalism school. How do you investigate and verify to ensure that something is not a hoax . Right. The first thing we decided early on was that we cant just take social media posts, because we there are so many of them it is hard to verify them. So the methodology is focused on news accounts. News accounts where a reporter for a publication has gone out and interviewed people, has talked to the victim, has talked to a manager in a store where some incident may have occurred. And based on that, they have written a piece. But that right there narrows down the number of incidents that we can compile. There are probably a lot more than that. Thats actually deserve to be in his system. But they are not because they were not reported by a News Organization. That brings about the question, it is great to be in the Media Capital here, it is nice to be around a 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 post it on social media, no News Organization is going to come knock on their door and ask to do a profile. So we are missing a lot of things in that way. But we did decide to step back and say that our methodology would only take verified posts. That does not mean, however, that i have not discovered, that or that our team has not discovered errors in news accounts. I will give you one really quickly. A paper in new jersey talked about an episcopalian minister whose car had some homophobic stuff scratched into it. And when i looked into that, it said that it was in montclair, or sometime like that, but there was no Episcopalian Church there. I dug deeper and deeper. I reached out to the minister and he said, no, the newspaper took it from my Facebook Post and i posted it in montclair, but this is actually about a colleague of mine in boise, idaho. So, i had to dig for more details. So there are cases like that. What do you do when you find glaring errors . Do you report them . Do you tell the newspaper that maybe they want a clarification . I know youre doing a database, but this is a journalism school. Right. So, i have emailed people in the past about certain errors. But the great thing is, especially in a mediarich place, you can find other news accounts to link to and find clarification as well, usually. One more question for you. When we are talking about hate groups today, not everyone by any means 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 perhaps identification with any of these groups . We have different checkmarks. We check off where we have perpetrators, we have victims, we have locations as well. Hate in schools, middle schools, Elementary Schools, airports, pressure points like that. In this case we also have one for racist organizations. The only thing is that we will only add them as a racist organization if they have left flyers or recruiting material at the places where they have committed these acts of bigotry. So, 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. But we do have a few numbers. But at some point, that flares up, we will be activating that. That is all visible online. That is good to know. That is a Good Research tool for some of the reporters here. Lee, i did want to ask you, because you mentioned berkeley. We have a lot to cover today but 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 also press access with these groups. First tell us about some of the First Amendment implications, either when people who have been denied access to speak or when they have been shouted down, some of the security implications. Can you talk about that, particularly on College Campuses . Give me big eyes if i am going along. I will try to be synced. Succinct. 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 know if you do law or journalism that there are no cases that uniquely protect the rights of the press, theyre all proxies for the public right to free speech or assembly. So 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 as real individual humans also are impacted by these security measures. Those happen in very different ways. Just a few standouts recently. Let me think of ok, most of them are campus. One that is not campus, but i because it is so new and alien is the federal Aviation Administration becoming a player in the media landscape. What that means is when shit gets real on the ground they will put a nofly zone in the air. That is really difficult for anyone who is a citizen newsalist you might get from a drome 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. Unbelievably thanks to a diligent reporter at ap, he sought the public records and found evidence that the blm one was explicitly made to keep out journalists. They literally gave exemptions for all 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 journalists need to know about and join us in the fight against the faa. 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. Occasionally we are able to give money to people, particularly freelancers who dont have support who had been kept away from events or in some cases their video cameras have been taken. We also sign onto amicus briefs. So talk a little about that, about the First Amendment implications there. I can talk on the ground and i will look at that through the campus lens. Security restrictions on either attendees or people nearby are also going to spill out into journalists. Necessarily, by the way. Journalists may get extra heat if they are in the pen at a hostile rally come at trump rallies journalists have been singled out. I am talking about normal level security and hostility that applies 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. Again, because there is no special press right, it does not mean you cannot have anything asterisk unless you have a highpowered nikon, it does not work that way. A restriction is a restriction. You may be able to get press credentials and get special access to set up for 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 that is for rent for the public. Its is what happened at the university of florida. Somebody like Richard Spencer basically rents it for a private event. So he gets to decide who comes in. He gets to vet press. 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. Finally i want to throw it out to the panel. What about prohibitive costs which can be pretty severe for small campuses . Apparently university of florida spent 600,000 on security 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 also 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 will likely 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 based on controversy. That is actually true. We know that liberal firebrands have been given super high 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 without slipping into trumpian rhetoric. At berkeley, a lot of those costs are because people in antifa came intending to engage in some degree of violence. Perhaps in selfdefense, but i think the bar for selfdefense is lower than some peoples 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 has not yet been a case for where any federal court has seriously grappled with the idea of a repeat offender coming time and time again and bankrupting a school. There is a part of me that believes those two realities cannot coexist. So i think it is very likely to be a reckoning. I dont have a 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 school has to show they are not spending more than necessary. I suspect courts will have more sympathy for the idb cannot have open season on educational budgets because someone wants to come through town six times. I think there are going to be limits on repetition. Marc, i saw you nodding your head. Would you like to add to that . Well i was just going to say that we are lucky to have our own Inhouse Legal Team that helped our reporters get access deals with them when they get caught up by police as protesters. So we have lawyers every correspondent has another david or another lawyers cell phone in their phone. We are lucky, and he works 24 hours and you know that there is a lawyer that has your back. It is really needed these days if youre covering these events. Ok, anyone else want to jump in . One thing that i think is worth talking about because its new. In boston at the freespeech rally, there were protesters and counterprotesters. I think this is the most important thing i have to say. I am sorry i left it for last. We know police were screening people to decide what group they would go into. They did not want White Supremacists in the real freespeech rally, antiracist 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. For the cops to be telling members of the press they cannot cover it. One of the excuses that we heard and we hope doesnt happen again is that the chief of police was citing deprivation 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 grapple with. The security costs can have a Chilling Effect on speech. Is what you are saying. That is an excellent point, because another issue that has been happening, reporters have not only been screened, they have been arrested. This is becoming a more frequent problem, because of kenneling, running of everyone in the area. 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 . I thought you were indicating. It is a big issue. If youre covering the action you are aware that kenneling can happen. It finally to due process to run up 100 people who have likeminded ideals and say you are all guilty of trespassing. Obviously reporters get that benefit. One thing i do want to discuss are the digital implications, the Digital Media and mark and ryan know because we did this before six weeks ago in anaheim, this is of particular interest to me. I became interested in this topic in college, i wrote my masters thesis on the movement of hate groups onto the web, the idea that this is an outlet to increase their reach and now we have social media and we are increasingly seeing signs that a lot of the instigation on social media is in fact, not homegrown, in fact exogenous. Russian bots and the like. I do want to throw this out to the group. Maybe we could do one more lightning round on this. Then throw it out to the audience for questions. Mark, i will start with you. 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 on College Campuses is large, the real numbers are online and nowadays, these organizations are not meeting in the woods in robes, they are meeting online in chat rooms. And this is how they are reaching into peoples living rooms and theyre doing recruiting and that is how all of this is organized. And so, social media, online, this is where these organizations are truly thriving , and to cover these organizations, you have to be covering them online. Cannot simply be covering the public face of them. I would just add one thing to that, really. And that is there is so much data on social media today, and right now most of us are approaching social media and we see a post and we try to contact that one person and interview them and get more information on from them. But it is possible to start scraping all of the numbers and terms and starting to analyze them and come up with much larger trends. I do think we have to at some point not just think about interviewing people on social media but start interviewing the data itself that is being collected. Does anybody want to give a brief followup . Because 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 in the United States . Right. 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 plugging those numbers into that database. So that was a definite decision to say we are going to look for hate and hate incidences in the physical world, between people , how people are affected and how their confidence of walking down the street is affected when someone comes up and punches them, says something, 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. Look, the internet has placed strains on all of our traditional values of free speech and privacy. The project i work for is called it is for just that reason. We knew we would go back to free speech 101 in an internet era and revisiting all of these outcomes. I think 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 powerfully echo chamber possibility. Journalists struggle with how much attention to give these groups and how to cover them but using careful terminology and exposing this to sunlight 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. Then you see the lack of anonymity. Get fired, there were discussions and they crawled back into their shell 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 confront it in the real world where we all exist. Im going to push back on one point that you made briefly in your preface. I think the external factors that are playing into the National Debate are not necessarily certainly the russian collusion and suspicion around the election there is not as much evidence as suggestion that these entities are pushing extremist racist ideology in the country that we know. There is suspicion that it has happened, but what we know for certain is there is a large portion of racists and extremists that are active online. It has been going on since aol went online in 1993. When aol went online, the oldest and most prominent racist site goes on with it. Don black has been an advocate of the internet as a space to propagate and expand these ideologies forever. I think we are looking at period of time where we will be dealing with Digital Space free speech issues 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 the battleground for the cultural war in 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 i 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. And actually that is an excellent set up for jessica. I should mention that jessica came to my attention because she wrote about storm front, something i wrote about in the 1990s. I talked to don black and he was just starting it. 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. So it is like the more things change, the more they stay the same. So what are your comments on the digital side . One thing that made me laugh was one marc said these guys are not meeting in the forest anymore. One thing i looked at with stormfront 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. It was so weird. We figured out with her conference was going to be. 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 cloudflare, which protects the website from getting taken down by hackers. They suspended service, which basically put 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 screw custoemrs, but these guys, im going to take them offline. And he did. 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 nazis stay online. People will find a way to get their ideology out there. I think some people on the panel might disagree. But after the daily stormer got kicked offline they kept reemerging on 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 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. This is what the jewish cabal doesnt want you to see. At some point, if your strategy is to silence people versus prove why theyre wrong, you are kind of going to lose. Im not sure 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. When companies do not take a content neutral approach which is why when people get upset, why do people do to use platforms to incite violence . Why are they still on facebook, why do the get to use these platforms . When people get so upset why can these White Supremacists be on and issuing Death Threats why are they still on facebook . Why do they get to use this platform to incite violence . I kind of say like, i dont think theres really much you can do about it. Indeed, servers in the u. S. Actually provided this service for foreigners who have limitations on speech. A principle in my thesis years go was in fact a german neonazi who is at that time iving in canada but using a server in california to put peech on line for people in germany that would have been illegal in germany. Thats off the roll in the u. S. To i can see you want comment on that. The thing about sort of the silencing people on line, you know, or sensoring as theyd have us believe its important that these web do this on o to not your platform. And on. Goes on it also says i will not use your platform for the propagation of that demean or bias people or demean or express bias or prejudice. Essentially. So whats happening now is just are holding es people accountable to the terms of service theyve agreed to. Its not that, you know, people silenced by twitter. Twitter has always had these rules and people have been violating them and twitter has really cared. In the midst of this election and certainly and this is the violence weve seen in the twitter and facebook are saying ok, weve got a problem. And so theyre going back to the terms of service and getting rid of people. Behind closed doors, a lot of terms will tell you these of service are completely subjective and trying to force them on any kind of consistent impossible and in reality, the only thing theyre really, really good about enforcing is kiddie porn because dont want to get sued. That also that also kind opens up the door for a company, a startup to have ifferent terms of service that actually encourages neonazis congregate and speak and thats already happening as well. Yeah. I saw you nodding your head. Obviously, these arent First Amendment implications because these are private companies. Ot governments but there are free speech implications. Do we want private companies wealthy, large, powerful ones like facebook and twitter determining what speech is acceptable . Obviously, im not suggesting we have a free for all but theres a path that you can see going. Agree with jessica and i think theres a difference between the social Media Companies that ryan was talking and people we think of the backbone of the web, the denial like cloud roups flare are more of a utility on the web. I say that word very loosely, right . Groups, ryan isa exactly right. Facebook has constituents and they want people to use their service, right . Going to be hard to get a jewish clients if you constantly , e swastikas on facebook right . There are many examples of that i could give, right . It. Ont mean to be flip of i think thats real. Its right for a company and they have every right to decide what are terms of service that ork so we can have a community and the kind of community that we want . The problem is, because these tend to react to moral panics, they put 100 of their esources into censorship and zero into what we think of as due process. So sure, they dont want nudity appeal luck getting an if youre a breastfeeding mom whose picture was taken down in error. Good luck getting a repeal if youre a person of color recounting the experience of crime ent and the hate you may have experienced that morning, people of color are more often shut down on facebook that was use the slur directed at them than when people actually using slurs against people. Astounding how bad they are at censorship because its very messy and very hard, right . At least when we have a constitutional regime, we know its really messy and hard. Why you get to appeal when the government messes up. That doesnt happen on line. Call it censorship and it is, it may be censorship that many of the users want. The fact that this censorship may be coming from algorhythms rather than human editors. Thats really complicated. Were working to challenge a that makes a felony to do what ryan just described which is to violate terms of doing it on ere behalf of researchers ta put in for tious names to test facial red lining. The only thing you know to get a different credit offer is to put in the name and see the kind of ads that you get filtering to your page. Guess what . One of those ever names isnt yours is a federal felony by violating those terms of service. Obviously, some rules are probably right. But we dont want to give that kind of power to the government using those terms of service and those speech rules against you in a criminal way. That for us is where were really holding the line. It, theyre really interesting values based conversations. At the end of the day, something ike a cloud fair, i dont want them taking nazis off the web number one because i think it on s the folks of twitter the right and opens gab so they have their own echo chamber and looking on it. At least on twitter we might have an idea and i dont think value in hiding it, drive it underground and Something Like cloud flare, we dont want them to play that role for us. It would be a grievous mistake. The obvious implication is they of the other eech people they host and by god, thats a dangerous road for us to watch for People Holding up century medium of communication. When you say cloud flare, youre working it as talking backbone of the internet so Internet Service providers, selling service base, the utilities. Ok. People who arent creating an expressive space like a social media company. How hard it is for these Massive Companies dealing with so many crimes to enforce smart way. When we were looking at the storm front case and trying to figure out how they got back on we saw it was domain registrar when we were writing up. S and we reached out to them for comment and say oh, what made you guys decide to put storm back on line . They have woman on the phone yelling at me saying we already this a statement about month ago. Read our statement. I dont think so. This just happened yesterday. About the talking daily storm where she got confused. They put out a statement xplaining why they didnt want to do service for the daily stormer and a month later, they helped storm front get back on line. This woman who was responsible for talking to the media about the issues didnt realize they line because e on don black had registered through a proxy and they only found out the neonazis ng once a reporter called them. When you look at how ad hoc it doesnt inspire a lot of confidence in these private companies to be regulating such a delicate issue. I meant by the moral panic button. Somebody calls and theyre like we have to cover butts. Thats not a great way of making it. All right. We are running long and i did promise there would be time for q a. Someone will bring a microphone. I saw several hands. You were first. Then you. Would anyone on the panel put together two piece of conversation from the beginning of the panel that dont seem to fit . E on the one hand, youre getting schmoozed by the right. This is this new approach, new friendly approach. The e other hand, its ldfashioned harassment up to Death Threats. And do you have a sense that in the s theyre one same person or groups . Do they talk if theyre not . Another . Talk to one could you drill down a little bit on that seeming contradiction, please . Said you want e to address your question to anyone in particular . One or two of the panelists or throw it out to whoever wants to take it . To whomever wants to take it. Ok. Ryan, you deal with them a lot. Maybe, perhaps, start with you and then jessica, youve been lately. L this so essentially youre asking why is this different now or how that, you how is it know, the scmooze and booze crew themselves o make known and prominent again with the very real violence coming from this. Important to note in the 21st century in this urrent iteration of hate and extremism were doing two streams of influence come together. This is just one of many models f two streams of influence coming together. But were seeing the old guard, believers in true the sense of the word and the people who are out there and they believe it thoroughly, ok . Additionally, youve got these atuned youngnternet into this because they want to piss people off because theyre trolls and they up through the internet where upsetting someone was noble. Making someone cry was beneficial and was an achievement. So youve got this stream of were doing who were expounding racist ideas what they want the world to believe and theyre going to shove it down your like it or er you not and a Younger Group of people that want to upset you and stand up and flip the middle to the establishment. And theyre going to shove it down your throat whether you want it or not. Basically, you got these two streams of people who are coming this new youmaking that were calling the all right. Jessica, you want to fall in there . Yeah, as far as the scmooze and booze, i dont get any booze them yet. Well see. I think youre sort of referring to the Richard Spencer tape who out of every shut single hotel in d. C. , invited reporters to his home for a press conference. And its not necessarily a friendly relationship but these are the type of people, you know, he has a nice haircut and and hes y blazers trying to put a good face on this disgusting ideology and i thats a lot of ways adapting. They dont want to look like the running around in the wizard outfits and look like smart respectable college mad theyre who are losing their place in society and i think theyre finding it to to be a more effective method. And i think youll recall during the last couple of years or so when these things are first up, the first time that riched ash spencer had the big speech in d. C. People doing the hail hitler sign. Of Mainstream Media outlets remarking on how leancut he was and how well spoken he was and it was just baffling because you never would to that courtesy afforded i wouldnt say never, these days you wouldnt have that ourtesy afforded to david duke and their ideology isnt all that different. Thats something reporters have to be careful about. Actually, jessica, cant that be a double edged sword . If youre commenting on the fact that someone is clean cut, implying that you dont expect them to be clean cut or spoken. Go ahead. One of the Biggest Challenges that journalists in america have faced since the election. This preconceived notion of what racists look like. Theyre missing teeth wearing place in the e woods. Not here, you know . The reality is that racists are our cops. Rs, theyre theyre our military. Theyre everywhere. And this selection has done more to kind of bring that to our attention as an undeniable truth than anything and thank god for that. And right away, theres stereotypes that are the exact that can be pes used by racists so i saw you nodding your head. You want to add something to that, mark . No, i think ryans point is a good one and i dont think this is a new thing. Mean, think back to the to he 1960s and the protests on youstreets of the south and had, you know, there were klansmen and you had politicians wereere in fancy suits who just as racist, you know, on the giving the senate and speeches. So theres always been a dichotomy s been here and theres sort of the movement als of the and then the thugs, the thugs of the movement. Ometimes theyre the same people but sometimes theyre not. I just want to say, ryan, about teachers and so forth, it really shows that n the hate index, i was quite shocked to see the number of Elementary School teachers and have chool teachers that said things to their children. Ok. Seconds . Have 150 its important to note this is not accidental. Ou know, david duke and don black made a decision, a verbal one. They wrote down and talked about when this in, you know, duke started running for congress. It was a plan. And were seeing the end of it. Yes. 1990s when many of you were too young to remember this. When david duke decided to go path, i do l remember and don black was working with him. He was this younger sort of acolyte. They did make that decision to go mainstream. Ok, by the way, if people ask indicate if ease there are one or two panelists that you want to direct the questions to and youre next. Thank you. Yeah. Veryone for your insightful comments. I dont think folks of color are under any illusion of what look like. Or may not my question is to mostly everyone and its in terms of in two parts. D of to turn sort of the racial ends newsroom look at the and where we began with these stories. In terms of access, what are ome of the considerations or debates happening within your organizations about which reporters cover these beats . Who is mark, you mentioned deep dive. You know, are there folks more suited . Into these to get places and into these places and get honest talk . Here, you guys speak about it and made me think of two towns of jasper going in and talking crews, one ferent white and one black about what went on with james bird in texas. So nder if thats an issue free to answer. How is it r you, addressing issues that are legal . Do you get stories about folks restaurant and werent served because theyre lgbtq. If so, is that something that index . P on your those are two different questions and well start with mark. You can pick up after hes done. First question, fascinating question. For me personally, i want who want to cover this who are eager, you know, assionate about covering the topic so we have black reporters, White Reporters, you jewish, christian, theres not a particular type. All of them, you know, there is no doubt that theyre weve had reporters who have been speaking to some over supremacist leader the phone and the person has jew . Are you a you know, but weve we you know, im sure a black reporter, a White Reporter will have a at some of perience these events but i believe both the event and both have covered the event. Sort of picking reporters to, you know, to get access or, you know, but its an interesting question. Yeah, so we are about a month compiling behind in the information. But we do have categories for denial of service. An service provider, by airline attendant, lot of those categories in there. We have gathered a few of those sure as we look at the data coming out now or news have jumped ill most likely. Ok. Here. s a woman over before we need another show of hands, you went the last time. So much. Ank you yeah . Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for all being here. This is sort of slightly cheeky question. And student at columbia im looking to write a story on hate groups specifically in new wondering if you guys had any like pro tips or that i should s be looking up . Because you were saying, jessica, you find it really easy to get in touch with them. Like i havent had that all. Rience at so yeah, any tips you have. As far as that, i know theres a big proud boys presence here. Listen to w if you that. I think this American Life had a good episode on them. A bar in eres brooklyn thats supposed to be the proud boys bar. Get ure somebody else can you the name of it. I honestly think if you go in person, especially those guys, men who want to talk to young women. So thats kind of a horrible way to talk to you. The reality is theyll talk to you. Just tell people where you are and maybe go with somebody else. But yeah, i would just cast a pretty wide net. Be afraid to follow up. I would, you know, tell them more about what youre looking interested youre and i think a lot of these i ple are very eager, like said to get their propaganda out there. If your geography extends upstate, theres a number of active militias north of the largest one of the groups is from upstate. Ok, another show of hands. Round ours in the last and then over here, give it to her and then her. Those two. So that one. Hi. Essica made the very good point, actually you all made a lot of really good points. Whenever you ly said that not all are violent nd there are peaceful gatherings. I have personally covered a. K. K. Rally at the birthplace of jeff davis that was one week after charlottesville and it didnt go to print because nothing happened. Of their trucks. They tromped around the monument two or three times which is what they do after church. Nothing happened. Understand in part why it didnt wind up in the papers. Because thats kind of a boring story unless you tell it with accent. All right . Thank you. But the thing about it is what the rvice do we do narrative when we leave out the not ful components or the as radical components of any of the involved groups . Well, in fact, i would just say that one of the reasons gotten oups have not more coverage is possibly because their meetings have largely been fairly boring, as said. To you address that question ok. Right. I think thats what made my colleague want to do this sort f deep dive into the movement because i think so he, he embedded with a lot of alt right supremacist crew and i think a lot of people on both sides through that. Nd i think did hear a lot of frustration from people saying know, ou just said, you some guy does something crazy and thats headlines and speaks to the whole movement. What not typically happens. That was his reason for doing the deep dive on that. And i just said i dont think magic necessarily a formula for knowing exactly which of these events, right, is to be a news worthy event and i think august 12th in particular, charlottesville, you speaking to our virginia affiliates this wasnt even first rally that he had flyers about this year and Richard Spencer went back to charlottesville two weeks later in almost zero Media Coverage of a totally boring event from a point of view. And its obvious the media is news worthy and violence is news worthy. As a free speech effort, my the publicrn is that begins to connect protests and violence because those are the points that when they put together leads to a news story. Right . And there werent that many news boston, right . 40,000 people got off their bus and said oh, i guess white is on the assension and i should probably leave my house today. Story snt as big of a outside of the globe. Thats kind a shame. No sentence should end at youre talk le if about what protests means to the media environment. It should end no earlier than the next weekend in boston. Did you want to give a quick call . I have a number of questions out here. Looks like you have thoughts on that. Talking about e like the klan march is every other day. You know, the klan is out there, theyre doing something trying in the news. Name theyve been trying to do it since the 1960s. Lets be honest. Theyre handing out candy to you know, ery week, its important. There is a newsworthiness to it and news judgment that takes generally before these events, you know sort of the and nature of the rhetoric that youre going to hear about. You know if its a Critical Mass or if its ple something thats just going to malignant w, some kind of guy running around and screaming about whatever. Ut it is a challenge and one that, you know, that we address as journalists across the world trying to figure out whats and whats not . You know . And also, whats giving them an platform and whats not. You know . Is there a risk, though, that coverage they get because they have this violence . In the last couple of months theres been a lot more coverage. There has been violent acts. I think that presumes that the violence happened because there was media there. I dont think thats true at all. I think there was violence that happened because they brought in place too many people who, you know, they didnt know there has been violent acts. Who they in and some of whom were, you know, hell bent on doing what they did. Next question. Thank you. I have a question for lee and then for the whole panel. Id like to get your opinion how selfconsciously the eonazi and neofascist elements are manipulating free speech right now. Theres no accident in them choosing berkeley, the home of speech movement. They were very conscious of that. In radio. Le i work i had people on the ground covering that event and they about plicitly talking how much fun it was to sort of topsyturvy that. Curious what your attitudes are about that because theyre ery, very consciously manipulating free speech issues. If you watch spencer there in florida, hes basically everybody. Youre denying my free speech. How do you see that resonating with the public . The level of think pieces on this. The level of depth of the reporting on this, i think is inadequate. Nazi party came up to new york 1950s and 1960s. Ame up here to do the exact same thing theyre doing in charlottesville. He came to union square and triggered Holocaust Survivors veterans to jewish go there and kick the asses royally. I watched Something Like that in high school in yorkville on 86th street the exact same thing. Publicized. This is not new. And the question of the interrelationship with things like while im thinking about carters book the politics of rage about the wallace ovement and how really the media and academia have dropped the ball for the past six years depth and now in we have to play catchup. Finally, the question about terminology. Terminology. When does one call somebody Walking Around with a swastika a opposed to an alt right person . Ok. Question for lee here on the terminology . Question for all of those guys. Lets start with lee because kind of a legal question. How selfconscious are these manipulating language and free speech . I think 100 . This is their full goal right now. Is wencern is at the aclu have to make sure our brand isnt tarnished, right . That has a brand that includes representing nazis in high profile cases, right . Moment where i think it goes back to alexs question about budgets. I think this is, you know, this performance art. Aclu itterative, for us at were thoughtful of all our cases, right . We have tons of peel that have civil Rights Violations and we to make choices and priorities. And look, if the law is not clear, were going to be there. Right . We have and will continue to help develop free speech law in the years. Right now, free speech rights arent really in question from a point of view. Incitement is at that crazy high bar and its not going to move. Folks know ishese that they have this high water mark. They can float their boats around under and more power to right . I work for a living on free speech so i support that. However, i think that what theyre doing now is not necessarily anything new but more insistent, right . Mosquitos and testing it constantly in a way thats budgetary and thats not really interesting from a legal view. Of its really not. Its factually oppressive. 100 t only do they know what theyre doing, you know, free speech week, nobody was a speech about condra madison. They were going up and talking bout hating black and brown people. They can label it free speech all they want. But i think an event like boston that. The lie to i think the event at berkeley have given lie to that. These are not folks trying to conversation. Eper trying to take the mantle of victimhood because the words arent great for selling. And they knowline it. I think theres hope in that. F they know that the only way they can embrace this dying gasp patriarchy, i got to take a little hope from that honestly. Three women raise and i dont remember what order i called on you. Does anyone else burning to jump in on that . The n, i think lee handles legal aspects ok. And please direct your questions whomever. Ok, sure. m just like raffling over the issue of free speech and obviously youre an expert. I understand why we protect all types of free speech and why allowed to are publicize their bigotry on line. Do we really want to and do we to give them access to convert and recruit the masses popular mainstream platforms like twitter and facebook. I think ryan brought up that how they have these terms where you cant violate them and like now, i think been a large movement for citizens to just make sure valley are silicon holding these people accountable when they do violate it. But then it sounded like when was speeing you were like oh, but we want we want we dont want them necessarily to use another publicize hannel to their free speech. So like i just wanted maybe some clarification. Talked about some of this before the q a. Anyone in particular you want to to . Ress it whoever really wants it. I have a Quick Response which s your question assumed that the presence on line isnt selfradicalizing. That. S zero proof of you can believe that, right . I know ryan is shaking his head. Literally is not a single peer review study that online speech radicalizes. Most of this takes place theres you can jump in after i finish my thought, ok . Largely, this has been assumed s a truth in on line radicalization of muslim extremis extremists, right . Our government has assumed if onre a muslim person and go line and you see an imam ranting against, you know, america that radicalized. E a lot of that has been based on fabricated evidence and studies. Thats the truth. With regard to online domestically i have a healthy bit of that skepticism. This a deeper fear of nation, i believe in James Baldwin when he said whats scaring this country is a sense own identity. I dont believe that online the online world has created racism in america. Thats nuts gravely white supremacist nation and always have been. Hat i believe in the online context is were getting a peek into a window of it. I need better proof to suggest causenline speech is the of racism as opposed to our window into it and how to it. Front i think were getting into differences in terms. I mean, to say that someone has radicalized on line, yes, there havent been a lot of studies to suggest theyre right . , there havent been a lot of studies to suggest its radicalizing people or actually ideas they embrace already had. Which is possible, too, because who have that people committed grave and horrible and terrible acts of violence have encountered their first window into like formalized racist thoughts have existed on line and come about through on line. Like ask dylann roof, for asked about how he came about these ideas. He said i made a google search. White crime. Ck and what it did is google took him, website of the council of conservative citizens this whole bastion of ideas. The internet didnt give dylann roof that question. Digital world and Silicon Valley has a responsibility in what who rs it provides people ask those questions because on the first page of that web earch, that query, it gave him a racist hate Group Responsible for propagation and violation of a nation. Ples as now, whether it said, hey, dylann come on in and let me ideas and introduce you to thoughts that you might not matter. D is another they may not become radicalized on line but may discover racism. On. Ant to get we have a few more questions here. Can you pass the microphone between the two of you . Hi. I read a report, i dont remember where. Lee, you can if orroborate if its true that blm and other black protest groups theres been an attempt as egally classify them extremists and hate groups and if thats true, what are the implications . Sitting next ally to a woman who knows more about this than me. My colleague vera is in front of actually helped draft our foyer request on what we recently referred to as black so i dont remists know if it looks like theyre handing you on the mike like a given thewho has been floor. But she can tell you more about what were looking for there. Sure. A couple of or weeks ago, there was a report in Foreign Policy about the f. B. I. An assessment about black identity extremists and weve been hat hearing about, this isnt anything new. It appears to be a new a long line of say that theres some shared ideology among black people so that the government them. Urther survey and weve put out a foyer request basically trying to find this use of black identity extremists but also the that r attempt to claim theres a purported shared ideology among black people who perceiving racism, why would they be doing that these days . An s somehow reflective of ideology and an attempt to challenge the government or attack police officers. And i would say what vera just said goes to the last uestion from you as well which is part of the belief, im a true believer in doing this work, i believe we have tructures that are fundamentally warped by racism and sexism and every other ism in this country and i worry that to the power wers structure wont shake out how we think, right . Kind of esult in this absurdity which is radicalization means a black power fist, right . You become that and more active. So its not that i dont agree with you or ryan that these are and its horrifying to see that. And, of course, theres going to be correlation if not a between people that are violently speaking on line, violentho speak about a ideology and people commit violence. Thats true. I think the question is do we of powerive structures the ability to decide these are the groups that risk heres how on and were going to tweak your google results secretly and i think to be skeptical of that even if i completely nderstand how right thinking people would be appalled at the idea that you search Holocaust Denial and the first thing you site. A Holocaust Denial right . Thats nuts. But also our warped marketplace of ideas and we have to be consumers of that marketplace. Before i turn it over our really are way over time. I want to let you know that olice and puerto rico are rounding up people, volunteers in the community, and questioning them if theyve ever raised a fist and that sort of thing. So, you know, it is something thats happening. Thank you. Horrifying. Thank you. Im not a journalist. Im a teacher. Married to a journalist. But also an alum of the and, of y of virginia course, when these things happened in august in charlottesville, i like many other alums and especially alums were, you know, appalled, devastated, outraged. Of the things that struck me was how vital irst person accounts were in finding out what actually happened. I actually depended on my riends who are still in charlottesville, some of my fellow students who now work for out what actually find really happened as opposed to what we were hearing and seeing in, you know, even or media with high standards. Ut so i think one of the things that i was struck by is you had doctored videos floating around. You had people claiming that oh, this person started the violence nd then these people just responded to the violence and so, of course, it was just selfdefense. And i think it just sent a real chill down my spine to think rely on actually knowing people who are on the ground there. To ask one of the journalists here about, for example, how that. Erify how they work on the ground. How do we as consumers of are, you know, not journalists and concerned about whats happening. How do we actually get through this . One other question that aligned that. Because lee has talked about this ties and sort of the way that universities can or cannot police what happens on campuses. And i think we were very struck by the fact that Terry Sullivan did not or could not do anything to prevent this particular rally from happening though they were carrying torches, even though they were shouting thats a different question. Mark a chance e to talk about how the New York Times handles that verification. I mean, its very challenging. Little that i see there is a dia when big news event unless it is verified and that includes a shooting, a hurricane, a protest. Mean, there are now professionals who enjoy putting 10 gs on line that are from years ago that are made up in a studio. Media is just full of this. We have a we our a forensic unit in Video Department that now takes video and attempts to confirm it finding other video that it matches with that does research challenging emely to know what is real and what is on your facebook feed and whether it is someone who your university or not, has little to do with that. The New York Times did have a u. V. A. Grad writing the that. Of but really, its very hard to everybody is sharing you have no idea not out ue or whats there unless it is reputable, the ground eone on who is saying that they took this themselves and you know them. You know, its hard. And lee, we talked a lot about college campus. You want to briefly address some the only thing id add is of there are a couple different ways that these speakers come to campus and i think a little differently about them. First is what i mentioned before which is where privatize their space and make them available irst come, first serve to the highest payer. My sympathy is limited when those colleges then cry that people they dont like come to rent those facilities. Thats what happened at u. V. A. U. F. Hats what happened at and you know what . Maybe they could do without the 40 grand in extra income and not open season on their campus. Thats a policy choice, right . Theyre only regretting after the obvious happens. The latter which i think is a trickier problem is you allow they wanto invite who to invite. Right . Thats whats happened at berkeley is the campus republicans have invited time and time again. I dont think we should prevent from inviting invited speakers on campus. I think thats absolutely a necessary part of the academic environment. I want to be clear theres some steps that you can take to limit season runs on stuff. I think you can do things like out student grants to groups to help them bring speakers and pay for them and nsure a more even platform for students that they arent part of a student american interbribes club that has 5 send him on a speaking tour. I think for practical things that schools can do. They have to actually sit down think about it before Richard Spencer comes to town because then any reaction if theyre a Public School is to run afoul the First Amendment. We are over. Ive seen two people for a while here who want to ask questions. I will remind you that were over. Facing because i was this way, i didnt call them. That is it you have it. Its one person. Last question. And please tell us if you want to direct it to anyone. Can you hear me now . Whoever wants to answer this, to preface it by saying theres a story about a how doist who once asked you cover neonazis and klansmen sheet. Said with a he had absolutely no use for coverage. Went on to say that whats the best way to do it is for focus rm deep investigative reports. I know weve touched on that but what walter whites investigations in the 1920s when actually posed because he was a very light skinned africanamerican. He posed as a basically, pro interviews witht klans people and was published in a chicago newspaper. More effect ly had than all of the actual coverage. Effort be ost of the given in this instance so as not to give them a platform. But actually, to deep focus and ong term Investigative Journalism if thats possible in the present environment. Good question. Want to direct that actually to you, mark, since you are assigning a team of reporters to this. Absolutely. To put on a sheet if thats what youre suggesting. But no, absolutely. Thought i sort of talked about that before that there is very unsatisfactory about thinking youre covering going from on by protest to protest. He stories that really matter that you should be doing have othing to do with these public displays. Theyre really shoe leather and ryan whose work i follow. Ryan is not running from protest o protest, you know, its really getting connecting dots. Documents. S reading its getting beneath the surface. Thats how to really cover this. One thing to d that. So youre right. I mean, covering these events that, of course, reporting verbatim, the cursory in a megaphoneke does so much in confronting this reality in america. Who they are, their back stories, where they come from. Ugly secrets are they trying to hide . Fundamentally t is this mercer money or is it not . Im not suggesting it is. Lets talk about their about how ons and they talk to one another and what they say to one another hen they think noo one is looking. Thats a more revealing look at them than anyone else. Ook at the discord chats released after charlottesville they were talking about guns. It goes on and on. Completely and i agree with mark. I have gone undercover when i irst started doing this to appear at rallies not as me but provides journalistic complications. I go as me now. Theyll talk as me. When its the flip of the tongue and right question, they reveal things they wish they hadnt. Quickly on the issue of undercover reporting since you brought it up. Without naming names, theres a specific reporter who is sort of honing hat beat of doing these pretty incredible long term investigative pieces posing as the group of people hes covering. That raises a lot of journalistic red flags and i you to talk to your professor abouts it. Weve debated a lot internally nd i think its lying about your identity is not really journalistically sound and i of trust etrays a lot in the process and endangers yourself and isnt worth the access that you get. Access for journalists comes harder to come by if theres going to be a greater temptation of bend the journalistic ethics rules. I think thats something that journalists coming up are going need to grapple with. I think that does bend the and we would need another two hour panel for that. Thank you very much for your time this evening. [applause] thank you. Thank you. For the excellent questions. At onight on c span, a look the defense financing and readiness. Military and elected officials as well as Defense Industry about the talk equipment and people required for current and possible future conflicts around the world. Heres a preview. Obviously going to defend nuclear north st korea and if, you know, god orbid iran becomes a Nuclear Weapons state, well defend ourselves against them, too. Ere going to keep fighting terrorists, unfortunately. And weve got, you know, europe asia traditionally as congressman gallagher was saying we morning have been areas have not wanted to see dominated by another hostile power and were going to continue to do that, i think. So everyones candidate, you know, for this, were going to cale back our ambitions and going to be the middle east, you know, and god knows id love to, ou know, for the region to return to the obscurity it so richly deserves. But thats just not going to happen. Going to continue to impose itself on us. So i think were talking really and or resources. But when we talk about esources, you know, i think everyone automatically goes to the