‘DEMOCRACY GONE WILD’ HATE SPEECH INFESTS ONLINE VERSIONS OF LOCAL DAILY NEWSPAPERS
Pasadena Weekly, CA
June 12 2008
For the person behind the moniker "Viking Knight," the Internet is
a virtual playground for hate.
"Mexican’ts are a b…stard race and will come to nothing in the
end. WHITE POWER FOREVER," Viking Knight wrote in response to the
fatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy. "Somebody saved the LAPD the
trouble of icing this ‘vato.’ … He is one less Mexie on the planet,
not that it counts for much."
On the beating of an Orthodox Jew by skinheads in North Hollywood: "We
should offer a reward to the guy who off’d this Christ-killer. … Jew$
are a disease."
On the death of an Armenian girl who was denied a liver transplant by
her health insurance company: "God got rid of one the Turks missed. Too
bad He doesn’t get rid of all of them."
A person might expect to find these and other vile comments by Viking
Knight — including slurs against gays and Asians — posted on a
white supremacist or neo-Nazi Web site.
But the banner on the top of the page belongs to the Daily News of
Los Angeles, and in other cases to its MediaNews Group sister paper,
the Pasadena Star-News.
Like dozens of other people who post comments through these and other
newspaper Web sites, Viking Knight can remain as anonymous as he or
she wishes to be. And due to the anonymity and instant access to an
audience that poorly monitored newspaper and social networking sites
provide, Internet hate speech is a growing national phenomenon.
"It’s democracy gone wild," said Deborah Lauter, director of the
national civil rights division of the Anti-Defamation League. She’s
hoping the Daily News and the Star-News will remove racist diatribes
from the Web and be more vigilant about hate speech in the future.
"Unfortunately, we believe now that many more papers are offering
this kind of [comment] service we are going to see an increase in
that kind of hate rhetoric. While it is protected speech, we believe
it is incumbent on a newspaper or a social networking site to step up
and be a responsible corporation, and be more active in moderating
[its Web site] and taking down what is clearly hate speech," said
Lauter. "Once they decide to create that forum, then they have to
act responsibly and monitor it."
The Daily News and Star-News Web sites allow any reader to post his
or her views through a service called Topix, which allows discussion
forums to be built around news articles and other subjects.
"It is impossible for any paper our size to read all the comments
every day, so this is an issue often discussed [among the 57 MediaNews
Group daily newspapers, many of which use Topix]," said Ryan Garfat,
online editor of the Daily News.
Garfat said the paper typically relies on Web users to flag hate
speech and other abusive posts through Topix, which forwards those
complaints to editors. He said Tuesday that he plans to remove hate
speech identified by this newspaper, but is already dealing with dozens
of reader complaints about other posts — some of which aren’t hate
speech at all.
Garfat also said that there were no plans to change how the Web site
is monitored.
"The unfortunate effects of having an open forum are that these things
are going to happen, and we feel they reflect poorly on the identity
of the newspaper. But if we take the alternate route of eliminating
comments, then I think we are not fulfilling our goal of allowing
legitimate discussion within our community and would be disserving
our community by doing that."
The Star-News has had far fewer problems with online hate speech than
the Daily News — the source of the three comments quoted above —
and removed posts that contained hate speech following conversations
with the Pasadena Weekly.
"Our policy for the comments is that we do not moderate or edit the
comments before they’re posted online. However, we will remove comments
that are deemed to be offensive or inappropriate," said San Gabriel
Valley Newspaper Group Senior Editor Frank Pine, who supervises the
Star-News, Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
Pine said he was not aware of Viking Knight’s hateful posts until
hearing from this newspaper, and that the only complaints about
comments made over the Internet had been from sources in news stories
who felt they were being characterized unfairly.
Although Topix terms of service prohibit content that is "hateful,
or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable," it also warns
that users "may be exposed to content that is offensive, indecent
or objectionable."
Topix is a Palo Alto-based limited liability corporation owned
largely by publishing giants the Gannett Co., The McClatchy Co. and
the Tribune Co., according to its Web site. The Web site for the Los
Angeles Times does not use Topix, and reader comments appear to be
monitored to exclude hate speech.
At the Star-News site, Viking Knight makes it clear in one
anti-affirmative action rant that he’s no fan of presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee Barack Obama, and in a separate post appears to
advocate that Obama be assassinated.
"Robert Kennedy sold our courageous men in uniform out when he became
a peacenik. He sold White people out when he started kissing up to the
likes of Chavez, Dr. King, the mestizo farmworkers, etc. Sirhan may not
be a prize, but he was just what America needed, just when we needed
him," wrote Viking Knight in response to a column by Star-News Public
Editor Larry Wilson about Kennedy’s Pasadena-bred assassin. "As we
approach the November elections, we could use a man like Sirhan again."
"That post is clearly over the line," Pine said Monday. On Tuesday
it had been removed from the site, along with other posts disparaging
Latino youth.
"As shocking as these kinds of things are, they are increasingly
common on perfectly mainstream Web sites. Usually the paper will
step in and scrub their sites of this kind of material, because if
they didn’t they would become absolute nesting grounds for white
supremacists. These guys are looking for a place to safely transmit
their ideology and bring more people into the movement," said Mark
Potok, editor of Intelligence Report, a magazine that monitors hate
groups and is produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Potok said that he’s been forced to keep a close eye on his magazine’s
blog () to prevent hateful comments from being
posted. People have even tried to post racially motivated threats
to assassinate Obama, which he has reported to the Department of
Homeland Security.
In the United States, constitutional free speech protections typically
prevent legal action on hate speech unless someone is threatening or
urging others to physically harm a person or racial group, said Potok,
who recently testified before the Helsinki Commission (also known as
the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe) about threats
posed by Internet hate speech.
Potok was testifying not only as an expert, but also as a victim:
A neo-Nazi group once identified him on a Web site as an enemy of
their cause and posted his home address. But because the group did
not specifically order its readers to do Potok harm, they didn’t
break the law.
In Europe and most other Western nations, hate speech — in Germany,
denying or trivializing the Holocaust — can be prosecuted as a
crime. As a result, said Potok, the majority of foreign-language
white supremacist Web sites are hosted through computer servers in
the United States.
Viking Knight also took aim through the Star-News at the social
services organization El Centro de Acción Social, which he or she
wrote on May 31 "is nothing but a Reconquista terrorist organization
dedicated to the destruction of America."
The next day, in response to another reader’s concern about the
achievement levels of some students receiving scholarships from the
organization, Viking Knight wrote: "They’re Mexican’ts, What did you
expect? Their grades suck because in most high schools, you can’t
major in Lowriding 101."
El Centro Executive Director Randy Jurado Ertll said he thinks
the Star-News should prevent racist comments like these — which
were pulled from the site after Pine spoke with the Weekly — from
reaching readers.
"Responsibility comes with freedom of expression," said Ertll. "I
was just disgusted by this. We need to be vigilant of people who use
hate language. Just as we denounce hate crimes, we have to denounce
hate language. Words impact people’s actions and influence others to
promote more hate."
But it doesn’t end there. One conversation chain from the Daily
News involving Viking Knight and others was so rife with prejudice
against a Latino teen shot to death at a party — "like all the rest
of the scum too hell he went too face satan," wrote catwomomen4u69 —
that someone claiming to be the victim’s ex-girlfriend was actually
pleading with people to stop.
"Certainly we could do a better job of moderating comments," said
Garfat, who acknowledged that recent staffing cuts have affected the
paper’s ability to monitor the Web site. "But, I still maintain the
need to allow people to have conversations supersedes the vile comments
that sometimes permeate our boards. We work with what we’ve got."
In another conversation that devolved into slurs against "Mexicans
and blacks," someone wrote: "It’s time for a good old fashion clan
meeting … come on my arean [sic] brothers … lets get out our
rebel flags and let the lynching begin."
Such vitriol targeting Latinos in general or people perceived to be
illegal aliens is, sadly, "very much par for the course," in terms
of hate speech to be found on mainstream Web sites, said Potok.
"We’re in a whole new age," said the ADL’s Lauter. "The anonymity of
the Internet provides a forum so the people who wouldn’t have the
proclivity to say it in public can hide behind screens. We used to
say the Klan hid behind their white hoods; these [people] hide behind
their screens."
And in many ways, newspapers are behind the times in figuring out
how to respond.
"There’s a larger issue in this story," said Pine, "that is,
to what degree should newspaper Web sites allow people to comment
anonymously. It’s something that warrants further scrutiny. Certainly
it’s a conversation we’ve been having in the newsroom and will continue
to have."
Pine and Garfat said they are reluctant to restrict comments until
they are screened or increase registration requirements, as that would
hinder access to the service. "We want to facilitate the free exchange
of ideas and have people feeling comfortable speaking their minds,
but on the other hand you don’t want people to hide behind anonymity
and use it to promote hatred and say things that have no place in
civilized public discourse," he said.
That such vicious comments sat for more than a week on the Web sites
of local daily newspapers angers Nat Nehdar, a friend of the Pasadena
Human Relations Commission and its former chair, who dedicates much
of his time to activities combating prejudice, hate and violence.
"I feel strongly that newspapers should more carefully monitor their
Web sites and eliminate such trash, which in some ways can reflect
on the newspaper itself. If you allow it you are not condemning it,
so it seems like you are condoning this type of hate speech," he said.
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