“Funny Is How We Got Here: When Journalists Amplify Hate”

Whitney Phillips (@wphillips49) joined Ana (@anamariecox) to talk about her recent work, The Oxygen of Amplification, which chronicles the battle journalists face to report on extremism without amplifying it. Early in their conversation, Ana and Whitney dove into the central paradox of that battle: that it’s almost impossible to report on extremism without normalizing and spreading it. Another part of that paradox is that for an uninitiated journalist, it is all too easy to get duped into spreading misinformation. They also explored one of the central problems of this reporting and reporting in general: newsrooms are overwhelmingly white, male, Christian, cis, and able-bodied. Because those people are the ones least at risk from white supremacists, they’re (*shocker*) who white supremacists will talk to, and the most likely to downplay threats from those same white supremacists. Lastly, after touching on Unite The Right 2.0, Ana played assignment editor and suggested different directions to take a Nazi Next Door™story.

You can find Whitney’s book here.

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