History, Hate and Hegemony: What's a Journalist to Do? - Term paper, research paper & custom essay writing service

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History, Hate and Hegemony: What's a Journalist to Do?

by Bonnie Brennen , Lee Wilkins

INTRODUCTION: THE CASE

The weekend before Martin Luther King Day, 2001, Ku Klux Klan supporters distributed fliers to homeowners in Columbia, Missouri. An 8 1/2 by 11-inch single sheet of paper, titled "Abolish the King Holiday," was wrapped around sections of old Columbia Missourian newspapers. The text and visual material in the flier attempted to connect King to the Communist Party and rejected the establishment of a national holiday in his honor.

Both the television news story on NBC affiliate KOMU, and the newspaper coverage m the Columbia Missourian, focused on the use of local newspaper advertising and editorial content as a delivery vehicle for the KKK flyer. The local media connected the incident to a November 2000 promotional campaign by the KKK in Centralia, Missouri, in which fliers were distributed in back issues of the Centralia Fireside Guard, the Columbia Daily Tribune, and USA Today. Missourian Circulation Manager Jamie Melchert expressed concern that some citizens might assume that the newspaper, individual advertisers, or delivery personnel were affiliated with the Klan. (1) On the other hand, Missourian Managing Editor George Kennedy said that no one would take the flier seriously because everyone considered the KKK a joke. (2)

This paper focuses on the distribution of a KKK flier in Columbia, Missouri as a case study through which to explore the responsibility of journalists confronting the issue of hate speech. It draws on Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, the domination of a ruling class through the shaping of popular consent, in an attempt to provide a relevant theoretical framework for the assessment of this cultural practice. Our discussion of hegemony is contrasted with an ethically-based discussion of the societal impact of hate speech. In an effort to help journalists cover hate without furthering its ends, this paper concludes with some practical advice for journalists that is grounded in communitarian theory and the notion of journalism as a transformational activity.

By framing the news coverage of the KKK flier as a fair use of newsprint issue, the local media minimized any actual discussion of the flier's contents and may have appeared to give at least tacit support of the Klan. Both the newspaper and television station chose not to address the allegations made by the KKK or to counter those charges in any way. This journalistic unwillingness to directly address controversy is not unique to Missouri. For example, in spring 2001, the conservative columnist David Horowitz sought to buy advertising space in college newspapers in an attempt to attack the idea of slavery reparations. His advertisement, "Ten reasons why reparations for slavery is a bad idea--and racist too" was rejected for publication by the vast majority of college newspapers. While Horowitz bemoans the misinterpretation of his message and his lack of access to college communities, the newspapers' refusal to run his ad has actually given Horowitz extensive publicity and greater access to the press. While mo st college newspapers rejected the advertisement because they felt its message might offend their readers--a laudable effort to avoid furthering hate--their actions may have also led to misunderstandings about the issue of slavery reparations. (3) As with the Horowitz advertisement, in the King case, the media's lack of discussion and refutation of content might actually contribute to a public misconception about the accuracy of the Klan's charges.

How journalists ultimately balance the twin duties--do no harm and refute falsehood (an act that may be inferred from the journalistic duty of truthtelling)--is certain to become more central to professional performance as society becomes more multicultural and artists such as Eminen (Martin Mathers) win Grammies and make the news. Likewise, how journalists should deal with hate speech, as distinct from non-grammatical speech, obscenity or vulgarity, is not addressed by the profession's various ethics codes, including the Society for Professional Journalists code of ethics or the code from the Radio and Television News Directors Association. In addition, the American Society of Newspaper Editors ethics code does not address the issue, nor does the ethics code for the National Press Photographers Association. While journalism ethics codes seldom provide clear and explicit guidance on any individual ethical dilemma, their lack of even generalized discussion of hate speech only serves to emphasize the need for c lear and consistent reasoning about the issue.

HEGEMONY & RACISM: THE LACK OF COUNTER SPEECH

For Gramsci, hegemony is an active dynamic process that enters all facets of daily life, influencing work, leisure time, and interpersonal relationships, as it impacts creative energies, thoughts, beliefs, and desires. Hegemony involves a type of power "to frame alternatives and contain opportunities, to win and shape consent, so that the granting of legitimacy to the dominant classes appears not only 'spontaneous,' but natural and normal." (4)

Unlike the Althusserian concept of ideology, which insists that each ruling class imposes a world view on its subordinated classes, hegemony is considered an active, contested, and ongoing social process that must be reproduced and sustained. Hegemony unites the persuasion from above with the consent of those individuals below, as it works to become our common sense through ideology, social activities, and institutional procedures. T. J. Jackson Lears suggests that the hegemonic process does not attempt to brainwash people but instead relies on tendencies in public discourse to make some information and cultural experiences available while suppressing and/or ignoring others. (5)

For example, consider the understanding of the First Amendment articulated by the Klu Klux Klan on their web site:

Have you noticed who is attempting to destroy the First Amendment? Homosexual groups -- minority groups -- left wing women's groups -- communist groups -- Jewish groups. They are, without apology, attempting to silence the protests of the white Christian middle-class. They are quite good at it. All of these anti-Christian groups yield tremendous influence over our governmental leaders and billions are spent to insure that anti-Christian legislation is passed. (6)

The Klan's specific view of freedom of expression clearly excludes a vast majority of the country's population and rejects all opinions that do not reinforce a particular hegemonic view of society.

While hegemonic forces deeply saturate the consciousness of society as a complex combination of internal structures that must be continually renewed, recreated, and defended, Raymond Williams explains that these structures are regularly challenged and may be modified by emergent oppositional and alternative forces within society. (7) Oppositional and alternative conditions emerge within the cultural process from residual and emergent elements that reside along with dominant positions. While residual positions are effectively formed in the past, they remain active in cultural processes of the present, and are incorporated through "reinterpretation, dilution, projection, discriminating inclusion and exclusion." (8) The political sanction of the Martin Luther King holiday represents one such attempt in American culture.

Emergent positions offer new meanings, values, practices, and relationships. Yet, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between new elements of a dominant culture, and alternative or oppositional elements of a society, because often when alternatives are viewed as oppositional, they are then converted and appropriated by the dominant culture. Williams suggests that to understand the dominant character in a society, it is necessary to remember "that no mode of production, and therefore no dominant social order of society, and therefore no dominant culture, in reality exhausts all human practice, human energy, human intention." (9)

THINKING ABOUT HATE

During the past decade, there has been renewed scholarly focus on the question of what constitutes hate speech and how a culture framed by the First Amendment can cope legally and ethically with such a contentious topic. The courts have ruled that hate-based subject matter cannot be restricted because it is deemed offensive to a group of people. In the recent cross-burning decision, R. A. V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota, (10) the Supreme Court rejected the city's ordinance prohibiting fighting words "that communicate messages of racial, gender, or religious intolerance." (11) The court found that the city ordinance had singled out a group of seemingly offensive words that it considered "obnoxious" rather than "threatening." Since the terms did not constitute a call to action, the court expressed concern that the restriction of these words might ultimately suppress the expression of some ideas. Attempts to ban specific racist, sexist, or homophobic words have also been rejected by the courts.

Scholars informed by critical race theory and ethical analysis have recently developed definitions of hate speech which favor categories that can be subject to argument, analysis, and interpretation. Although it is impossible to summarize the literature of critical race theory for this article, it is important to understand that critical race theory posits that race is the most fundamental and inescapable fact of contemporary social life, eclipsing in its influence the impact of both class and gender. Because American culture is built on racial assumptions and biases, critical race theorists assert the impact of race on individual lives and the lives of individuals as they interact with/in groups is literally inescapable and thoroughly profound. What is "obnoxious" to a person of one race, the theory suggests, may constitute a real threat to others. Some scholars, primarily in sociology and political science, have suggested that the exclusive focus on race by those ascribing to critical race theory is to some extent reductionist; however, even those who find the theory itself contentious have noted that thinking in this way foregrounds race and promotes renewed analysis. Legal scholar Man Matsuda, intellectually informed by the literature of critical race theory and professionally informed by her representation of a Filipino man living in Hawaii who sued because he believed he had been denied a job as a radio announced by virtue of this accent, realized that definitions of hate speech, grounded exclusively in law, failed to speak to the central issues her client's case raised.

Matsuda et al (12) define hate speech as speech directed against a group that has been historically oppressed. Borrowing from classical ethical theory based on the concept of the autonomous moral actor, rather than legal scholarship, Matsuda explains that hate speech denigrates group members by virtue of affiliation rather than individual distinctiveness. It is the most fundamental sort of assault, a denial of human dignity that each of us possesses solely because we are human. Incorporating the concepts outlined in critical race theory, (13) Matsuda also notes that membership in such vilified groups, encompassing such qualities as race, gender, or ethnicity, needs to be something it is difficult to escape regardless of context. The inability to escape the pejoratives in hate speech, regardless of social or political context, is a distinctive quality that renders hate speech more pernicious and long-lived than other sorts of speech, such as commercial television jingles or political campaign rhetoric. In som e situations, for example religious affiliation, escape is difficult even for categories of people for whom distinctions are not readily, visually apparent. Using this line of reasoning, it is possible to distinguish hate speech from scurrilous attack. Hate speech is consistent in content over time and is focused at groups rather than individuals. Scurrilous attack is more event-centered and specific, although such attacks may, at their core, call on some of the characteristics of hate speech.

It is the persistence of hate that allows Matsuda and others to assert that such speech does real, tangible harm. There is, of course, anecdotal evidence to support these assertions. The dragging death of an African-American mm in Texas, the beating death of a gay college student in Wyoming--these incidents and others suggest that the oft repeated maxim of "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," is, and perhaps always has been, naive. Psychologists document real mental and physical injury resulting from being the recipient of sustained prejudice. Such impact is a direct result not only of being unable to escape from hate but also having no venue to effectively respond to it. The law, Matsuda has concluded, is a tool which travels only post hoc and far too seldom to the places where people who are powerless live their lives. She argues that because the law continually proves itself unable to respond proactively to the injuries hate causes, that the solution is a small but signific ant exception to the First Amendment. This exception outlaws hate speech in much the same manner that the US Supreme Court long ago said Americans were not free to shout "fire" in a crowded theater. (14)

Journalists, of course, are First Amendment bull-dogs. There is a long line of philosophical reasoning (15) to support the position that the remedy for hate speech is more speech, particularly speech that refutes hate or allows viewers and readers to make that refutation for themselves. Robust discourse over time, the argument goes, will reveal hate for what it is. The well-known case of former Agriculture Secretary Earl Butts is a frequently used example to support this philosophical stance. Butts, a Nixon appointee traveling with the President in the early 1970s, told journalists that African Americans wanted "good pussy, tight shoes, and a warm place to shit." The traditional media cleaned up the quote, changing it to "good sex, comfortable shoes, and a warm place to go to the bathroom." When a reporter for Rolling Stone published the unexpurgated version of the comment, Butts was forced to resign, and more traditional journalists began to rethink their decisions about using language that might offend rea ders but was truthfully telling about the psyche of the person quoted.

Hate speech continues to make journalists uneasy, and many turn to ethical reasoning to support a type of self restraint that Matsuda would codify. Chief among the reasons journalists often give for failing to republish and broadcast the claims and specific language of hate speech is the ethical prohibition against doing harm. (16)

As much as one may try to resist a piece of hate propaganda, the effect on one's self-esteem and sense of personal security is devastating. To be hated, despised, and alone is the ultimate fear of all human beings. However irrational racist speech may be, it hits right at the emotional place where we feel the most pain. The aloneness comes not only from the hate message itself, but also from the government response of tolerance. (17)

Researchers provide some tangible support for Matsuda's inferences. African-American women, for example, have been found to have a less positive self-image because their features do not reflect a Caucasian-centered notion of beauty. Studies have noted that when people of color appear in the news, they are often portrayed as criminals. (18) Such portrayals are problematic for good reason.

Journalists engage in sound ethical decision making when they become aware of the risks associated with hate speech and use caution when repeating potentially hateful messages that may reinflict the injury through news coverage. When journalists fail to exercise critical thinking about repeating hateful messages, as in the case of news reports about the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad that uncritically repeated the racial stereotypes and fact errors deliberately built into the campaign commercial, they are attacked for, among many other things, perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes in the guise of news. (19) Spike Lee, in his 2000 film Bamboozled, put African-American actors in actual black face. Some critics suggested that the make-up was "over the top," so offensive that it outweighed the film's other claims. If the goal is the creation of a civil discourse, enforceable both socially and politically, then reinjury in the guise of news or entertainment may seem less ethically compelling than pure First Amendm ent advocates would have the profession accept.

But, for civil discourse to be effective, it must to be grounded in truth. In the specific case of the King flier, while the framing of coverage as an organizational issue may reflect concerns regarding the potential damage of promoting hate-filled messages, the framing fails to confront the accuracy of the charges themselves, inadvertently perpetuating the Klan's hegemonic position. An alternative framing of the situation could include a journalistic evaluation of the charges themselves and their potential impact on the community.

KKK FLIER

The single page flier, distributed as a "public service" by the Klan, uses hearsay, innuendo, blatant manipulation, and lies in its attempt to connect Martin Luther King Jr. to the Communist Party. While there is absolutely no evidence to support any of the Klan's claims regarding King, the lack of actual evidence has not hindered the Klan's accusations. The flier maintains that the FBI monitored King, not for his civil rights activities, but because of his Communist connections.

A black and white image of a group of people, one of whom is identified as a young Martin Luther King, Jr. occupies a prominent position on the flier. The Klan identifies other individuals in the photo as members of the Communist Party and explains that the picture was taken in 1957 at the Highiander Folk School in Mounteagle, Tennessee. According to the flier, the school was financed by Communist sympathizers and served as a communist training school. The image is noteworthy in that while it is impossible to identify where the picture was actually taken, or to know if the people identified in the photograph are actually who the Klan says they are, the individuals in the foreground of the image occupy a much greater portion of the picture than expected. The size of these men, the brightness and contrast of their images, as well as their juxtaposition to each other differs considerably from the rest of the image. The photograph represented on the flier certainly seems like a composite image--a splicing of two or more different pictures into a single photographic montage.

The use of composite pictures can be traced to the 1850s when photographers occasionally took artistic license and merged two or more negatives to create a composite image. (20) At the height of the 1950s Red Scare, composite images were a popular red baiting technique used to discredit individuals who challenged Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist witch hunts. For example, Senator Millard Tydings, an outspoken critic of McCarthy, charged that McCarthy was using fear tactics to scare the public into believing that Communists had infiltrated the United States government and were about to destroy the American way of life. In response to Tydings's public criticisms, a four page tabloid publication, "For the Record" was widely distributed, shortly before the election, by supporters of Tydings's Republican challenger John Marshall Butler. The tabloid included a photograph of Tydings deep in conversation with Earl Browder, who was at that time a leader of the American Communist Party. The photograph was a fake; it was a poor-quality montage that had been created from two completely different images. Unfortunately, the picture's impact on the public was substantial and Tydings lost the election. Although a subsequent investigation revealed that the photo was a fraud and Butler's campaign manager was fined $5,000 for violating election laws, the results of the election stood.

The KKK flier uses another popular red baiting technique, guilt by association, to stir up hatred and prejudice and connect King to the Communist Party. During the McCarthy era, if a person's family member was considered a Communist, or if an individual was a member of a club or organization that Communists joined, or even if a person was merely an acquaintance of a Communist sympathizer, that individual's life and career could be destroyed. The Klan flier includes a copy of an expense check for $167.74, made out to King, from the Southern Conference Education Fund, a group the KKK considers a Communist front. Of course the authenticity of the check is never questioned, nor is any evidence included to prove that the Southern Conference Educational Fund is actually a Communist organization. To these Klan members, the check serves as guilt by association to prove King's Communist affiliations.

During the McCarthy era, merely uttering the word Communism out loud, or alluding to an individual's perceived Communist sympathies was enough to destroy a person's livelihood and make millions of people scared and insecure. Today, the word Communism and related terms like Socialist or even Liberal still evoke concerns among many Americans. For example, conservative Republicans depicted President Clinton's 1993 health care initiative as "Socialized Medicine"--a strategy that helped to insure the defeat of the bill. A Lexis-Nexis search yielded hundreds of newspaper articles that debated the socialized medicine aspects of the health care plan even though it was an erroneous description of the plan.

MORE SPEECH, BETTER SPEECH

The goal of professional ethics is to articulate a path for action. While the foregoing sections have framed the central issues in journalistic coverage of hate speech, a professional solution that boils down to "print or don't print" seems both simplistic and static. In fact, borrowing from the approach of feminist ethics, we suggest that both claims--the journalists' duty to report news truthfully (22) and the journalists' duty to minimize harm (22) --require a conversation among stakeholders. This conversation can, among other things, serve to activate a cultural dialogue that disputes hegemonic discourse. It is in listening to that conversation and framing news stories based on it, that guides for professional performance can be developed.

Our suggestions are also grounded in a branch of ethical theory that derives its power from placing the experience of those effected by the decision at the forefront of the analysis. Feminist ethics, and its interpretation by philosopher Daryl Koehn as dialogic ethics, place the contestability of claims at the center of the discussion. As Koehn notes, feminist ethics emphasizes "the need to listen to the possibly unique position of every individual with whom we interact, these ethics must contend with the possibility that one of these persons will raise a crucial objection to our position." (23)

Koehn herself is critical of much of the writing in feminist ethics. She suggests that some feminists overemphasize process and fail to rely, or ignore the role of, principle in ethical thinking. Others criticize feminist ethics for being too particularistic, incapable or unable of producing the sort of abstract, principle-based and universal norms that have characterized classical ethical theory, particularly the work of virtue ethicists such as Aristotle and McIntyre, duty-based theorists such as Kant or Ross, and consequentialists such as utilitarians Bentham and Mill. Koehn's work, based as it is in four principles, attempts to address the weaknesses she perceives in some feminist work.

From our point of view, the application of feminist ethics, specifically Koehn's articulation of it, has much to recommend it. First, because feminist ethics does emphasize process and inclusiveness, it provides professionals with a way of thinking through the issues surrounding hate speech without coming to premature conclusions. Ethicist Sissela Bok (24) has noted that one of the most basic problems in reaching ethical decisions is premature rejection of alternatives and alternative points of view. Bok, like Kant, subscribes to the principle of publicity, an approach that is embedded in feminist ethics and one that is particularly applicable to journalists who, after all, work in public and in the public domain. Second, Koebn's work--and we believe by implication much of feminist ethics--does subscribe to universal principles, particularly the principle of justice. Koebn's articulation of this principle, couched as it is in feminist theory, assumes a relational quality that is similar to Rawls's notion of distributive justice. Again, this mode of thinking is particularly relevant to issues surrounding hate speech because hate itself is not an abstraction but is instead applied, setting members of one group against members of other groups. Kahn's articulation of justice is applied as well. It requires connection to others based on commonly held understandings. In sum, we suggest that feminist ethics provides an articulation of process grounded in a relational concept of justice that is particularly appropriate to professional thinking about specific problems that have society-wide consequences.

To begin then, ethicists would have journalists acknowledge the reality that, for many, hate speech is harmful. It is harmful to the person at whom hate is directed, and it is harmful to political society in general. Matsuda's analysis of the impact of hate reflects a common understanding, unbounded by race, ethnicity and gender. "If it is indeed true that what each person accepts as true reflects his or her individual experiences, it must be equally true that not all truth is contingent upon individual perspectives." (25) In this framework, individual experience with hate speech is appropriately generalizable.

Ethicists would also have journalists acknowledge that telling the truth, even about hateful things, is a professional duty. The experience of McCarthyism and red baiting is a potent illustration of the need for truthful journalism in American political society. The next step, then, is to find common ground, and Koehn suggests a decision model that helps arrive at such an understanding.

Dialogic ethics may be summarized through four principles. First, recognize that all opinions of all people may not be equally practically good. As Koehn notes, "the mere possibility that there are relevant and important objective differences in the goodness of persons' opinions is ethically significant." (26) What feminist ethical theory seeks to create is an ongoing critical dialogue in which self discovery provides a reason to continue thinking. As self discovery continues, opinions can be modified.

Principle two: never act unjustly. This principle is particularly important for journalists because it demands that their actions and thoughts be open to public scrutiny. Justice is a relational concept. It is difficult to "be just" without considering the roles, duties, histories and actions of others--justice requires that we need connection to others in the "right" way. To fulfill this principle, opinions are good not because they are strongly held or held by the majority, but because they further connection and reflect wisdom.

Principle three: abide by the laws we have agreed to obey. As Koehn notes, the focus on law allows feminists to shift the conversation away from a private discussion between two people to a public discussion between the laws and all citizens. This principle allows citizens to debate laws, attempt (and sometime succeed) at changing them, and to obey laws. "It asserts an obligation to show the community what is right--it reconciles caring with political responsibility and integrates care and trust into a larger political and democratic structure." (27)

Koehn's fourth principle: make sure the first three apply. Covering hate speech, we suggest, provides a case in which the four principles can work. By acknowledging the validity of multiple experiences, by focusing on the role of journalism as one institution in society that can promote arid further justice, and by respecting law, it is possible for journalists to articulate a set of professional guidelines that will help them better cover sometimes hate-filled political discourse.

This ethical approach also places journalistic performance squarely in the line of communitarian thinking. "Nurturing communitarian citizenship entails, at a minimum, a journalism committed to justice, covenant, and empowerment. Authentic communities are marked by justice; in strong democracies, courageous talk is mobilized into action.... In normative communities, citizens are empowered for social transformation." (28) Such empowerment, of course, relies on the dilution of a hegemonic view. It is to that effort we now turn.

While in principle, Koehn's doctrine may seem particularly relevant to the issue of hate speech, the specific elements of this case remind us that by not engaging with hate speech, and choosing to avoid (ignore) these messages, journalists may actually be at least tacitly supporting a racist, sexist, and/or homophobic ideology. The discussion of these issues, however personally offensive, may also serve as a way of challenging a dominant ideology that is created and perpetrated by social, economic, and political elites. A thorough discussion and examination of hate-filled communication, in such examples as the King KKK flier, may actually provide citizens with alternative ways of thinking about these issues. Ultimately that knowledge may even become an oppositional force that could expose and undo hateful speech and ideas in society.

For example, during much of the nineteenth century, virtually no anti-slavery discussion was allowed in the Southern states. Although only a third of the population had a direct connection to slavery, the ruling elites saw the ownership of people as central to their political, economic, and social well-being. From the 1820s until the end of the Civil War, a one-sided pro-slavery campaign, which appealed to racial prejudice, effectitvely curtailed all discussion on the abolitionist issue and deprived citizens of their rights of free inquiry. In contrast, while at the beginning of the nineteenth century citizens in the North were primarily pro-slavery, the issue was discussed and debated in the press and slowly views began to change. Historians, political scientists, and social theorists maintain that if Southerners had been allowed the fundamental right to learn and debate all aspects of the slavery issue the emancipation of slaves might have succeeded without the Civil War.

More recently, the underground press took issue with mainstream journalists over the issue of objectivity. They felt that when reporters did not inject their personal beliefs in their stories, and clung to a belief that they were neutral and unbiased, the stories actually reinforced specific ideological views of the ruling class. Underground journalists noted that because of their reliance on objectivity, the mainstream press had, over the years, supported racism and male-only voting, and rejected the concept of social security and other issues and ideas that were unpopular with the upper middle class, white male elite in US society.

COVERING HATE

Unfortunately, examples of hate speech continue to make the news. Considering the foregoing discussion, we offer reporters the following suggested standards of performance:

1. Tell the truth about the content of hate speech, even if it includes the original language and charges. Let the community know why this action is newsworthy--why the media have brought this particular incident to public attention. Although hate may appear episodic, history suggests it is a persistent problem. News accounts need to be complete and contextual. A short story about such an episode, no matter how timely, is much less likely to include the sort of stakeholder-based information that we suggest. And since hate is persistent, the traditional rationale of "it's breaking news" is less than ethically persuasive. This recommendation takes seriously Koehn's third principle, abide by the laws we have agreed to obey. In this case, it is the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But this recommendation as well as our second recommendation also follow Koehn's second principle. Telling the truth about the content of hate speech allows readers and viewers to recognize that all opinions of all people many no t be equally good.

2. Counter hate-filled charges with actual fact. This means not only accurately recounting historical fact--something that is not a strong suit for a profession dominated by reporters under 30--but providing context to the original historic charges. In the case of the KKK flier, it is important for journalists to remind readers and viewers that former, long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tried to amass a dossier proving King was a communist. FBI files show that Hoover was obsessed with discrediting King. He fabricated evidence, wiretapped, and harassed King from 1962 until his 1968 murder. Part of the unspoken context of the King flyer is that the government itself, at the direction of Hoover, was unsuccessful in verifying such ill-founded suspicions. (29)

3. Help readers understand that words and doctored images may be used to further a hegemonic view that finds certain elements in society undesirable and untrustworthy, not merely as individuals but as members of particular groups. This effort to condemn people by the groups they associate with rather than through individual action is profoundly anti-democratic. It is also illegal, according to the US Constitution. Help provide readers with the analytic understanding to spot such tactics on their own. Every community has sources who can speak to this issue. Quoting these sources puts them on equal footing with those who bring such charges. If possible, ask those who produce hate material to be accountable for specific content. This recommendation and the ones that follow speak to Koehn's second principle--never act unjustly.

4. Remind readers of the harm such hate continues to cause--in the same story in which you report the hate speech itself. Allow the stakeholders who are most immediately and personally effected legitimacy in news accounts that report hate. Quote them and remind others of their claims.

5. Provide readers with alternate sources of information, in their own community and in others, where they can deepen their understanding of history and political action. For many news organizations, such an attempt to empower readers to formulate their own, informed understandings may be accomplished, in part, by referring readers and viewers to books, web sites, broadcast coverage, etc., about the issue and the particular groups that are the targets of such attacks. In the spirit of truthfulness, it can also provide additional information about the groups and individuals that bring them.

Finally, we return to an important element in dialogic ethics: that ethical theory seeks to create an ongoing critical dialogue in which self-discovery encourages additional thinking. As self-discovery continues, opinions can be modified. How journalists cover hate in the early part of the twenty-first century should reflect historic understandings of the profession, for example, its errors during the McCarthy era. Coverage should also consider contemporary understandings of the possible--the role that communication can play in providing in-depth, historically grounded background and fact. We suggest that part of an emerging critical understanding is the role that journalists need to play in helping readers and viewers understand for themselves the tactics of hate. This understanding encourages the ability of all stakeholders to engage in critical analysis of the news of the day. It empowers readers. It places justice on a equal footing with truth-telling in some portions of the journalistic enterprise. And, it also represents a moving professional target. What might have been professionally appropriate in 1950 will no longer be judged excellent professional performance in this information age.

NOTES

(1.) "Anti-King KKK Fliers Dot Neighborhood," Columbia Missourian 15 January 2001, p.1.

(2.) KOMU 10 p.m. broadcast 14 January 2001.

(3.) See, for example, Salon.com's coverage of the Horowitz advertisement.

(4.) John Clarke et al., "Subcultures, Cultures and Class," in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals (London: Hutchinson, 1976), p. 38.

(5.) T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (June 1985), p. 577.

(6.) Rachel Penergraft, "Hate Crime Legislation--Friend or Foe?" (2001). http://www.kukluxklan.org/weekly16.html

(7.) Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977/1988).

(8.) Ibid., p. 123.

(9.) Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," New Left Review 82 (Nov.-Dec. 1973), p. 12.

(10.) 505, US 377 (1992).

(11.) Edward J. Cleary, Beyond the Burning Cross. A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship, and the First Amendment (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 268.

(12.) Mari J. Matsuda et al., Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993).

(13.) See, for example, M. Omni and H. Winant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994).

(14.) See Schneck v. United States, 249 US 47 (1919).

(15.) See, for example, John Milton, Areopagitica (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1911) and John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: J. W. Parker, 1859).

(16.) See, for example, Bernard Gert, Morality. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

(17.) Mari J. Matsuda et al., Words that Wound, p. 26.

(18.) See, for example, Paul Lester, ed., Images that Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media (Westport, CT.: Praeger, 1996).

(19.) Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

(20.) Dino A. Brugioni, Photo Fakery: The History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation (Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 1999), p. 27.

(21.) Den Elliott, "Foundations for News Media Responsibility," in Deni Elliot, Responsible Journalism (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1986), pp. 32-44.

(22.) Bernard Gert, Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

(23.) Daryl Koehn, Rethinking Feminist Ethics: Care, Trust and Empathy (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 17.

(24.) Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).

(25.) Daryl Koehn, Rethinking Feminist Ethics, p. 105.

(26.) Ibid., p. 116.

(27.) Ibid., p. 150.

(28.) Clifford Christians, et al., Good News: Social Ethics and the Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 14.

(29.) See, for example, "The Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr." produced by the Washington Post for their online news service, www.washingtonpost.com.

BONNIE BRENNEN is Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Missouri Columbia. Her interests in ethics and cultural history of the media are based on her professional media experience. She is the author of For the Record: An Oral History of Rochester, New York; Newsworkers. She is also co-editor with Hanno Hardt of Picturing the Past: Media, History & Photography and Newsworkers: Toward a History of the Rank and File. She has published articles in a variety of journals including the Journal of American History, Communication Theory, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, and Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.

LEE WILKINS received her doctorate in political science from the University of Oregon. She is a former newspaper reporter and editor whose academic interests include media ethics and media coverage of the environment. She is co-author of a college-level media ethics text, and she is listed as one of the leading scholars in the field in the Encyclopedia of Media Ethics. She is particularly interested in the ethical decisions that political reporters make. She has published eight books and numerous articles in journals such as the Journal of Communication, the Journal of Mass Media Ethics, and the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters.

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