In The Sun’s article headlined ‘Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants’ (The Sun, 2015), columnist Katie Hopkins refers to the arriving migrants as “cockroaches” and encourages the British to “bring on the gunships [to] force the migrants back to their shores” (Hopkins quoted in Martin, 2015, pg. 1). This is just one example of many instances in which inflammatory and hateful ideologies have found a platform in the British news media. Examples can be found even amongst the most esteemed of news media, for example when the BBC invited far-right BNP leader Nick Griffin onto the panel of their flagship programme, Question Time, in 2009. In this case, a holocaust-denier who has, in the past, been arrested on “suspicion to commit racial hatred” (Oliver, 2004, pg. 1) found a platform to openly speak about his party’s xenophobic and intolerant dogmas on the UK’s most prestigious public service broadcaster. In a recent report, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) asserts that “hate speech in some traditional media continues to be a serious problem [in the UK]” and encourages the “authorities and media to take steps to curb such incitement to hatred” (ECRI, 2016, pg. 18). Alongside the legal constraints and professional regulations that guide the ethical dilemma of whether or not the media should be used as an instrument to disseminate irreverent content of hate speech, the ethical ambivalence on the side of the journalist is arguably the most interesting to analyse. ‘Hate speech’ falls under the overarching umbrella of ‘extremism’ or ‘extremist speech’ and constitutes the most precarious of extremist speech, one that is “often offensive and sometimes harmful” (Brison, 2013, pg. 1). Hate speech is defined by Brison (2013) as speech that “vilifies, harasses, intimidates, or incites hatred toward an individual or group on the basis of a characteristic such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation” (pg. 1) and stands in stark negation to the principle of freedom of expression. For journalists, this conflict takes the form of either protecting the notion of a free press and hence a free society in a democratic sense or prioritising the moral obligation of not causing harm (Slagle, 2009).
This dispute over whether or not the right to speak freely entails a right to cause offense, and, if the media should be reporting on it, has been at the centre of debate since the beginning of the mass media in the mid-1900s (Analysis, 2015). Jacquette (2016) effectively summarises both sides of the conflict and postulates the key question it all boils down to: “what concepts and principles enable us to decide that publishing sufficiently dangerous things is not in the public interest?” (pg. 138). This crucial question contains a number of contentious terms that need to be addressed and explored in order to fully make sense of the issue: firstly, which ‘concepts and principles’ demand deliberation in this debate, how dangerous is ‘sufficiently dangerous’, and lastly, what aspects of a story qualify it as being in the ‘public interest’.
In this essay, I will be addressing these moral ambiguities through an overview and critical assessment of all ethical considerations a journalist must face when reporting on hate speech. First and foremost, this includes the arguments for and against an absolute yes-or-no decision to disseminating hate speech content through the media. By drawing upon the two main ethical concepts involved, libertarian and critical race theory, I will present arguments about democracy, consequences of action, moral responsibility and harm, and power relations. Also to be considered is the ethical dilemma of how to report on hate speech, if it is to be done at all. As the arguments for and against reporting on hate speech and the issues involved are inextricably intertwined, it is almost impossible to come a coherent conclusion of either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. However, I will argue that the strongest argument for an unfettered free press is today’s hypersensitive society and the consequent implications of censorship and the strongest argument against, the moral obligation not to harm others. Furthermore, I will argue that if the situation demands a publication or broadcast containing hate speech, this should not be treated objectively, but should be considered subjectively by the journalist and, if necessary, suitably denounced.
As the philosopher and Enlightenment writer Voltaire famously said, “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.” In his efforts to fight intolerance and criticise the horror of fanaticism in the 18th century, Voltaire pursued what is now known as one of the first ‘clarion calls’ for an unrestrained freedom of speech (Analysis, 2015). John Stuart Mill followed shortly thereafter and published his life’s work On Liberty in 1859, in which he “feared for a society that discourages unorthodox ideas” (Slagle, 2009, pg. 240). Similarly, John Milton, purported ‘a battlefield of ideas’ in his book Areopagitica, and vouched that within it, truth would always trump falsehood. These three philosophical pioneers would later form the basis for what is now called the ‘libertarian approach’ to freedom of speech, one that pursues unfettered and autonomous free speech (Slagle, 2009). This model of free speech “acknowledges that hate speech may inflict harm upon individuals but that such harm is necessary for the unimpeded exchange of ideas that permits society to advance” (Slagle, 2009, pg. 239). Jacquette (2016) reaffirms this in saying, “personal and political freedom is an intrinsically morally valuable state for the members of any society and a free society can only be properly instituted […] by a free press” (pg. 135). Thus, Jacquette (2016) argues, the press must remain uncensored in order to fulfil their role of truth finding through inquisitive reporting of the news.
However, even the utilitarian paean in praise of free speech, John Stuart Mill (1978), recognized that there are boundaries to this freedom and subsequently developed ‘Mill’s Harm Principle’, in which Mill suggests a need to “regulate the actions of members of a political community” (van Mill, 2017, pg. 1) and permits censorship under one condition: preventing harm to others. Mill (1978) states “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (pg. 9). However, when considering these limits on freedom, it is important to distinguish between ‘giving offense’ and ‘causing harm’ (Analysis, 2015). Especially in today’s trend towards a culture of victimhood and the fragile millennial generation dubbed ‘snowflake’, the distinction between the two is becoming increasingly blurred (Analysis, 2015). Nonetheless, in order to make sense of Mill’s Harm principle, clear boundaries must be set, that ‘harm’ does not include being ‘offended’ and thus, you cannot claim damages for offense. ‘Harm’, according to Mill, includes “an action that directly and in the first instance invades the rights of a person” (van Mill, 2017).
When looking at the example of the attacks on satirist magazine Charlie Hebdo and their choice to publish another cartoon of Mohammed after the attacks in January 2015, it could be argued that this crosses the line of Mill’s Harm Principle. With the knowledge that previous publications of the same nature had provoked violence and outrage amongst Muslims, resulting in the deaths of 12 of their employees, foreseeable harm was involved in publishing similar content again. Thus, this would have required silencing according to Mill’s Harm Principle, under the justification of predictable harm. However, censoring inflammatory publications upon previous resistance would vindicate the violence and grant the attackers a voice, or veto, on free speech (Analysis, 2015). Hence, BBC’s Brian Winston concludes that Mill’s Harm Principle is out-dated and “no longer adequate to the needs of our times” (Analysis, 2015) and encourages a new look into free speech principles.
The counter argument to the utilitarian model of libertarianism, the critical race model, is based upon Immanuel Kant’s moral universalism and the “deontological approach to ethics that demands its adherents to ignore the consequences of a given action and instead focus on the inherent morality of that action” (Slagle, 2009, pg. 239). Modern supporters of this approach include Matsuda et al (1993), who claim the ‘level playing field’ in the ‘battlefield of ideas’ posited by libertarian theory cannot exist and prevail in reality. They argue that pre-existing prejudices against minorities of race, ethnicity, religion and gender have resulted in an established ‘imbalance of power’ and an inevitably tilted ‘playing field’ (Slagle, 2009). It is therefore impossible for marginalized hate speech targets to challenge the inflammatory messages hurled into the public sphere in equal measure (Slagle, 2009). This is what critical race theorists base their justification for a censorship of the media on: “the need to single out truly damaging and hurtful messages from other kinds of […] speech” (Slagle, 2009, pg. 242). Tsesis (2002) goes so far as to equate hate speech to a ‘societal virus’, with the potential to instigate destructive societal developments. Smolla (1992), on the other hand, has an entirely different outlook. While supporting the idea of a libertarian ‘marketplace of ideas’, Smolla (1992) considers some forms of speech, such as hate speech, not worthy of any valid representation within in the ‘battlefield’ as it doesn’t have any ‘societal value’ and cannot effectively contribute to debates in the public sphere. Hate speech, according to Smolla (1992), “states no fact, offers no opinion, proposes no opinion and attempts no persuasion” (pg. 166), and hence, can be ‘ethically curtailed’. Perhaps most effectively, George (2014), summarises the critical theorist argument as follows:
In liberal discourse, legal toleration of speech-related harm is frequently justified as the price the society has to pay for the protection of free speech. Examined through an equality prism, however, that position appears pat. […] The “price” is not distributed evenly: It is borne disproportionately by victims of hate speech—usually members of historically marginalized groups—who do not necessarily gain the most from existing free speech protections. (pg. 87)
More concretely, Fish (1994) argues the “traditional definitions of free speech break down when confronted with […] examples of troublesome expression” (Slagle, 2009, pg. 243).
A libertarian, however, would argue that the correct response to hate speech is more speech not less (Slagle, 2009). Rauch and Will, in their 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors, argue that the ‘battlefield of ideas’ should be left uninterrupted in its ‘on-going quest for truth’, in that “claims of knowledge are subject to public scrutiny, then adopted or discarded” (Slagle, 2009, pg. 243) within the public sphere. Censoring hate speech would disturb the marketplace of ideas and put the freedom of society on the line (Weinstein, 1999).
This brings us to the next crucial point in the debate: the point about democracy. Supporters of unfettered free expression argue that free speech guarantees all other freedoms of a functioning democracy. BBC’s Brian Winston highlights the irony of how free speech is the least important of all human rights, but is the vital prerequisite to uphold all other freedoms (Analysis, 2015). Similarly, Jacquette (2016) states that free speech and thus, a free press, is “closely linked to protecting all other freedoms that are valued in a free society” (pg. 123). In this way, the principle of free expression is made central to the safeguarding of a free society and functioning democracy and because “any value attached to the preservation and proper functioning of a society” (Jacquette, 2016, pg. 217) is classified as being in the ‘public interest’, this leaves no room for censorship of any form. Meddaugh and Kay (2009) argue that free expression safeguards yet another vital aspect of a democratic society: education. They contend that the “avoidance of hate texts through regulatory structures may impede our progress as educators to inoculate those who may be exposed to them” (pg. 264).
Critical race theorists, on the other hand, would argue that the marginalisation and discrimination that results from unregulated hate speech and its dissemination through the media in itself is undemocratic. George (2014) asserts that “along with liberty, democratic constitutions also uphold equality as a defining value, and equality is compromised by hate speech” (pg. 77). This is backed up by further scholars, including Tsesis (2002) who contends that “while hate propagandists defend their own right to free speech, they seek to suppress minority voices from influencing political and social thought, serving the cause of inequality” (pg. 6). Ursula Owen, in an exchange on free speech with David Miller for The Guardian (2004), argues “in order for democracy to work, people must feel like they have a voice” (pg. 1). Furthermore, Berkowitz and Eko (2007) make a valid point in their research into ‘journalistic paradigm repair’ stating that when a paradigm appears defective, for example through a temporary restriction of publication or broadcast, journalists will undergo paradigm repair as a “way of sustaining an intellectual position about authority of knowledge and freedom of speech” (pg. 782). The researchers demonstrate this using the example of Mohammad cartoon affair of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and the consequential “journalistic solidarity and broad based support for the freedom of the press” (Berkowitz et al, 2007, pg. 779) in the US and in France. From this point of view, it could be argued that a temporary censorship of hate speech content will not have as much of a dramatic effect on democracy as anticipated by libertarian theorists, as journalists restate and maintain their own values through a restoration process.
Possibly the most valid argument in favour of the libertarian approach, and one that substantializes a rather out-dated outlook in the modern world, is the recent flourishing of the awareness of one’s human rights and a growing ‘sensitivity’ to the feelings of others (Analysis, 2015). With the rise of the millennial generation ‘snowflakes’ and their hypersensitive approach to offense, this general sensitivity has tipped over into a ‘culture of victimhood’ (Analysis, BBC). Libertarian theorists argue that this new, ‘sensitive’ age makes censorship on irreverent voices even more dangerous. Jacquette (2016) talks about a “thin edge of the wedge” that constitutes journalistic censorship and paves the way “to less and less extreme instances that are increasingly morally objectionable” (pg. 132). Similarly, Ursula Owen talks about the dangers of censorship, a ‘slippery slope’ in which “laws against hate speech are all too often used to suppress dissent” (Owen, 2004). Another facet to this argument involves the power relations that come to play when debating censorship, relations that have surfaced on the basis of a rather degenerative society. The main question here is, who has the right to censor anyone? This ‘paradox of censorship exceptions for censors’ is thoroughly explored in Jacquette’s (2016) Journalistic ethics, in which he questions “if certain information is harmful to the general public why is it not harmful in the hands of the censor, who must also ingest its content?” (pg. 139). Thus, anybody who considers himself self-assured enough in their willpower to censor content, is being inherently arrogant about their standing in relation to the rest of society. This argument puts the entire concept of censorship on the line.
Putting the other side of the argument on the line, Jacquette (2016) notes that there is no such thing as a completely unrestrained press as reasonable limitations of a free press are inevitable. He argues that restrictions are already in place through, for example, bribery, media ownership and coercion which all “influence the questions journalists ask and answers they can give” (pg. 122). This raises the question of whether it is even worth pursuing unfettered free speech and an autonomous, free press if these concepts are utopian. Jacquette (2016) answers this question by reasoning that whatever you define ‘freedom’ as, whether this definition takes pre-existing constraints into account or not, the crucial objective should be to unceasingly try to maximise this freedom.
The perhaps strongest argument in favour of the critical race approach, as it invokes our duty as human beings, is the argument for moral responsibility. We, as journalists but also as human beings, have a moral obligation not to harm others, and thus, “the values of not harming others and respecting others should play a prominent part in the considerations of journalists” (Cohen-Almagor, 2008, pg. 136). Hate speech not only strips the marginalized targets of their democratic voice and fundamental rights, including autonomy and tranquillity, it can also initiate and vindicate ‘harmful social movements’, as racial thoughts become entrenched and standardised in society (Tsesis, 2002). In the words of Tsesis (2002),
By drawing attention to the centrality of language in perpetuating discrimination, we may be able to dislodge some deep-rooted racist thoughts and behaviors. Charismatic leaders can harness subtle and explicit misethnic statements to instigate active or complicit participation in hate crimes. (pg. 7)
Using the example of the appearance of Nick Griffin on Question Time in 2009, Cohen (2001) explores the treatment of fascists in the media and developed the perhaps most succinct précis of the argument:
There are laws against inciting racial hatred and Griffin’s very presence on the airwaves teaches blacks and Asians that Neo-Nazism is now semi-respectable (pg. 2)
Suppose, however, the situation necessitates a newspaper or broadcaster to report on hate speech; then there are different ways of doing so. Principles of objectivity and impartiality have long been core values of the profession and are widely regarded to be the certified standards journalists should strive towards (Harcup, 2004). Adhering to these principles would involve giving a fair weighting in the report and equal treatment regarding contributors of the story and an overall morally neutral account, without placing judgement. However, recent scholars have found that exceptions to these values have to be made, especially in the case of hate speech (Cohen-Almagor, 2008). Cohen-Almagor (2008) makes the point that “subjectivity is preferable to objectivity when the media covers illiberal and anti-democratic phenomena” (pg. 136). Moral neutrality should be abandoned when issues are involved that threaten the upholding of fundamental human rights and a liberal democracy, to which Cohen-Almagor (2008) includes the moral obligation not to harm. Cohen (2001) also purports that journalists are too lenient in their treatment of irreverent messages and succumb to the lies of a ‘mellowed fascist government’. Scholars are increasingly condemning the notion of objectivity, contending it “has denied journalists their citizenship; as impartial reporters, journalists are expected to be morally disengaged and politically inactive” (Glasser, 1984, pg. 15) Instead, stories involving hate speech should be suitable denounced and condemned in the media and journalists should put their roles as democratic citizens before their professional obligations (Cohen-Almagor, 2008). Counter arguments, besides the arguments for democracy explored above, which support moral neutrality even in the most extreme cases, include the argument from paternalism. As Cohen-Almagor (2008) deliberates, it is “wrong to assume that all readers and spectators are able to differentiate between good and evil” (pg. 146). The media must also account for those who are unable of thinking rationally, and thus, should maintain and prioritize the educational and informative role of the media, based on which even the most irrational can form opinions from (Cohen-Almagor, 2008). However, this argument is refuted by the severity of the issues and content at stake, which simply cannot be hurled into the public sphere without any judgement.
To sum up, both theories involved in the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ debate are relevant and corroborated by valid arguments of more or less equal weighting on either side of the debate, hence making it is almost impossible to come to a rational conclusion. Nevertheless, the strongest argument in favour of unfettered free press is the one stemming from the degeneration of society and the strongest against, the argument of moral obligation not to harm. In terms of the treatment of hate speech in the media, the severity and potential harmfulness of the content involved, allows, or perhaps even demands, subjective judgement and a condemning treatment of the story.
The issue in question remains one of the key, unresolved ethical dilemmas of our modern time and the only coherent way to sum it up is through the words of Marron (2015): “free speech is a tightrope performance that requires a delicate balance” (pg. 1).