Discussion 10: The Sinister Side of Community

It was a little more than a decade ago when my friend Jemele Hill forwarded me a nasty email she got from a reader, calling her a two-word epithet that was both racist and sexist. I was horrified … and very naive. Jemele got that kind of hate all the time, and it got exponentially worse when she moved from the Orlando Sentinel to ESPN a few years later. I just didn’t fathom how bad it really was until I saw that email.

Our reading this week paints a relatively sunny portrait of “community,” and on one level it resonates. We want to serve the public, and expand the discussion.

But for a lot of people in journalism — especially minorities and women — the cost of “community” is the constant barrage of comments ranging from unwanted to vile. Just this morning I retweeted a journalist’s commentary on the tragedy in Ukraine and a commenter wrote back “Wow you’re gorgeous … are you single?” I suppose there’s a chance the journalist appreciated the compliment, but I found it wildly inappropriate. She was reporting on historic devastation, not scrolling through Tinder. 

I keep my direct messages open to everyone in the effort to be transparent and accountable to the community of readers. But it’s easy for me to do so. I don’t have to worry about anyone calling me “gorgeous” or the much, much worse adjectives that I’m sure so many minorities and women get when they post almost anything. Sure, I get the occasional hate, but it’s more annoying than traumatic. 

Please write 150-250 words on one thing that can be done to make online journalism communities better for minority and female journalists. You can direct your idea toward an editor, a hiring manager, a co-worker, or anyone in journalism. We all have a role to play in this, and “Minimize Harm” needs to apply to our colleagues and not just our subjects.

Another option for the assignment: If there is a specific situation you’d like to share about yourself or a friend, and how you chose to handle it, please feel free to do so. 

“Nothing can be done! People are terrible!” is an acceptable answer if that’s what you believe, but please give it some thought and put that thought into words.

Lastly, please remember to reply to another student for full credit, and please keep it respectful. This is an online community that should be safe from the kind of abuse we’re trying to avoid.

Reply to 

I believe that certain measures need to be taken to ensure that online journalism communities are safer for women and minorities. These actions include censoring racist and sexist messages from being published online, monitoring the comment section of such forums, and ensuring that women’s and minorities’ voices are represented and heard. I believe that moderators of such forums should go to lengths to make sure that racist and sexist messages aren’t published online. Publishing such messages to be seen by women and minorities can be traumatizing to them. Especially life-threatening to their very existence. It is best to minimize harm and keep such harmful messages hidden. There should be monitoring of the comment sections of the forums to see that there is a respectful dialogue between the commenters. When there is discord in the comment section, things can get out of hand, and become a very toxic place for women and minority journalists to frequent. One wants to avoid this by limiting discord and monitoring any negative exchanges on the forum. Also, I believe that such forums should be a safe space for women and minorities to express their opinions, and be heard. Every journalist needs to have the ability to express themselves, along with reporting facts through online mediums. It is much harder for one to express their individuality in such a hostile and unwelcoming space. The prominence of women and minority journalists depends on the ability to ensure online journalism’s ability to be accessible to them.