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

Another Day with Ana Marie Cox

Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle

News, Arts, Performing Arts, Business, Society & Culture, Politics

4.6 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2018

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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. Get in touch with us on Twitter at @crooked_friends, or email the show at [email protected]. Thank you to our sponsors! Visit thirdlove.com/friends for 15% off your first order today. Check out getquip.com/friends and get your first refill pack free with a QUIP electric toothbrush. Go to grove.co/friends for a two-month VIP membership and a bonus gift.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to guess you might consider yourself.
0:07.1	What we used to call a news junkie.
0:10.5	It's a phrase that, for me, is a lot more frayed than it used to be.
0:15.1	I'm ambivalent about the word junkie, which I now tend to take more personally than I
0:20.4	used to.
0:21.4	And I'm also ambivalent about the word news.
0:25.5	I'm actually ambivalent about news as a thing.
0:31.8	It's not just that the phrase fake news has been literally weaponized.
0:36.6	It's not just the attacks from the president and his fans.
0:41.6	It's the attacks from within.
0:44.3	It's the fact that I'm no longer sure if being a journalist is the kind of righteous crusade
0:50.2	I once believed it to be.
0:53.1	I am definitely over the fiction that news is neutral.
0:56.4	It is always doing something, harm or good.
1:00.8	And my guest today, Whitney Phillips, has written a report, the oxygen amplification,
1:06.5	better practices for reporting on extremist antagonists and manipulators that is all
1:11.8	about the harm.
1:14.9	And that's why you'll hear me tell her right up front that her report depressed me more
1:20.2	than the book we featured last month.
1:23.3	Arjun sings set these American hate, if you'll recall.
1:27.3	That book is filled with first-person accounts from the survivors of hate crimes.
1:32.6	It was sobering.
	...

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