Deluge of Jew-Hatred in Response to Broadcast About Online Antisemitism

https://www.algemeiner.com/2016/06/15/npr-producer-deluge-of-jew-hatred-in-response-to-broadcast-about-online-antisemitism-forced-program-to-shut-down-comments-section-interview/

NPR Producer: Deluge of Jew-Hatred in Response to Broadcast About Online Antisemitism Forced Program to Shut Down Comments Section (INTERVIEW)

JUNE 15, 2016 1:28 PM 0 COMMENTS

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Lea Speyer

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ADLOnline AntisemitismOrlando terror attackWhite supremacism

NPR’s “Here and Now” program. Photo: Screenshot.

A producer for a Boston-areaNational Public Radio (NPR) station expressed her shock on Wednesday at the barrage of antisemitic and racist remarks posted in response to a broadcast about online antisemitism — which resulted in the shutting down of the comments section. 

Karyn Miller-Medzon, a senior associate producer for90.9 WBUR-FM NPR’s “Here and Now” nationally syndicated program, told The Algemeiner she was “caught by surprise” at the hatred spewed in response to a post of a previously broadcast, eight-minute segment highlighting the controversial “(((echo)))” symbol used by white supremacist groups and antisemites to track Jews online. The segment featured an interview with Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO (((Jonathan Greenblatt))), who spoke about the organization’s decision to place (((echo))) on its list of hate symbols. Within hours, she said, the site was flooded with vicious epithets.

“There was a deluge — over 100 comments — of offensive, racist and antisemitic remarks — the kind that you know people somewhere think but don’t expect to see,” she said. “Every time an offensive comment appeared, five or six more people would add their own comment to that one. So each comment would spawn new ones.”

According to Miller-Medzon, these included “stereotypical depictions of Jews, about their physiology and long noses, things like, ‘Well, of course, we want to show who the Jews are online so they don’t interbreed with the common population,’ and, ‘We wouldn’t have to use the (((echo))) symbol if Jews wore yellow stars.’”

As soon as she became aware of what was happening, Miller-Medzon said, she alerted the show’s host. She then contacted the managing editor, who informed the web department. An immediate decision was taken to remove the antisemitic and racist remarks and shut down the comments section. A WBUR web moderator announced the closure and linked to the station’s community guidelines:

“This kind of occurrence is rare,” Miller-Medzon told The Algemeiner. “We are a news and current-affairs show, and report on everything you can imagine. We do sometimes cover controversial topics that spawn offensive comments, and we take steps to remove the comments and ban the user. So it’s not uncommon for us to remove a post or warn posters that if they continue with their offensiveness, we will ban them. However, I can’t remember ever having to shut down all comments on a particular segment, and I’ve been here a long time.” 

While there were a handful of people speaking out against the antisemitic comments, she said, any defense against them proved futile. “The comments were coming so quickly and from people with such clear hatred that I don’t think it was realistic for someone who felt otherwise to engage them,” she said. “Engaging would have led to more of the same, and I think the wisest thing to do was not to engage.”

Miller-Medzon said she believes the alt-right community — who is responsible for creating the (((echo))) symbol — got wind of the “Here and Now” segment and decided to launch an online trolling attack. “We have wonderful listeners and readers who regularly, in our online forums, really defend the oppressed and speak out against racism,” she said. “This is not our regular community of listeners, because we don’t usually get this kind of venom.”

Miller-Medzon concluded by bemoaning the timing of the incident — which “couldn’t have been more depressing” — in the wake of the Orlando massacre and the show’s subsequent reporting on hate crimes. “On the day when one of the few segments we ran wasn’t about Orlando, this segment spawned even more hatred,” she said. “This was all a surprising turn of events.”

She first brought the issue to light in a Twitter post on Tuesday:

 Follow

Karyn Miller-Medzon 

✔@KBMM

Ironic (sad) that comment section of @hereandnow webpage about online #antisemitism had 2 be shut down b/c of antisemitic slurs #StopTheHate

9:11 PM - 14 Jun 2016

 

Defending History - Past Imperfect

History can be a fragile thing, very much like an old book. The pages are brittle and become more easily lost, damaged or  removed. The older the history, the more at risk it is.

Sometimes history is lost or broken by accident.  Records are destroyed - like the loss of the ancient library of Alexandria. Sometimes history is destroyed on purpose. Historical revisionists abound. These are not people who present thoughtful, encompassing, documented examinations of events. These are individuals and groups who present arguments which omit or offhandedly dismiss large chunks of the historic record. Usually this is in pursuit of a political or social agenda. Sometimes it's about mitigating responsibility or guilt. Rarely is it about respecting history. Many oppressive governments have proved that.

Defending history is not just about perpetuating stories and retaining facts. History is about people. When we negate any aspect of the historic record, good or bad, we dishonor the memories of the people who lived it and sometimes died in it. Teaching history, repeating history, going to the places where it happened is not just about keeping things known, its about speaking for the for the dead - the heroes, the villains, the good people, the bad people and the foolish.

We cannot ignore that history is recorded by people. People are fallible. The historic record is imperfect. Imperfect is not the same as untrue or wrong.

History is like food. What we had yesterday makes us what we are today and what we have of it today will make us what we will be tomorrow. To be historically anemic is ugly, unhealthy, unnecessary and dangerous.

Elliot's Book of Nazis

My father-in-law was a Nazi hunter, a professional Nazi hunter. He was paid to be a Nazi hunter. He was determined and methodical.  In the mid 1990's, before the internet's pervasive content emergence, he gained access to the German military archives.  He came away with numerous volumes including copies of the Reich's own complete listing of SS officers. These phone book sized bound volumes have names, ranks, serial numbers, assignments - all of it. Thousands of names of officers assigned to some of the most infamous places in history.

Elliot's book of Nazis is evidence,  not indictment. It is, however,  proof of history. Something inceasingly at risk and fragile.

Cowards of the Internet

Being a coward on the Internet is not about hiding or running away, as it might in the real world. Cowards can stand in plain sight using words to hide from the truth.

Truth is not a selective thing. It is determined through s process, a series of examined bits of evidence that comes out to a balance, one way or the other, in the end. The truly brave and courageous will embrace both sides of an argument grant the merits of both, incorporate changes along the way and accept the result.

The internet today is populated by too few of these brave people. The common approach is to build an argument predicated on a predetermined conclusion - the answer before the argument.

For example, writing about how the internet, society, government or media hate a particular social,  religious or racial group is easy if you ignore all or part of the evidence. Saying something unpopular isn't brave or courageous if  the argument is bias or incomplete.

We like to think that the internet has made us all journalists of one sort or another. But journalism without responsibility or credibility is nothing more than opinion.  The internet has made very few journalists and way too many of us simply noisy.

Hiding behind unsubstantiated information, presumption, subjective bias and rumor - no matter unique or representative is not valid, it is cowardly.

The Plastic Atomic Future - Bad Ideas From Smart People

In 1994 or so,  I was at the General Electric Aircraft Engine plant in Ohio with a collection of British aerospace companies. Tucked away in a corner of the factory was a makeshift museum. One of the models on display was very different. It was a mock-up for the nuclear powered aircraft project. Two years later, at the Idaho Falls nuclear test range,  I stood next to a test rig holding the remains of the airborne reactor created for that same project and later I stood outside the hanger built for the super plane.

The nuclear powered aircraft project and killed  by the Eisenhower administration.  Flying nuclear reactors were only a good idea as long as they never flew over the continental U.S. or crashed.

What other nuclear  marvels did we consider building and what other scary ideas did we actually bring to reality.

There are, of course, nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers. One of the questionable ideas was the Ford Nucleon,  an atomic powered car. Another atomic powered form of transportation with long history of crashing.

Then there was project X-12.  In 1954 a plan was developed by Professor Lyle B. Borst and his colleagues at the University of Utah to build a nuclear-powered train. Babcock and Wilcox, one of the country’s premier nuclear reactor designer/builders, helped to develop the concept in secret. Project X-12 would have created a steam engine using a small nuclear reactor. Rather than the typical control rods, a more efficient liquid uranium oxide dissolved in sulphuric acid mix would be used. Fortunately this project also never got beyond prototype stage.

The winner of the bad use of non-weaponized nuclear energy are the atomic powered lighthouses built by the USSR during that country's heyday.  Although the application makes some sense,  a string of self sustaining, autonomous lighthouses on isolated Arctic shipping lanes, the problem was the USSR.

When the Soviet Union collapsed many of its far-flung assets were looted; jets, vehicles, art and small nuclear reactors in unguarded lighthouses. The looters knew that the reactors contained valuable metals but were ignorant or didn't believe there was actual danger. The damaged and breached reactors contaminated everything in the immediate vicinity.  To this day these sites are still hazardous.

A Brief History of the End of the Comments

• AUTHOR: KLINT FINLEY.KLINT FINLEY BUSINESS

• DATE OF PUBLICATION: 10.08.15.10.08.15

• TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM.7:00 AM

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE END OF THE COMMENTS

EARLIER THIS WEEK, Vice’s technology and science news siteMotherboard dropped its comments section, opting to replace it with an old school “letters to the editor” feature. Then Reddit launched a news site called Upvoted that didn’t include a comments section. (You can still comment on the stories on Reddit itself.)

What’s going on here? For years, comment boxes have been a staple of the online experience. You’ll find them everywhere, from The New York Times to Fox News to The Economist. But as online audiences have grown, the pain of moderating conversations on the web has grown, too. And in many cases, the most vibrant coversations about a particular article or topic are happening on sites like Facebook and Twitter. So many media companies are giving up on comments, at least for now. So far this year, Bloomberg, The Verge, The Daily Beast and now Motherboard have all dropped their comments feature.

While it’s too soon to say that comment sections are outright dying— there are plenty of major sites that still have comments, including WIRED—it’s safe to say there’s a trend towards replacing them with something else. Here’s a brief history of major publications pulling the plug on comments. Feel free to suggest additions to the timeline in, well, the comments.

September 24, 2012: The Atlantic launches the business news site Quartz without a comments section, but adds comments in the form of “annotations” nearly a year later.

September 24, 2013: Popular Science becomes one of the first major publications to ditch its comments feature, citing studies that found that blog comments can have a profound effect on readers’ perceptions of science. “If you carry out those results to their logical end—commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded—you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the “off” switch,” former digital editor Suzanne LaBarre wrote in the site’s announcement.

April 12, 2014: The Chicago Sun-Times suspends its comment feature, citing concerns over the “tone and quality” of the comments while its team developed a new discussion system. Most articles on the site still don’t allow comments.

August 2014: CNN quietly disables comments on most stories sometime during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

November 7, 2014: Reuters drops comments for all of its stories except its opinion pieces, saying that social media is a better place for discussion. “Those communities offer vibrant conversation and, importantly, are self-policed by participants to keep on the fringes those who would abuse the privilege of commenting,” executive editor Dan Colarusso wrote in the company’s announcement.

November 20, 2014: Popular tech news site Recode follows suit, also citing social media as the best way for readers to provide feedback.

December 15, 2014: The winter of comment discontent kicks into high gear as The Week pulls the plug on comments.

December 16, 2014: The very next day, so does the millennial-focused Mic.com, proving that comment-phobia isn’t just for old media.

January 27, 2015 Bloomberg’s website relaunches with no comments.

July 6, 2015: Tech news site The Verge announces that it’s shutting off comments for most articles for the duration fo the summer. Most articles still don’t have comments enabled today.

July 7, 2015: WIRED launches our new “short post” format, which doesn’t include a comments section.

July 27, 2015: Internet community news site The Daily Dotswitches off comments.

August 19, 2015: So does The Daily Beast, but the site claims that it’s working on “multiple ways to bring you an upgraded commenting experience.”

October 5, 2015: Vice Motherboard announces that it’sreplacing its comments feature with a weekly “letters to the editor” feature.

October 6, 2015: Reddit launches its news site Upvoted, which has no way to comment on or “upvote” things directly on the site. You can guess where the site’s owners hope discussions will take place.