Should we cover right-wing extremism?
On August 12, 2017, a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to “Unite the Right” brought white nationalism to the center of American news. Ahead of the next demonstration, to be held this weekend in Washington DC, I spoke with a scholar of media manipula
via Columbia Journalism Review: https://www.cjr.org/first_person/should-we-cover-right-wing-extremism.php
Light disinfects, but light also illuminates. It does both things simultaneously in ways that are very unpredictable. I think information is good, and to participate actively in your democracy, you need to know what’s happening. But you relinquish some control of what is going to happen to the information you put out there. And for that reason you need to be a little bit wary of who you’re shining the light for, and what you end up illuminating, for which groups of people.