ADL Forms Task Force On Anti-Semitic Hate Speech Against Journalists
By KATHERINE KRUEGER
Published JUNE 1, 2016
4:18 PM EDT
The 2016 election has been nothing if not a case study in what you can get away with saying. Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump set the tone right out of the gate when he called undocumented Mexican immigrants rapists and hes won supporters ever since with his bombastic rhetoric, slinging mud at virtually every opponent real or imagined whos crossed his path.
The discourse has pitched far darker online. After a slew of high-profile reports of blistering online abuse targeting journalists, the Anti-Defamation League announced Wednesday it has recruited top journalists, academics, and law enforcement officials for a task force to get serious about studying and recommending solutions to the problem ...
Over the next several months, the group plans to study the prevalence of online abuse targeting journalists and whether it has caused them to self-censor out of fear of retribution. Greenblatt also said a major question for the group focuses on finding out whether the abuse is the work of actual users or automated bots, occurring spontaneously or in a strategic, coordinated way. They plan to release a report on their findings before the end of summer.
The task force launch comes after Julia Ioffe, a Jewish journalist writing for GQ, was bombarded with anti-Semitic slurs, death and rape threats and harassing phone calls after publishing a profile of Melania Trump that revealed the former supermodel has a secret half-brother ...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/adl-task-force-anti-semitic-threats-reporters