The last few months have been particularly hard on reporters and editors in terms of online harassment from those who disagree with their coverage — especially against those covering the campaign.
At the same time, parents and educators have reported a “Trump effect” among school children who seem to believe that racist, hateful speech they see from Donald Trump is now more acceptable than it may have seemed in the past.
Education reporters are especially vulnerable given the strong feelings many have about schools (including race, immigration, religion, sexuality) and the sad reality that harassment is much more prevalent against women than men.
There’s been at least one recent, high-profile example of online harassment of an education reporter — the New York Daily News’ Ben Chapman — in recent months. Some of the NYC students whose “fight club” was exposed by NYDN’s Ben Chapman have gotten in trouble for harassing him and his family online.
“All told, I received hundreds of insulting and threatening text messages from more than 100 different phone numbers and dozens of Facebook users, most of them Bronx Science students and alums,” wrote Chapman about the experience, which included an estimated 500 phone calls, emails and texts.
The experience was understandably frightening and unsettling. “My family and my workplace were being targeted. My relationships with some of the public school brass and some in community were being strained. And the cops posted outside my house created an unwanted scene on my block.
“But maybe worst of it was the feeling that the people I’d been trying to help, the students in the public schools, and alumni, and their friends and in some cases their family — were attacking me, for truthfully reporting on a very embarrassing situation at a high-profile and beloved school.”
But it turns out that this is far from the first example of an education reporter receiving vile threats and having personal information published online — and at least some of these incidents include not only threats of violence but also gender-based harassment.
In a 2014 article, education journalists Amanda Ripley and Elizabeth Green reported having gotten hate emails from readers in response to their stories.
“I have been called some awful names,” said Ripley. “And the funny thing is, I’ve written about abortion and terrorism, and I don’t get the same level of vitriol from those stories.”
“When I published my story on the elementary school in Portland [about white gentrifiers bypassing a neighborhood school], I was lambasted by a white nationalist on Twitter who repeatedly tweeted at me, asking me how I would prefer to be raped/stabbed and telling me that I was encouraging race mixing,” said Jessica Huseman, currently a Pulitzer Traveling Fellow. “Several of my followers were alarmed and reported her to twitter for harassment, as did I. Twitter responded to my harassment complaint a week later telling me they found no evidence of harassment. It was upsetting and ridiculous.”
“I write about guns, education and the LGBT community in Texas, so you can imagine I get a lot of angry emails, tweets and letters,” wrote a Texas-based education reporter.” I’ve found it’s gotten worse this election season.”
“The most threatening messages have been delivered via Twitter, from readers who don’t like that I wrote about UT’s “Cocks Not Glocks” protest or think I’ve been too hard on certain elected officials in the court of commonplace watchdog journalism,” she said. “Every once in a while you get that one that truly makes you wary, causes you to draw in on yourself and contemplate getting a stun gun or can of mace.” Threats of bodily harm and sex- and gender-specific threats are the most unsettling.
“The criticism I get for writing about education (“may you rot in hell”) is NOTHING like what I get when I write about race,” according to Betsy Hammond at The Oregonian. When she wrote about how white Portland iscompared to other similar cities, she received vile threats against her, accompanied with her Facebook photo.
In a Vanguard News Network blog post titled White Portland Journalist Betsy Hammond Bitching Because Her City Is Too White, commentators made comments about her appearance and made threats of sexual violence against her. [Read at your own risk.]
In a followup piece, New York Daily News reporter Chapman urged punishment for school officials who had failed to act, not for students who had participated in the fight club or the online harassment. He was also interviewed about the experience on local public radio.
“Unfortunately I think the harassment I faced is probably pretty typical of what kids who are bullied in school today deal with on a daily basis,” said Chapman.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Russo
Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.
Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/
