CBS Provides Platform For White Nationalist To Spin Without Pressing On Racist Views
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
CBS News provided alt-right white nationalist Richard Spencer with a platform to normalize his racist political movement and praise President-elect Trump without pressing him on his racists comments and stances.
After noting Twitter’s recent suspension of several prominent white nationalist accounts associated with hate speech, CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan asked Richard Spencer if he was “an advocate for an all-white United States of America,” and allowed Spencer to respond “No, I don’t think that is going to happen,” without offering a follow-up question or pressing him on his past racist comments. From the November 17 edition of CBS’ CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley:
JOHN DICKERSON (GUEST HOST): In Germany today, President Obama called the spread of fake news online a threat to democracy. Facebook and other social media sites are being criticized for not doing enough to stop bogus stories that seem to dominate the election cycle. Jericka Duncan has more on this.
JERICKA DUNCAN: When a satirical web site headlined a story “Pope Francis shocked the world, backs Trump,” the fake news went viral. Waves of false headlines on social media have turned readers into believers. This week, social media giants Facebook and Google said they will go after hoax websites by restricting ad revenue. Facebook is also planning to launch a program allowing users to flag fake news. Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis.
JEFF JARVIS: The slope is very slick if we try the make Facebook and Google and company into censors. You can’t fight a position that just because somebody doesn’t like it and doesn’t trust it, it gets killed, it would be very dangerous to have blacklists and to ban sites, I think.
DUNCAN: Twitter is taking a different approach. A new feature rolling out this week allows users to mute key words, phrases and even entire conversations. Tuesday, it suspended several accounts supported by white nationalists, including Richard Spencer’s, a leader of the alt-right movement which is based on white identity.
Are you an advocate for an all-white United States of America?
RICHARD SPENCER: No. I don’t think that is going to happen. I want to first raise consciousness of who we are amongst Europeans in the United States, and second, I want to promote policies that really have a realistic chance of being implemented by the Donald Trump administration.
DUNCAN: Twitter’s rules prohibit violent threats, harassment and hateful conduct. A spokesperson from Twitter says they don’t comment on accounts they’ve suspended for privacy and security reasons. John?
The Associated Press has reported however that Spencer has “matter-of-factly called for removing African-Americans, Hispanics, and Jews from the United States,” declaring “We’ll help them go somewhere else.”
Duncan’s failure to press Spencer helped normalize a bigot that founded the white nationalist website Alternative Right, where one contributor wrote that “low-IQ Mexican immigration is the greatest threat to America,” and that “we should be heartened that white teenage girls aren’t passing themselves around in black neighborhoods.”
