USA: Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance’s fake stories create real risks for journalists; Reporters Without Borders, October 1, 2024

Reporters Without Borders (RSF); USA: Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance’s fake stories create real risks for journalists

"A viral hoax spread by Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance has led to an outburst of violent threats against Haitian immigrants, including journalists from The Haitian Times. After covering the story, the media outlet itself became a target, highlighting the real-world dangers that political disinformation can create for journalists and journalism.

An online news outlet serving the Haitian American community, The Haitian Times, has received anonymous threats and editor Macollvie Neel’s home was “swatted” when police showed up to her residence in response to a false report of a crime. These incidents took place a few days after Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance circulated a widely debunked claim from Facebook alleging that Haitian migrants resettled in the town of Springfield, Ohio were stealing and eating local residents’ pets. 

In the weeks since Vance elevated this fake story, Springfield has been subjected to dozens of bomb threats and city leaders have been flooded with threatening hate mail. Racist and xenophobic displays have left Haitian residents feeling unsafe, including journalists from The Haitian Times, who were forced to cancel a scheduled town hall event.

Instead of retracting this claim, Vance has defended it and asserted that he is willing to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.” ...

Combating misinformation: a key issue in the election campaign

RSF recently published its 10-Point Plan for U.S. Press Freedom in which it urges the presidential campaigns to treat the members of the press with respect and “publicly reaffirm the right and necessity of journalists to do their jobs safely.” RSF has previously highlighted the global problem of increased political attacks on the media. Of the five indicators that RSF measures on its World Press Freedom Index, where this year the U.S. dropped to a ranking of 55th out 180 countries, the political indicator saw the sharpest decline in 2024."

Banning Leslie Jones’s trolls won’t change a thing — hate is still the norm online; Washington Post, 7/20/16

Mikki Kendall, Washington Post; Banning Leslie Jones’s trolls won’t change a thing — hate is still the norm online:

"This is not just a matter of speech, despite the persistent notion that online harassment is easy to escape because in theory you can close the tab or turn off the computer. Online harassment spilled offline years ago. Harassers may imitate a deceased parent, contact employers in an attempt get a target fired or track someone down and drive them from their home. The last is often accomplished via SWATting, a tactic where a harasser files phony reports alleging a hostage situation or something similar so that police will in theory send the SWAT team into their target’s home.

Can we really claim that the trolls are outside the norm when the norm dismisses their behavior or even supports it on flimsy free speech grounds? After all, the people behind those keyboards sending hateful messages and imagery can vote. They can work on political campaigns; they can run for election. Ignoring bigots in our midst and failing to take them seriously can have a negative impact on everyone.

People like Yiannopoulos and his supporters are the symptom, but the real disease is the way that bigotry is being normalized as something harmless. It’s not. Some of the world’s darkest moments have happened because hate of “the other” spread like wildfire and stripped people of empathy, reason or basic human decency."

The terror of swatting: how the law is tracking down high-tech prank callers; Guardian, 4/15/16

Dan Tynan, Guardian; The terror of swatting: how the law is tracking down high-tech prank callers:

"The first 911 call came at 4.30pm. The caller told dispatchers that a man, woman, and boy had been shot and another child was being held hostage. Police responded in force, sending more than half a dozen cruisers and emergency vehicles to a sprawling house in the affluent Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek.

But when they arrived there were no signs of a shooting; inside, police found a nanny with two small children. When the mother returned from shopping she found her home surrounded by emergency vehicles. The father, who had been on a plane, landed at Atlanta’s international airport to see his house on TV, with news reports declaring that his wife and children had been shot.

They were victims of a swatting attack, a malicious form of hoax where special weapons and tactics (Swat) teams are called to a victim’s home under false pretenses, with potentially deadly results...

In November 2015, around the same time that reports about Obnoxious became public, congresswoman Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a bill that made swatting a federal crime. (The bill has been referred to the House subcommittee on crime, terrorism, homeland security, and investigations.)...

In March, Clark addressed the second part of the problem – the lack of law enforcement expertise – by introducing the Cybercrime Enforcement Training Assistance Act, which would allocate $20m a year to train local police departments on how to investigate and prosecute cybercrime."