CBC Response to Milo Story Leaves a lot to be desired
I recently complained to the CBC for running an interview with Milo that was an open forum for him to play the victim rather than the perpetrator of hate against feminists online, most recently and notably Leslie Jones of the Ghostbusters movie.
(How fucking sick and tired are women of having to deal with serious consequences over women being in a remake of a movie from the 1980s? I am tiiiiired, fam)
Here is the CBC response to my complaint, in full:
Thank you for your letter to the CBC Ombudsman on July 20 asking we decided to run an interview with Milo Yiannapoulos.
“A person being banned from Twitter for unleashing systematic hate speech on people is NOT NEWSWORTHY,” you wrote. “You could have chosen to interview actual Canadian feminist victims of this hateful man. You didn’t.”
Since I am the managing editor of CBCNews.ca, Jennifer McGuire, the general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News, asked me to reply.
Our reporter at the Republican National Convention interviewed Mr. Yiannapoulos earlier in the day about a different subject. Yiannapoulos’ quotes were not included in the story the reporter ended up filing from the convention floor.
But when news of the Twitter ban broke and began gathering momentum in news outlets around the world, we revisited the notes and found they were newsworthy given the context of the ban (regrettably the reporter didn’t ask him about the harassment of Ghostbuster’s star Leslie Jones).
While Twitter deactivates thousands of accounts a day for abuse and violating its terms of service, Yiannapoulos is one of only a handful of Twitter users who have been permanently banned. Indeed, the rules guiding by behaviour on social media are rarely enforced and the source of great confusion, and his ban could signal a shift in how these large, global social media companies police the space and make them safer for regular users.
I believe there to be a difference between interviewing a newsworthy person about a newsworthy subject (which contributes to balance and fairness and is our responsibility) and giving someone a platform to spew vile abuse or attack others.
We did the first, but did not (and would not) do the second.
The interview also provided additional context into the series of stories that we ran about the topic — including a story about why he was banned, another about why his banning had nothing to do with First Amendment violations and another piece that ran on As It Happens and on our website that focused on why a woman who reported abuse hundreds of times “won’t congratulate” Twitter after the ban.
We also commissioned a freelance column from a writer who was herself forced off Twitter several times as a result of directed racism, to further show the negative consequences for those who come under attack by so-called trolls.
Granted, there were problems with the piece — we realized when we posted the story that it didn’t contain enough context about why the interview happened in the first place and didn’t provide enough background about his past violations.
We inserted this paragraph to help make this clear, and also ensured the related links in the story brought readers to other stories that contained this information: “The interview was conducted before his Twitter suspension became major news online. The discussion focused on his politics and the Republican National Convention and didn’t address the Jones controversy or the Twitter ban.”
Our Journalistic Standards and Practices warns us that “on issues of controversy, we ensure that divergent views are reflected respectfully, taking into account their relevance to the debate and how widely held these views are. We also ensure that they are represented over a reasonable period of time.”
Not everyone who we interview is pleasant, civil or inclusive. But in this case, I feel the decision to run the interview was correct given the context of an RNC convention that has been highly divisive and focused on several of the unpopular issues raised in the question-and-answer piece and pushed into the mainstream agenda by publications such as Brietbart.
Finally, it is my responsibility to make you aware that if you are not satisfied with this response, you may wish to submit the matter for review by the CBC Ombudsman. The Ombudsman may be reached by mail at Box 500, Terminal A, Toronto., Ontario M5W 1E6 or by fax at (416) 205–2825, or by email at ombudsman@cbc.ca.
Thank you,
Steve
