The Citizen Journalism Manual…

10. On offence

Published in

PacificEdge

8 min readJul 30, 2022

Be careful what you say in social media, because no matter what, we live in a hypersensitive society where people are just looking for any reason to be offended and make a huge deal about nothing … anonymous

Continuing our exploration of the legals around citizen journalism, let’s take a closer look at offence that was already mentioned in The legals.

“It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive’. It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. …Stephen Fry

INADVERTENTLY OR NOT, giving and receiving offence comes with living in democratic societies because they have an implied or legal freedom of speech. Giving offence is not a crime unless it is made on the basis of ethnicity or some other characteristic proscribed in law.

At some time or other in personal life and as well as in citizen journalism we are going to give offence to some individual or group irrespective of whether we intend to or not. This can happen simply by:

questioning something about a person or group
writing about a topic the offended would prefer we didn’t write about
writing in a style the reader is unfamiliar with and that they misconstrue
using particular terms the offended does not like
being critical of something the offended supports
not giving some organisation’s spokerperson an opportunity to comment; the organisation and its supporters will likely claim offence and bias.

Similarly, we are likely to be offended by what some individual, politician, religious spokesperson or other group says or does that contravenes our own beliefs and values. Remember that we cannot control what others say, only what we say, so there is no point in getting angry.

Offence is what happens in life and we should regard it as normal. We should also know that some people enjoy the excitement of being offended and outraged. They like the emotion of anger and expressing it. Some like playing the victim to discredit the supposed offender and turn public anger on them, engage in emotional blackmail or to satisfy some psychological drive of their own.

Claims of offence can be a weapon. They are used to try to silence criticism and, thus, can be used to censor what is discussed and close down conversations. As citizen journalists we need not set out to deliberately offend but we should anticipate that some will accuse us of causing offence for any of the points I mention above.

Who are the offended?

Individuals, social groups, genders, ethnicities and the religious are the main demographics to claim offence. They will say so to defend themselves or to deflect attention from themselves.

They may direct accusation and question the motives of the accused offender. This sometimes takes the form of an ad-hominin rebuttal that attacks the character or other personal attributes of the person making the argument rather than addressing the argument itself. It is an attempt to discredit the alleged offender by making the offended appear to be victims.

Let’s look at a couple examples

I saw a case of ad hominin attack on social media not long ago. A male respondent commented in a discussion in an inoffensive way only to be attacked by a woman for ‘mansplaining’. This was an an hominin attack because it attacked the character of the man and did not address the topic under discussion. Although mansplaining is a reality (I recently watched it in action with an IT person explaining how something worked to a friend who had worked in the area and well-knew how things worked)—it happens when males assume superior knowledge than a female then explain, uninvited, something to the woman as if she knows nothing —the woman directing the accusation at the man did not, or chose not to address the issue in discussion in preference for a personal attack. This is not the sort of behaviour that citizen journalists engage in, however they should be aware that they may experience ad hominin attacks. As someone said, journalists need a thick skin to weather verbal attacks of all kinds.

Sometimes we see people claiming offence on behalf of some social demographic, group or person. They might have no association with the supposed-offended but choose to speak for them. I have seen this on social media—the home of bad behaviour—when a commentator wrote a piece in an inoffensive, humorous style to accompany a photograph of a woman he knew. Others, both male and female, were quick to claim offence on her behalf. Interestingly, the woman never claimed offence and said later that she understood the commentator’s intention. There were also many more ‘likes’ for the social media post than people offended by it on the woman’s behalf, however the supposedly offended were more vociferous in the comments and came to dominate the conversation. What happened was that humour is rarely, almost never, used as an idiom on that social media site and, thus, readers did not understand the intention of the commentator.

Another case centred on a noted performance poet who developed a stand-up piece about a woman who ‘repainted’ a mysogonistic slogan that bordered on encouraging child sexual abuse on a campervan hired from the Wicked vehicle hire company. I wrote a comment supporting the action of a woman, however another woman who read the piece thought I was supporting the slogan on the van and responded with an insulting comment. Another one then wrote, pointing out that the commenter misunderstood what I had written. They had failed to comprehend what I said and had taken offence, responding with an ad hominin attack. It was another case of speaking for someone uninvited. I have known the poet for decades and she was not offended because there was nothing to take offence at, and she understood the humour.

People often respond with a comment about a linked article without reading the article itself. They will respond to the headline and a quoted paragraph without thinking about whether it accurately reflects the content of the article.

Weaponising words

The emotions associated with offence stimulate rapid emotional response on social media. People will write in criticism without thinking whether they are misinterpreting the comment. It pays to ask ourselves whether what someone writes is actually how we understand it. Do they usually write like this? People misreading and misunderstanding what we and others write about and taking offence at something that is not offensive is a common occurrence.

The lesson is to ensure you understand what someone writing on social media actually says and do not respond on the basis of emotional reaction, as were some in these examples. Is a commentator actually being offensive or do we imagine that is so because we misread what they say? One reason why there is often misunderstanding on social media is because we have only the written word to go by, unlike a conversation-in-person where we can read the body language of volume and tone, expression and gesture. Social media, video excluded, is single-channel communication.

Responses to perceived offence range through verbal attack, attempts to discredit the journalist, verbal bullying, abuse, passive aggressive behaviour and emotional blackmail.

As a form of verbal bullying, the intent of claims of offence can be to shut down discussion on a topic the complainant does not want to see discussed. We might think of it as a type of emotional blackmail with the offended claiming hurt and the writer or speaker accused of being thoughtless, inconsiderate, ideologically motivated, racist, feminist, antifeminist, male, middle class, privileged, white, biased, non-objective, unfair, insensitive or aggressive. These have all become catchwords—weaponised language—in the ‘culture wars’ that appear from time to time in our society. I have seen many of these terms used by the supposedly-offended. They form a common vocabulary of go-to words for use against presumed offenders such as writers, journalists, public figures and social media commentators. The thing is that by inappropriately using these terms they become devalued when their use is justified, in much the same way that overuse and misuse of ‘sustainable’ and ‘sustainability’ have become devalued and have lost their impact and meaning in discussions about environmental and economic issues. Claims of offence are very much a win/lose game.

Don’t get the idea I am trying to excuse people saying things to disadvantage or misrepresent some group, demographic or individual. All I am saying is that, as citizen journalists, we might encounter hostile remarks in response to something we write and that we best avoid using charged words in our stories.

I think British actor, Stephen Fry, summed it up when he said:

It is now very common to hear people say ‘I’m rather offended by that’. As if that gives them certain rights.

It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive’. It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase.

‘I am offended by that’. Well, so f’ing what?.

While we don’t set out to offend anyone, remember that this is the age of the easily-offended. Write responsibility by not deliberately setting out to offend and have a thick skin, as the saying goes.