Hate Speech, Media Activism and the First Amendment

Putting a spotlight on dehumanizing language

By Candice O'Grady

In just over a month last winter, two Latino men were beaten to death in New York state while their attackers shouted racial slurs and epithets (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/25/09). Such hate crimes, motivated by anti-immigrant prejudice and other bigotries, have spurred a media justice campaign to reveal the potential human costs of hate speech.

When the FBI reported that hate crimes against Hispanics had increased by an astonishing 40 percent between 2003 and 2007 (FBI: Hate Crime Statistics, 2003 and 2007), UCLA professor Chon Noriega began to ask “whether the media plays a role in the persistence of hate speech and hate crimes.” In a pilot study that attempts to quantify hate speech in commercial radio, Noriega tracked language on the Lou Dobbs Show, Savage Nation and the John & Ken Show (Latino Policy and Issues Brief, 2/09). On these programs he found “systematic and extensive use of false facts, flawed argumentation, divisive language, and dehumanizing metaphors that are directed toward specific vulnerable groups”—which results, Noriega argued, in marginalized populations being “characterized as a direct threat to the listeners’ way of life.”

While deeply unsettling, Noriega’s findings should come as little surprise. Last August, San Francisco–based shock jock Michael Savage unleashed this xenophobic tirade (Savage Nation, 8/4/08):

We need to get our troops out of Iraq and put them on the streets of America to protect us from the scourge of illegal immigrants who are running rampant across America, killing our police for sport, raping, murdering like a scythe across America.…The Statue of Liberty is crying, she’s been raped and disheveled—raped and disheveled by illegal aliens.


Savage is hardly alone in advocating violence against immigrants in recent years. Montana radio host John Stokes said of non-English speakers (John Stokes Show, 9/1/07): “Romans 15:19 says that if they break into your country, chop off their leg. We have to forcibly get rid of them.” (Actually, the verse cited says nothing of the kind.) Rush Limbaugh (Rush Limbaugh Show, 3/27/06) cast all Mexicans as a “renegade, potentially criminal element.” MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson agreed on-air with radio host Mark Williams (Tucker, 10/16/06) that illegal immigrants are mainly “drug runners, human traffickers” and “people who engage in slavery and prostitution.” Meanwhile, in 2007 alone, Lou Dobbs connected crime to illegal immigrants on 94 episodes of his television show (Media Matters, 5/21/08). (For further examples, see FCC Petition for Inquiry: In the Matter of Hate Speech in the Media, 1/28/09.)

More at the link: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3776


The 'Fairness Doctrine' may or may not control this. What is really needed is a government and corporate anti-propaganda law. Considering that someone could go to jail for lying to a persecutor or falsifying a contract, why not go to jail for misleading the public.

Then again, these same people will also say that National Security will be at risk or lets do away with the 1st amendment.

All I know, stirring-up hate needs to end...