Misogyny, rape culture, racism in relation to journalism, media, and Reddit

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by pocheros

Man, fuck that CNN article. Note how white dudes who are criminals always get humanized in the news- you never hear about any of their crimes without hearing about how hard they worked, how they're parents, or about how they supposedly regret their actions.

I have a problem with every other sentence in that article, seriously fuck that. AUGH.

But Pocheros!
His son and his stepson are both in the U.S. military!!!
And he's kind of sort of sorry to some degree!!!
And he was fired from his job of seven years!!!!!

What an honorable, ethical man he is, worthy of the utmost of sympathy pieces from CNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Meister]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Someone needs to tell me why CNN decided to give this man an audience without at any point writing something to the effect of "This man is a fucking piece of shit and should rot in the deepest depths of hell."

Because they're in the business of news and information and not in the business of telling the general public who they should hate. It's an interesting interview that highlights some of the motivations behind reddit subculture, if only superficially, touches upon the general issue of internet services' responsibility for user content, and, yes, may reveal media bias through its language. They could have just done a motivational poster saying "THIS MAN: incredible asshole" but the interview is more interesting. Anyway do you seriously need a news organization to spell it out for you to form an opinion on this guy?

Listen, I don't want to see this thread become the all-purpose Let's Confirm To Each Other How Much We Hate A Guy show. There's all of the rest of the internet for that. In a thread that's got some of the underlying issues right in the title, concentrate on those.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Meister

Listen, I don't want to see this thread become the all-purpose Let's Confirm To Each Other How Much We Hate A Guy show. There's all of the rest of the internet for that. In a thread that's got some of the underlying issues right in the title, concentrate on those.

The thing is, how these things are discussed by society at large are part of these issues. The fact that a white man is getting attention and opportunity to apologize that would probably not be given were he a black man. The fact that the media feigns a lack of bias both in it giving him this opportunity and in how it goes about it. We don't need the news to tell us how to feel, but the messages sent out in popular media do influence the way people think. Giving a man like this a figurative podium from which to speak reflects these issues.

As much as you may want to, you cannot separate the issues in our society from how they're presented by those with power, and a news station has a FUCKLOAD of power. Such power must be used responsibly. While you may disagree with the criticisms made against CNN, I don't think telling members they aren't allowed to make those criticisms is a responsible use of your authority.

Poch made an excellent post pointing out some of the shitty elements of the article and how those shitty elements reflect a large systemic problem. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your post and you in fact support Poch's post 100% and were only telling Snake he wasn't allowed to make emotional posts, but if that's the case I don't think you made that clear, and a better post would have made clear that it was Snake's posts specifically that were out of line, since those seem to be the only ones that could be argued to detract from the thread, though honestly I find them rather harmless.

[pochercoaster]

Edit: NINJA'D

I would argue that biases in journalism are actually a large part of these issues. And news unfortunately is in the business of telling the public who to hate, just usually those are the victims of crimes (when they are sexual assault and related crimes) as opposed to the perpetrators, and in the process they distort the information instead of provide it. For those who do not access news through the internet and read up on these issues through a variety of sources, they are being presented with a biased representation of the events. Yes, most people with common sense will still conclude that this man is a criminal, but the additional sugarcoating is still objectionable and symptomatic of the culture that allows places like Reddit to breed in the first place. (I understand that your response was directed at Snake and not me, though)

Anyways, ugh, I had some other things I wanted to talk about but I forgot what they were and it's late, so I'll probably write up a post after some sleep.

[Meister]

Oh hey I'm definitely 100% in favour of pointing out media biases and bad journalism, don't get me wrong there. And that includes pointing out where they shape an opinion instead of representing it (a tricky distinction, at best). I definitely don't want to keep anyone from making these criticisms but also not from challenging them, but in either case to do it without needing to restate the obvious common ground that I think we all have here ("dude's an asshole for sure"). So yeah, to clarify, addressing Snake in an immediate sense, but even more so addressing everyone else as well to not let things get out of hand.

[POS Industries]

I would say we're not even close to getting out of hand yet, so there's nothing for anyone to worry about for the time being.

[Meister]

All that said I do have to challenge some bits:

Originally Posted by pocheros

Fixed those.

Now I haven't followed this case as closely as you probably have, and I don't know if there actually have been allegiations of the guy actually raping his stepdaughter that CNN is deliberately toning down - if you're gonna "fix" statements like that please back it up with a source. Similar with the second statement: are you saying Hostin is misrepresenting the actual material posted (in which case, deliberately or by mistake?) or that there's no such thing as "borderline" child porn?

e: and now I realized that hers wasn't even a statement that necessarily relates to his particular postings, just reddit as a whole, so that's a bit dodgy of CNN to associate it without explaining the exact connection.

Note how often white criminals are reported as having addictions or mental illnesses.

Can you provide some more examples? I don't particularly doubt that that's a thing but it would be nice to have them.

[Satan's Onion]

Originally Posted by Meister

...
Now I haven't followed this case as closely as you probably have, and I don't know if there actually have been allegiations of the guy actually raping his stepdaughter that CNN is deliberately toning down...

If I remember what I've read at Something Awful correctly, there was a rather...infamous "Ask Me Anything" thread hosted by violentacrez himself, wherein he actually bragged about doing that to his stepdaughter. We can only hope he was just making shit up to please his large fanbase of creepy fuckers.

[pochercoaster]

Originally Posted by Meister

All that said I do have to challenge some bits:

Now I haven't followed this case as closely as you probably have, and I don't know if there actually have been allegiations of the guy actually raping his stepdaughter that CNN is deliberately toning down - if you're gonna "fix" statements like that please back it up with a source.

In the original article Adrien Chen wrote about how Violentacrez bragged about raping his daughter, as SO mentioned. It was in an AMA which, near as I can tell, has since been deleted. It obviously wasn't consensual sex like the language in the article suggests. This happens all the time in journalism- sexual assault is repeatedly referred to as sex scandals or simply sex.

Similar with the second statement: are you saying Hostin is misrepresenting the actual material posted (in which case, deliberately or by mistake?) or that there's no such thing as "borderline" child porn?

He created a subreddit called "jailbait." As in you would go to jail for having sex with someone that age. He also created subreddits such as rapebait- as in it's the victim "baiting" the rapist.

What is so "gray area" or borderline about this?

Edit: I missed the part about whether or not the material is being deliberately misrepresented. To which I ask, does it matter? Overall, I think misrepresentations like these are a bit of both, since ignorance certainly enables its more deliberate manifestations, and vice versa. But whether or not it's deliberate doesn't change its effects.

He created hundreds of subreddits dedicated to rape, child pornography, racism, and misogyny. This is not something that a regular well adjusted adult does just for kicks. No one says "I'm going to create hundreds of subreddits dedicated to rape and child porn just because, I'm totally not a rapist or pedophile it's just, you know, a hobby, something a non-rapist or a non-pedophile would totally do in their spare time."

If anyone doubts violentacrez' actions, I decided to check his profile in the waybackmachine (since he deleted that account) and put together a compilation of some pretty blatantly incriminating comments. There's no images, of course, but the comments themselves are pretty upsetting, so link. There were plenty of snapshots of him submitting to reddits like jailbait as well. Note that this was just a few pages that happened to be archived- I didn't even have to dig for this.

Can you provide some more examples? I don't particularly doubt that that's a thing but it would be nice to have them.

Every white person who has gone on a shooting spree in America in the last decade. They interview their families, talk about how they were bullied at school, talk about how they're unstable,* etc. A black or brown person doing the same thing is called a terrorist, a thug, or what have you, and they don't interview their families.

George Zimmerman is also an example of a white criminal who was humanized in the media. So is Julian Assange.

*Note I don't mean to imply that mentally ill people are violent criminals- it's just one way the media makes a shitty attempt to humanize criminals. This results in an enormous amount of stigma towards mentally ill people and it's incredibly wrong. There is an association between crime and mentally ill people, though- in that mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of a crime, not perpetrators.

Additionally, someone created a tumblr dedicated to outing predators, which prompted this reaction from Reddit:

To everyone else who is a member here, all I can emphasise is... please stay safe. When posting here, we strongly suggest that you use an alternative account or, at the very least, delete personally identifiable information about you that you may have posted in your comments. You still aren't doing anything illegal.

The Moderators may also take a harder line for your safety. Whenever we can, we will check your profiles for any comments that may personally identify you. You will have your posts removed, you will be banned, and then you will be sent a message asking you to create a new account so you can post here. This is only for your safety.

As some of you may know, a prominent member of Reddit's community, Violentacrez, deleted his account recently. This was as a result of a 'journalist' seeking out his personal information and threatening to publish it, which would have a significant impact on his life. You can read more about it here.

As moderators, we feel that this type of behavior is completely intolerable. We volunteer our time on Reddit to make it a better place for the users, and should not be harassed and threatened for that. We should all be afraid of the threat of having our personal information investigated and spread around the internet if someone disagrees with you. Reddit prides itself on having a subreddit for everything, and no matter how much anyone may disapprove of what another user subscribes to, that is never a reason to threaten them.

As a result, the moderators of /r/politics have chosen to disallow links from the Gawker network until action is taken to correct this serious lack of ethics and integrity.

We thank you for your understanding.

So Reddit is encouraging users to use alt accounts so they don't get outed. Violentacrez is not an anomaly.

And if you want to know how this actually affects people's lives, then read about Amanda Todd.

[Amake]

Well, that Reddit mod there basically comes out and says no matter how much you may hurt another person by indulging in your diseases, we will go to any lengths to protect you from the consequences of your actions. Because the right to privacy only applies to real people who make Reddit posts, not some girl on a picture I guess?

(I thought I was going to have something to contribute here, but I'm basically just continuously disgusted by Reddit to a degree where I can't shut up.)