Fabio ManganielloI prefer not to call Wilders racist. “Racist” is not a journalistic word, because you can ultimately not know what someone’s intentions are, just like genocide is not a journalistic word. The latter is primarily a legal concept and a political word. Journalism means staying as close as possible to the facts and avoiding far-reaching qualifications. It is our work to describe as precisely as possible what someone does and what happens. It is up to others to give qualifications to that
The editor-in-chief of the Volkskrant explains very clearly why most of Western modern-day journalism (including his own newspaper) is a big part of today’s political problems.
You see, something interesting happens when you, as a journalist working for a major newspaper, don’t express harsh judgements towards jerks.
Initially, those who already have high levels of political/social immunity will indeed connect the dots themselves. They’ll understand that proposing arbitrary deportations for migrants or calling them stupid is racist, and that destroying every home and starving the local population in Gaza is a genocide, even if you don’t tell them explicitly.
But not everyone has high levels of political/social immunity. Many can’t even tell the difference between two popular political ideologies, and they don’t even have a clue of what’s happening in the world any deeper than the headlines that they briefly scroll on their timelines.
You need to tell most of the population explicitly “hey, btw, this is not ok”, because you can’t make assumptions about their levels of civic education or political literacy - just like you wouldn’t throw a paper on non-linear fluidodynamics differential equations to an audience without being confident of their level of numerical literacy.
Also, he says “I can’t call a racist as such because I don’t know his real intentions”: does he apply the same rule as a journalist to everybody else (never a single judgement because you can never know someone’s intentions), or is it only racists that get this privilege? If I repeatedly ask my audience “don’t you want less Moroccans in your country?”, do you really need a crystal ball to understand what my ideologies and motivations are?
And, on the long run, when you simply report the worst thoughts of the political class without applying any filter or judgement, you normalize them.
The first time I hear Wilders making a racist remark about Moroccans I may get enraged. The second time too. But on the 3rd, 4th, 10th, 20th, 100th time, will I still get enraged the same way? Especially when the news is passed without the moral judgement that it should rightfully be applied to it? Or will it become just another opinion in a sea of equally valid opinions?
The problem is that fascists and racists are very well aware of the tendency of the “moderate” press to pass on their comments without judgement.
In fact, they use them as their loudspeakers.
They repeat the same outrageous thing again and again, without anyone between them and the listener calling it outrageous, and the listener will slowly start to consider it normal. The more you repeat something false or awful without anyone shutting you up, the more people will believe you - no matter how false or awful the original thing is.
Today journalists like Indro Montanelli don’t enjoy a good reputation in Italy because they failed to take a strong stance against the fascist regime, first amid fears of not being sufficiently impartial, then amid fears of alienating the supporters of Mussolini among their readers, and then amid fears of persecution. On the other hand, intellectuals like Benedetto Croce or Karl Popper are seen in a positive light for speaking up against those crimes, without thinking in terms of “is it my job as a public intellectual to take a public position or not? Will I offend or alienate my audience by taking a stance?”
When barbaric times come, there’s no doubt over who sits on the right side of history - and it’s never those who failed to speak up.
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