When it came out that a celebrity was arrested after faking a hate crime report to police, no one had a monopoly on anger. Some had their own kind, though, based on the bogus view that nonpartisan journalists pad their reporting with fake stories to make the right look bad.
Widespread outrage followed revelations that actor Jussie Smollett received a felony disorderly conduct charge after filing a false police report about the hate crime to boost his career. Conservative and far-right media had a field day with the news, using it to justify a slew of faulty positions.
Case in point: In an opinion piece for The Hill, Charlie Kirk, founder of conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, used coverage of Smollett to back up the claim that the media consistently reports false stories.
“They are algorithmic,” Kirk said of journalists. “They are deliberate in process. They have no lessons to learn, because false stories are simply written into the program.”
This line of thinking is central to far-right propaganda in that it puts every bit of nonpartisan reporting into question, especially stories that challenge their positions. In this case, it also casts doubt on information from law enforcement agencies. The Chicago Police Department issued statements about Smollett’s claims, which then became the basis of initial stories about the alleged – and now debunked – incident.
Kirk hints at a media conspiracy to cherry pick for “accusative stories,” referring to sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Kirk imagines reporters look for “a chance to create public outrage against people generally considered ‘conservatives’ and, these days, more specifically labeled ‘Trump supporters.’”
Lending credence to his theory is a detail from Smollett’s police report that his attackers had shouted, “MAGA,” the acronym for President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. Last month, a video of students from Covington Catholic High School, also wearing Trump’s red hats, was taken out of context to incorrectly assume the teenagers were involved in a racial clash with a Native American.
Crime reporting is certainly far from perfect. A statement like the one Smollett made to Chicago police isn’t the same as confirmation that his claims had been investigated and held water, but that didn’t stop reporters from covering it. Some journalists prefer to refrain from covering a complaint until it’s been fully investigated with charges filed, but not only can that be impractical at times, that kind of due diligence goes out the window when the subject is a celebrity or another kind of public figure.
At the same time, the suggestion that journalists shouldn’t cover reports of hate crimes or allegations against powerful people like Kavanaugh is absurd. The public deserves to know if a nominee to a powerful legal post has been accused of a crime, and they deserve to know if a hate crime occurred in their community.
Smollett’s farce, as bizarre, selfish and self-sabotaging as it was, doesn’t change that hate crimes are increasing in the United States. According to FBI data, there were 7,175 hate crime incidents in 2017, a 15 percent increase from six years earlier.
The catch with that number is that hate crimes are underreported, probably by a lot. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, also in 2017, reported that 54 percent of hate crime victims said they didn’t file a complaint with police.
ProPublica and other news organizations have devoted resources in recent years to tracking and covering hate crimes. Coverage of Smollett’s false complaint doesn’t delegitimize those efforts, and sentiments from people like Kirk doesn’t make them any less true.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 orbryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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