STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Hate Speech as a Weapon: Reporters Are Charged for Covering Disturbances
By Joe Jarvis - October 26, 2016

Editor of Austria’s Largest Paper Charged with ‘Hate Speech’ over Migrant Article … An editor of Austria’s largest paper, Kronen Zeitung, is to be tried for hate speech over a commentary he wrote about the migrant crisis last year. –Breitbart News

This is part of a larger attack on the Western media, especially the alternative media.

It’s surely not a coincidence that these attacks are being launched in several countries. The attack are being coordinated in our view by the same groups involved in the expanding scourge of globalization.

More:

On 25 October 2015, Christoph Biro wrote of the masses of migrants who were travelling through the Syrian countryside and remarked on the assaults and property damage committed by migrants, reports Kurier.

Calling the majority of the migrants “testosterone-driven Syrians”, Mr. Biro recounted the multiple reports of migrants carrying out, in his words, “extremely aggressive sexual assaults”.

He also detailed Afghan men had slashed the seats of the trains that were transporting them to Germany because they refused to sit where Christians had previously sat.

Biro did not perform the acts but merely reported on them and drew a conclusion. But nonetheless he may go to jail.

His case is not isolated but part of a trend. It is one that has reached the US, where Hillary Clinton has hinted at the adoption of similar approaches should she become president.

In fact, both Clinton and President Barack Obama have suggested that those who are involved in “hate speech” via media presentations ought to suffer “consequences.”

The argument is that such writing disturbs civil society and encourages violence. But this is wrongheaded. People should be prosecuted for actual violence – for deeds not words.

ZeroHedge reports:

A couple of days ago we noted that protests in North Dakota, over the Dakota Access Pipeline, were growing increasingly hostile with police arresting over 125 people just last weekend alone.

Another startling discovery from the weekend was reports of police efforts to shoot down multiple media drones which some thought indicated an increasing hostility toward press seeking to cover the protests.

Certainly, Deia Schlosberg, a documentarian who was recently charged with three felonies for filming activists shutting off oil pipelines, would tend to agree.

The point here is that Schlosberg is not being prosecuted for deeds, only for her coverage.

This is part of a larger effort to conflate reporting with “doing” – and marks a virtual revolution in the way journalism is conducted.

In the future, if this tact is pursued, it will be government and law enforcement that can decide what’s going to be covered, depending on the interpretation of the coverage.

Conclusion: If the reporting is seen as “inciting” violence or disturbance of civil society, the reporter can face legal  consequences as grave or graver than the individuals actually performing the actions. This amounts to virulent censorship.

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