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In light of Reach appointing an Online Safety Editor - do more Publishers need to start assigning dedicated resources to handle Online Abuse?
Shortly after the announcement of Reach appointing their very first Online Safety Editor - we reached out to our Clients to see how they were handling online abuse themselves. The response we got is that online abuse is not a significant issue for any of them (yet). As a result there don’t seem to be any strict protocols in place for dealing with the very occasional ’flare-ups’ - which are currently handled in an ad-hoc manner as and when they arise.
Affino’s media clients are largely in the B2B space - and there seems to be rather less partisanship and politicising of those news stories and features - while there is often some interference originating out of China - in terms of DOS attacks and hacks - but not within the typical definition of Online Abuse - certainly no threats of violence or death!
In practice the consumer press, and general news media more broadly seem to be facing the brunt of the issue where there seem to be very strict camps of agitators who verbally harass and harangue anyone with a different viewpoint.
Resources for Journalists
We undertook a fair amount or research to discover what resources are available within the Journalism Sector to address online and abuse and there seem to be scant proper resources for handling Online Abuse. Neither the National Union of Journalists, nor Society of Editors has any official dedicated resources that we can see to help with those matters.
In practice the only reference I could find is a legal paper by the Media Lawyers' Association:
'Combatting online harassment and abuse - a legal guide for journalists in England and Wales'.
The UK Government is in the midst of discussing the introduction of new legislation to protect Journalists 'The Online Safety Bill' - and to ensure that every UK Police Force is assigned a designated journalist safety liaison officer. While the industry itself doesn't seem to be doing much yet to support and provide help resources for its much beleaguered journalists.
There is currently a greatly increased chance for aggressive abusers being able to track down journalists, and to hound them at home even. News and Media organisations need to do far more to aid and protect their staff. I would have thought the minimum would be to have a dedicated Security Officer, and access to legal and police departments as well as other essential (and emergency) processes in place.
Female Journalists feel particularly unsafe currently
A recent UK Government Survey revealed that one in three female journalists feel unsafe working in the UK. What with personal attacks and recent assassinations of politicians - much more needs to be done to turn the tide here.
Social Media Platforms need to appoint their own Safety Officers whose sole remit is to stamp out abuse - and those specialists need to liaise with each Safety Officer working on behalf of each News Media Company / Organisation.
Right now very little seems to be in place - and in fact the last few years and during the pandemic in particular has seen the slow erosion of traditional newsrooms - where increasingly those members of staff tend to be freelance and contractors - totally isolated and exposed to the growing dangers online.
Government and Law Enforcement need to curb those excesses which have become so commonplace - and we need smart laws, rules and regulations to deal with those. We still need dedicated Safety Officers though and access to Police and Legal Resources for every journalist out there.
Trending Populism and Conspiracy Cults
In many ways we seem to have become more of an isolated society - where it seems to be increasingly a matter of every man, woman and child for themselves. We need to redress the balance with a proper framework to bring all these elements back into line.
We most certainly need a de-escalation of where things stand currently - which needs to start with proper fact-checking enforcement, and punishment and sanctions for those publishing patent untruths and versions thereof. Starting with more robust social platform behavioural standard enforcement against abuse. We also need to somehow stop politicians from lying - which is at the root of much of this vitriol.
We do need to be careful though that the balance in maintained - and that new legislation isn't some veiled autocratic attempt at censorship.
If any of you have further insights on what should be done to tackle the current situation - to let us know in the comments below!
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