Widespread anti-Semitic harassment of journalists perceived as critical of Donald Trump: Report

The ADL Task Force study shows that a small cohort of journalists bore the brunt of the online abuse. The Task Force identified that some 19,253 overtly anti-Semitic tweets were sent to at least 800 journalists in the United States during the twelve month study. The top 10 most targeted journalists – all of whom are Jewish – received 83 percent of those 19,253 tweets. The top 10 includes conservative columnist Ben Shapiro, Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and theNew York Times’ Jonathan Weisman, and CNN’s Sally Kohn and Jake Tapper.

According to the data analysis, Twitter deactivated 21 percent of the accounts responsible for the tweets aimed at journalists. The other offending accounts remain active, and ADL says it will be providing a list of those accounts to Twitter.

“The spike in hate we’ve seen online this election cycle is extremely troubling and unlike anything we have seen in modern politics. A half century ago, the KKK burned crosses. Today, extremists are burning up Twitter,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “We are concerned about the impact of this hate on the ability of journalists to do their job and on free speech, which is why we established this Task Force. We hope this report hastens efforts to combat the surge of hate on social media. We look forward to working with Twitter, media companies, and other online platforms to limit hate and harassment and preserve freedom of speech.”

While there has been a significant increase in anti-Semitic behavior since the start of the election season and spikes in activity around key campaign events, ADL’s analysis did not distinguish between anti-Semitic tweets directly motivated by campaign activity and those that may be independent of it.

ADL says it has been able to identify individuals and Web sites in the white supremacist world that have played a role in encouraging these attacks. While much of the online harassment of journalists was at the hands of anonymous trolls, ADL has identified two of the neo-Nazis responsible for some of the attacks.  They are Andrew Anglin, founder of the popular white supremacist web site “The Daily Stormer” and Lee Rogers of Infostormer (formerly “The Daily Slave”). While both are banned from Twitter, they have encouraged their followers to tweet anti-Semitic language and memes at Jewish journalists.

ADL published its first report on cyberhate in 1985. Since then, ADL has been an international leader in tracking, exposing, and responding to hate on the internet. The organization’s team of experts – analysts, investigators, researchers and linguists – use cutting-edge technology to monitor, track, and disrupt extremists and terrorists worldwide. 

ADL was one of the first groups to detail terrorists’ use of Twitter for recruiting, and ADL coordinates closely with U.S. law enforcement, warning it about online hate activities and trends in real time to help stop their spread and prevent harm to communities.

In 2014, ADL – in consultation with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo, and YouTube – created best practices to counter online hate that have become a template for responsibility and a centerpiece for coordination between the industry and community. And in 2016, ADL’s Center on Extremism added the (((echo symbol))) and Pepe the Frog meme to its online hate symbols database. 

— Read more in Anti-Semitic Targeting of Journalists During the 2016 Presidential Campaign (ADL, 19 October 2016)