The editor, the politician and hate speech

We are now in the heat of the election season, a pretty amusing time with the politicians turning themselves into serious comedians. Despite the peace accord they signed this month, they are already doing what they know how to do best - turn the mud of weighty allegations into missiles.

In this season, the editor and his reporters must be prepared to deal with three nasty problems in the daily discharge of their professional duty to inform and educate the public on issues that affect them. They are libel, fake news and hate speech. Of the three, libel is the least problematic because it rests on a clearly-defined piece of legislation. On the other hand, we have no laws against fake news and hate speech. Actually, no country has criminalised fake news. Fake news is an old problem. Generations of editors have had to deal with misinformation, disinformation and propaganda since Hitler’s propagandist-in-chief, the unforgettable Goebbels, used them as effective racial hate weapons.

The law of libel has been with us for so long that editors are not particularly frightened by it any more. Well, take that back. I know of no editor whose dry palms do not suddenly turn wet at the sight of the occasional threat of a libel writ delivered through a hostile letter full of adjectives from a lawyer. A law, even a bad or a nuisance law, is good because it defines the limits beyond which it is dangerous for you to roam in deeds.

If something is criminalised without the backing of the law, it becomes a huge problem. This is the case with hate speech in our country at the moment. Everyone appears to be falling over themselves to whip this new social problem. Elsewhere in the world there is a tangle between the guardian angels of freedom of speech and the anti-hate speech police. The problem is that when politicians identify something like this as a possible cancer in the body politic everyone becomes a potential victim of its definition provided by whims, not by law. Attention is focused on the news media, of course, because they are the purveyors of every shade of opinion, including speeches deemed to have crossed the line of decency and entered the hate speech territory.

In my column for this newspaper, Hate Speech V Freedom of Speech, published on November 27, 2018, I noted that “The problem with hate speech is that it is often presented as a legitimate right to hold and express an opinion in pursuit of legitimate personal, ethnic or religious interests and better accommodation in the country. Those who indulge in hate speech can defend their action constitutionally” under the general rubric of freedom of speech. This is why the United States of America has refused to join other countries, East and West, in criminalising hate speech.

In its issue of March 23, 2017, The Huffington Post, UK, published an opinion in which the writer argued that “hate speech is not free speech (because) no human being exists in a vacuum where they can speak as they please with no regard for the consequences of what they are saying. Too often we hear of the right to freedom of speech with rarely a mention of the responsibilities. Yet, we do have a responsibility in our speech. We have a responsibility not to harm others, incite hatred against them or to create a society of prejudice and intolerance.”

The editor would be dragged into this argument. It is important for him to fully understand what this is all about. Given the unfair of nature of human interactions, the editor would be placed in the tough position of defending men and women given to a robust or even vulgar expression of their views. He had better be prepared. Hate speech is so poorly understood in our country at the moment that an over zealous police force can easily conflate it with a robust criticism of other people’s views and government decisions and actions. This danger was brought home to us in late November when the police arrested Deji Adeyanju, the convener of a civil society group called Concerned Nigerians and two of his colleagues for hate speech. Their offence consisted of three statements they disseminated, criticising the police, namely, “the romance between APC and the police is unholy;” “police is not a department of APC;” “we just want the police to be neutral.”

I have read some of the laws in other countries that define hate speech. What Adeyanju and his colleagues put out were not within the threshold of hate speech. Yes, they were critical of the police and yes, the police did not find it funny to be portrayed as an arm of the ruling party but their intention was less harmful to the reputation of that civil force than its personnel were prepared to accept. Because the hate speech climate is on us.

It is important for the editors to have a sufficient grasp of hate speech to protect themselves against security officials who may use their ignorance of hate speech to intimidate them. Hate speech is ugly but we must be wary of those who might wish to stamp it out putting the boot on the neck of the most important human freedom, the freedom of speech; and of the news media. In my lecture on hate speech to the League of Columnists earlier this month, I offered the following as the basis for judging if a speech could be classified as hate speech or not. I have slightly modified them into questions:

1. Is it explicitly or implicitly directed at persons or group of persons who are different from us in terms of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation?

2. Is it intended to cause social, racial, ethnic or religious disharmony and incite violence directed at persons or groups so categorised?

3. Does it include verbal or non-verbal communication with the same intent as mentioned earlier?

4. Is it calculated to injure or traumatise persons or groups of persons for the purposes of causing the community in which they reside to deny them their basic human rights and legitimate entitlements?

5. Does it explicitly or implicitly profile the persons or groups it is directed at to prejudice others against them by emphasising their detestable racial or ethnic characteristics?

6. Is it discriminatory of persons and groups on the basis of their attributes referred to earlier?

In all cases, profiling, be it ethnic or religious, must be seen as the basis for hate speech. You cannot hate an ethnic or religious group without profiling them on the basis of what you dislike about them. A hate speech is directed at groups directly or indirectly through an individual member of the group. On no account must an editor accept that a vulgar abuse constitutes hate speech. It is intended to injure feelings but it is no more than an irresponsible expression of an irresponsible opinion.

Happy new year.

Hate speech is ugly but we must be wary of those who might wish to stamp it out putting the boot on the neck of the most important human freedom, the freedom of speech; and of the news media.