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Maybe the trolls aren't so harmless - pbrower2a - 07-01-2018
Our Hate Mail
Are these trolls? Actual threats? How can anyone tell the difference, anyway?
Up until the moment on Thursday he allegedly murdered five Capital Gazette employees, Jarrod W. Ramos was in many ways a kind of media consumer known to every journalist in America. He hated the newspaper, and he set up a pseudonymous account on Twitter to say so, again and again. There, the surly nonsense he directed at the newspaper’s reporters sat alongside the ominous allusions to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, all of it adding up — to what, exactly? A troll campaign? An actual threat? How could anyone tell the difference, anyway?
Journalists who aren’t murdered get stuff like this in their inboxes and voicemails and Twitter mentions all the time. It was hard to know last night whether this was a reassuring thought or a terrifying one. At HuffPost, reporters have been doxed more than once. They get death threats. They’re photoshopped into gas-chamber cartoons. They receive obscene abuse in virtually every medium, many examples of which are reproduced uncensored here.
(Not in this post -- the racism, sexism, homophobia, scatology, religious bigotry, and violence to which the trolls allude
is in the source. Journalists, the people who can tell us the truth about corrupt, cruel, and dishonest leaders and shatter personality cults, are at risk).
Check the link to the Huffington Post if you wish. I will not relay the filthy language and disgusting images.