[Stelter:] Imagine you just published a big story. You're feeling good after weeks of hard work. Then you peak your social media accounts and you are suddenly inundated, insults as far as the site can scroll, a troll army saying you're worthless, biased, fat, dumb, sick, evil, attackers are trying to get you fired, anonymous accounts are telling you to kill yourself we're offering to do the job themselves. Well, the Committee to Protect Journalists is out with a new report on this issue, this issue of online harassment. Showing how big this problem is, how pervasive it is especially for female reporters. CBJ has updated its safety kit as a result giving reporters advice about removing vulnerable personal data from the web and what to do if you've been doxxed with that data. And they've also shared information about addressing the psychological impacts of online harassment and threats. Here to discuss this new report in detail is Courtney Radsch. She's at CPJ. She's the Advocacy Director of the organization. So the report is up on CPJ.org, Courtney, why was it important for your group which focuses on press freedom to take a look at online harassment specifically?
[Courtney Radsch, Advocacy Director, Committee To Protect Journalists:] I think what we've seen with online harassment is that it is the biggest safety concern facing women journalists to be surveyed in the United States and Canada. So if there is a perception that online harassment is the biggest safety problem they're facing, we've got to address that because if journalists feel that they're going to get retaliated against or attacked or threatened because of the reporting they're doing, that could have a silencing and a chilling effect.
[Stelter:] And many people in social media, of course, not just reporters but people in lots of different professions, individuals who just try to share their political opinions get harassed on social media all the time. What makes it specific about reporting do you think that people should think about?
[Radsch:] I think that we have to think about journalists as really serving a public interest. They're there to help inform the public to dig out facts, to follow up stories, I mean, so much about what we know whether we're talking about you know economics, politics, you know, the scandal and USA Gymnastics, it came because journalists were digging, they were reporting. So when we hear that journalists, especially women journalists, are being faced with online harassment as an endemic part of their job, that is problematic and we need to address it because we don't want journalists to be fearful of reporting on issues.
[Stelter:] Right.
[Radsch:] And we know that. Our respondents said that reporting on extremism as well as national politics were some of the most concerning beats for them.
[Stelter:] Right, where people end up getting harassed even more than others by virtue of covering these important subjects. So your message is partly I think to newsrooms right, to editors to take this seriously, and also to the tech companies, right? They have a responsibility here.
[Radsch:] Yes. So both of those are important constituencies. We can't rely on just journalists. Yes, they need to take steps to protect our digital identity, to you know, do social media hygiene, but we also need newsrooms to take this issue seriously and realize that it is endemic to certain beefs, it's very likely in retaliation for certain stories, and that they need to address this proactively with their reporters both staff and freelance, and we need the technology companies to do their part because this is pervasive on their platforms. And it's not enough to mute or block somebody. You need to know if those threats are coming through and we need more proactive responses from the tech platforms.
[Stelter:] I agree. Courtney, thank you so much for being here. And please, everybody, check out the report on the committee's web site at CPJ.org. A quick break here, much more RELIABLE SOURCES including an unfortunate milestone at the White House in just a moment. [11:50:00]