TCN News
Stop Funding Hate organized a Twitter storm on October 24 at 8 PM IST against the rising hate speech campaign in Indian journalism.
“Hate speech presents a major challenge to ethical and neutral journalism,” the official release of the campaign featuring on Foundation The London Story (Foundation TLS), declared. The Twitter storm, #StopFundingHate and #StopSeedingGenocide was held as protest against “the growing insensitivity of certain Indian TV channels” and their influence on the society at large, hence causing “deep social divisions and hurting the unity and integrity of the nation.”
Through the latest Twitter storm #StopFundingHate and #StopSeedingGenocide, the campaigners have warned consumers against investing in Indian as well as non-Indian advertisers who fuel hatred. #StopSeedingGenocide further raised awareness on the sharp rise in majoritarian hate and decline of ethical journalism especially in TV channels and prime time news shows. It resonated that “by regularly using pejorative, discriminatory language and attacking an identifiable group — a race, religious community, or sexual minority,” Indian media have prompted harm to Indian minorities, especially Muslim minorities.
The campaign cited the example of how Tablighi Jamat was made a scapegoat surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic infection spread and subsequently, the Indian Muslim community, a religious minority, “was vilified and dehumanized by the Indian media.” The Twitter campaign further demanded accountability from media outlets that have been acting as “purveyors of hate speech, cheerleaders of hate, xenophobic religious extremism” by using hate speech in “the disguise of freedom of expression to wage a psychological war against Indian public.”
The campaign then expressed concerns over the Indian Judiciary for not reprimanding the propagators of hate despite their continuous role in engaging in religious-based, gender-based and caste-based hate speech. It said that a full-fledged witch-hunting of women and media trials by news-channels “made a mockery of the justice system,” highlighting that “none of the channels have issued a public apology or visibly corrected its course of action.”
On a larger scale, #StopFundingHate has emerged as a global movement, urging advertisers to adopt a conscious pathway to advertisements. Stop Funding Hate has been working closely with Foundation TLS over the last few months to defund hate on social and traditional media. The campaign has already been initiated in the US and Brazil, across Europe and Australia where it is socially committed to ethical advertising standards.
Through the Twitter storm on October 24, the campaign has called for global support in strongly condemning hateful speech and depictions, stating that “hate should never be made profitable and we urge advertisers to take conscious steps in demonetizing hateful media making it less and less profitable with each progressive step.”