hate

Tuesday November 1, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 1, 2022

U.S. Headlines Expressing Anger, Fear, Disgust, and Sadness Increased Hugely Since 2000

About 42 percent of Americans now actively avoid news coverage, according to the Reuters Institute’s 2022 Digital News Report. That’s up from 38 percent in 2017. Nearly half of Americans who’ve turned away from the news say that they are doing so because it has a negative effect on their mood. As it happens, a new study in the journal PLoS One tracking the headlines in 47 publications popular in the United States reports that they have trended decidedly negative over the past two decades. 

Coincidence?

June 12, 2019

In their study, the team of New Zealand-based media researchers used a language model trained to categorize as positive or negative the sentiments of 23 million headlines between 2000 and 2019. In addition, the model was finetuned to identify Ekman’s six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise), plus neutral, to label the headlines automatically. Using the 2019 Allsides Media Bias Chart, the publications were ideologically categorized as left, right, or center. For example, The New Yorker, the New York Times Opinion, and Mother Jones were identified as left; National Review, Fox News Opinion, and The New York Post as right; and A.P., Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal as center. (Reason was pegged as right-leaning.)

After turning their language model loose on the millions of headlines, the researchers found “an increase of sentiment negativity in headlines across written news media since the year 2000.”

June 5, 2012

Overall, the researchers find that the prevalence of headlines denoting anger since the year 2000 increased by 104 percent. The prevalence of headlines denoting fear rose 150 percent; disgust by 29 percent; and sadness by 54 percent. The joy emotional category had its up and downs, rising until 2010 and falling after that. Headlines denoting neutral emotion declined by 30 percent since the year 2000. Breaking these down by ideology, headlines from right-leaning news media have been, on average, consistently more negative than headlines from left-leaning outlets.

Why are negative headlines becoming more prevalent? “If it bleeds, it leads” is a hoary journalistic aphorism summarizing the well-known fact that dramatic, even gory, stories engage the attention of news consumers. In other words, journalists are supplying news consumers with what they want. Given the global reach of modern news media, there is always some attention-grabbing horror that occurred somewhere that can be highlighted between weather and sports on your local TV news.

November 4, 2020

Journalistic catering to people’s negativity bias ends up misleading a lot of their audiences into thinking that the state of the world is getting worse and worse. However, looking at long term trends, the opposite is the case. Yes, yes, there are wars in Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Yemen and, of course, a global pandemic during the past two years has killed around 6.5 million people so far. “For reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell, and become huffy and scornful when some idiotic optimist intrudes on their pleasure,” wrote economist Deidre McCloskey. “Yet pessimism has consistently been a poor guide to the modern economic world.” (Continued: Reason) 

 

Wednesday September 21, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 21, 2022

The world is in ‘peril’, UN chief warns General Assembly

In an alarming assessment, the head of the United Nations warned world leaders Tuesday that nations are “gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction” and aren’t ready or willing to tackle the challenges that threaten humanity’s future – and the planet’s. “Our world is in peril – and paralyzed,” he said.

October 30, 2021

Speaking at the opening of the General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made sure to emphasize that hope remained. But his remarks reflected a tense and worried world. He cited the war in Ukraine and multiplying conflicts around the world, the climate emergency, the dire financial situation of developing countries and setbacks in U.N. goals for 2030 including an end to extreme poverty and quality education for all children.

He also warned of what he called “a forest of red flags” around new technologies despite promising advances to heal diseases and connect people. Guterres said social media platforms are based on a model “that monetizes outrage, anger and negativity” and buys and sells data “to influence our behaviour.” Artificial intelligence he said, “is compromising the integrity of information systems, the media, and indeed democracy itself.”

September 21, 2016

The world lacks even the beginning of “a global architecture” to deal with the ripples caused by these new technologies because of “geopolitical tensions,” Guterres said.

His opening remarks came as leaders from around the planet reconvened at U.N. headquarters in New York after three years of pandemic interruptions, including an entirely virtual meeting in 2020 and a hybrid one last year. This week, the halls of the United Nations are filled once more with delegates reflecting the world’s cultures. Many faces were visible, though all delegates are required to wear masks except when speaking to ward off the coronavirus.

Nearly 150 heads of state and government are on the latest speakers’ list, a high number reflecting that the United Nations remains the only place not just to deliver their views but to meet privately to discuss the challenges on the global agenda – and hopefully make some progress.

September 14, 2022

The 77th General Assembly meeting of world leaders convenes under the shadow of Europe’s first major war since World War II – the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has unleashed a global food crisis and opened fissures among major powers in a way not seen since the Cold War.

The death of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her funeral in London on Monday, which many world leaders attended, created last-minute headaches for the high-level meeting. Diplomats and U.N. staff have scrambled to deal with changes in travel plans, the timing of events and the logistically intricate speaking schedule for world leaders. (The Globe & Mail)

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro …

 

Thursday May 19, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 19, 2022

‘Canada is not immune,’ leading Black voices say in response to Buffalo mass shooting

Members of the Black community in Canada on Monday are warning this country is also vulnerable to hate crime as they react with shock and horror to Saturday’s bloodshed in Buffalo that left 10 Black people dead.

October 30, 2018

“Canada is not immune to it,” Velma Morgan, the chair of Operation Black Vote Canada, told CBC News Monday. 

“We’ve seen what happened at different places of worship, we see what happens in London, Ont., we’re definitely not immune to it at all.”

Payton Gendron, 18, is accused of a racist rampage after he crossed the state to target people at the Tops Friendly Market in one of Buffalo’s predominantly Black neighbourhoods. He had talked about shooting up another store as well, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told CNN.

Authorities in Buffalo are working to confirm the authenticity of a 180-page manifesto posted online, which identifies the accused by name as the gunman. It cites the “great replacement theory,”‘ a racist ideology that has been linked to other mass shootings in the United States and around the world.

Tuesday January 25, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 25, 2022

More tools needed to fight hate crimes

It’s a sad sign of the times that Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, has taken to telling interviewers that “our clergy not only need to be versed in Torah, they need to be versed in tactics.”

September 13, 2012

The tactics to which Greenblatt refers are those necessary not just to combat hate crimes, but quite possibly to engage in combat with those who are committing them.

Greenblatt made the comments in response to this month’s hostage-taking at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. And while we might prefer to think it couldn’t happen here, police and Jewish community leaders clearly think otherwise.

Concerned about a copycat attack, some community leaders have encouraged heightened vigilance, and police have increased their presence in the vicinity of some synagogues.

The concern is understandable given that the Colleyville attack occurred at a time when hate crimes have been increasing dramatically throughout North America. Data from 2021 is not yet available, but Statistics Canada says there were 2,669 police-reported hate crime incidents in 2020, up 37 per cent from the previous year. And while crimes against certain groups, notably Asian-Canadians, increased exponentially during that period, Jews continue to be the most frequently targeted group.

Friday January 8, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 8, 2021

‘Incited by the president’: politicians blame Trump for insurrection on Capitol Hill

The riots at the US Capitol shocked many in the US and around the world, but for some, the violent scenes in Washington are simply the natural culmination of Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud and repeated stoking of division in the US.

November 16, 2019

The descent by thousands of Trump supporters on the Capitol – minutes after the president specifically asked them to march towards it – might be the clearest evidence yet of Trump’s responsibility for Wednesday’s debacle.

But in truth, the violent insurrection was a long time coming.

Months before the November election took place, Trump supporters were already being fed a steady diet of misinformation, as Trump repeatedly claimed the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged.

Should that happen, Trump and his allies told supporters, the US would descend into socialism, communism, or worse. In August he told a crowd that if Biden were to win the election, “China will own the United States” – to the extent that Americans would “have to learn to speak Chinese”.

As the world watched the mob of Trump supporters lay siege to the Capitol building, the beacon of American democracy, it clear to some that this had been a long time coming.

November 6, 2020

“What we are witnessing at this moment is the manifestation and culmination of reckless leadership, a pervasive misuse of power, and anarchy,” Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP civil rights organization, said in a statement.

“This is not protesting or activism; this is an insurrection, an assault on our democracy and a coup incited by President Trump.

“For the past four years, we’ve seen him chip away at the civility, integrity and dignity of our nation. The pattern of President Trump’s misconduct is unmistakable and has proven time and time again that it is a grave threat and harm to the fragile fabric of our country.”

Johnson and others called for Trump to be impeached for his role in the siege of the Capitol. Some Democratic members of Congress have already said they support that measure, and Ilhan Omar, a progressive congresswoman from Minnesota, said on Wednesday evening she was already drawing up articles of impeachment.

October 2, 2020

The tone at Trump’s rally before the riot was combative, as the president told the crowd: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s confidante and increasingly beleagured lawyer, had earlier demanded “trial by combat” over the election results, further stoking the crowd.

Away from Trump’s immediate circle however, many elected Republicans have also lent credence to the president’s baseless accusations of fraud – and have supported Trump even as he defended far-right, torch-bearing marchers in Charlottesville, refused to condemn white supremacy, and spread fear among Black Americans.

“Make no mistake: the domestic terrorism at the US Capitol by armed protesters is not only Trump’s fault alone,” Julian Castro, a Democratic former secretary of housing and urban development and 2020 presidential candidate, wrote on Twitter. (Continued: The Guardian)