Call for civility sparks acrimonious reaction

Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022 | 2 a.m.

On Friday the threatening call came: “Well, what are you going to do when someone comes and starts shooting up the Las Vegas Sun?” And another: “take your moronic lies and keep them to yourself, something might happen, you know …” Earlier came two other calls that we aren’t discussing because they are in the hands of law enforcement.

Why did the implied death threats arrive? Because the Las Vegas Sun wrote an editorial decrying political violence and political intimidation. We’ll leave that amazing irony to be savored by our readers.

But the story of how we got here is a cautionary tale about Americans’ quickness to threats of political violence and provides a call for members of the media to be more responsible.

In particular, the Sun would like to formally put Tucker Carlson, Greg Gutfeld and Fox News, which provides them their platform, on notice that such threats are the direct fruit their rhetoric sows. They can no longer hide behind the idea that “we just put information out there, we can’t be responsible for what someone does with it.” Threats like these are exactly what their overheated, inciteful rhetoric brings, and they bear responsibility for their words. The volume, origination and tone of the response received by the Sun is directly tied to Fox News timing.

Last week, as the Sun has done many times in the past, we published an editorial decrying the increasingly strident talk of political violence and civil war in American society. To illustrate the dangers of this rhetoric, we cited a shooting in the office of a Democratic mayoral candidate in Louisville, Ky., by a political activist. While thankfully no one was hurt, it was obviously an assassination attempt.

Our editorial stated clearly that the alleged shooter had no apparent ties to right-wing organizations — a point we felt obligated to make because the editorial also noted that extremists on the right are trading too often in inciteful rhetoric that can lead to political violence or intimidation.

Shortly after the editorial was published, the Sun updated the commentary when readers made us aware of news stories affirming early reports from the developing situation that the alleged shooter was heavily involved in Black Lives Matter and had also expressed support for gun control.

We added that information to the online version of the editorial, along with an editor’s note saying it had been updated. We did not offer a correction in the print edition because there was nothing to “correct,” rather there was simply more information made available. We kept the rest of the editorial intact, including our acknowledgment that dangerous rhetoric has come from the left as well as the right. We did contend, however, that such speech is coming from the right much more often than the left, and with much more open calls to violence. Evidence supporting our contention is visible in American daily life, as some right-wing activists call for civil war and “Second Amendment solutions,” and somehow the disgusting thought of political executions is discussed openly.

The editorial was, yet again for the Sun, a plea for Americans of all political stripes to condemn political violence as well as speech that might inspire it.

“This has to stop,” the editorial said. “Everyone — Republicans and Democrats — needs to quit talking about civil war and killing politicians, or else what happened in Louisville will go on and on. Regardless of where the violence is coming from — the left, the right and the middle — it’s all a symptom of the dangerous environment being created by this hateful speech.”

Having updated the editorial, we went on with our business.

Then, at about 5:30 p.m. Las Vegas time — hours after we included the updated information about reports of BLM ties to the shooter — Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson criticized the editorial on his nationally broadcast show, accusing the Sun of dishonestly blaming the shooting on extremist Republicans and falsely intimating that we had suggested the alleged shooter was associated with the GOP. Carlson ignored — or his producers didn’t check — the fact that the editorial had been updated hours earlier to include the BLM connection.

“As long as there is a shooting, there are extremist Republicans afoot, it’s the fault of extremist Republicans,” he said, incorrectly characterizing our editorial. “So the lesson here is that you may believe news organizations are dishonest, oh, you’re just scratching the surface. They are much more dishonest than you could even imagine.”

Carlson’s misleading criticism triggered a burst of angry comments to the Sun by phone, email and social media. The number of comments wasn’t overwhelming — it was probably fewer than 100 all told on the first day — but the criticism was unusually shrill and significantly misinformed. It was obvious that the vast majority of the commenters hadn’t read our editorial but were simply reacting to Carlson’s description of it, in which he didn’t mention our updates or that we had stated that the violence could come from anywhere and that we used the shooting as a bridge to discuss the national climate.

None of the commenters seemed to realize that we had not said the shooter was from the GOP, nor did they realize we called on Democrats and Republicans all to stop with violent rhetoric. Simply put, they were reacting to Carlson’s version of events, and their calls were not inspired by actually reading the editorial. The threats clearly were stimulated by his remarks too.

One of the remarks Carlson made — emphasized here — is telling as a rhetorical device and is a core element of speech meant to incite others to take extreme action against someone while allowing the speaker to try to avoid responsibility: “They will literally tell any lie as long as they believe it will hurt their political enemies, very much including you, so keep that in mind.”

What Carlson is saying to his listeners is that the Sun is quite directly their personal enemy when it calls for everyone to stop violent political speech and intimidation. The Carlson and Fox News-endorsed construction is simple: The Las Vegas Sun is your personal enemy and intends to afflict you directly. They leave open the idea of how people might want to smite their now proclaimed enemy, but the message is that the Sun is your enemy no matter what, “so keep this in mind.”

As we mentioned, this is a familiar rhetorical construction — dating to the 19th century — used by all manner of political operators from the right and the left, and commonly used to inspire action against not just political targets but ethnic groups too. The goal of these rhetorical constructions is to incite mob action. The stakes and speed of escalation of such language is amplified in an age of social media.

In fact, this rhetorical construction of accusing a specific “enemy” of committing vague but nearly existential “crimes” against “you” had largely died out in American political dialogue (other than the most extreme ones — like white supremacists) until social media arrived and made it freshly powerful again. Both Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson are artists at this particularly corrosive rhetorical technique, and our nation is poorer for their skill in this regard.

Under any circumstance, the Sun stands against such talk, no matter where it comes on the political spectrum. In our editorials we’ve taken Maxine Waters to task for inciteful language she’s used, we’ve gone after people targeting the homes of conservative school board members, and we’ve even weighed in when Tucker Carlson’s home was targeted.

After the Carlson commentary aired Wednesday, a reporter from the Daily Caller (originally co-founded by Carlson) reached out to the Sun and we responded to her questions. The resulting story on dailycaller.com was perfectly in-bounds and reasonable journalism. We might quibble with a characterization here or there or wish a remark we made was included, but that goes with the territory and certainly people can find fault with elements of our reporting. The Daily Caller piece on this issue provided our side of the story and made an effort to do so. Fair play.

After a flurry of cursing callers Thursday morning, things died down.

Then Thursday evening arrived with Gutfeld’s comments, and activity perked up. And again Friday afternoon, Fox renewed the drama with a story on foxnews.com that incorrectly suggested the Sun was blaming the right specifically for the acts in Louisville. The Sun continued to be the boogeyman for Fox listeners and fresh death threats arrived because … well, because the Sun contends that people should stop with violent rhetoric! It’s bewildering and funny in a sick way except, of course, people have shot up newsrooms and some of the threats were alarming enough to call in the FBI. Nor was it funny for the Sun staff members who had to listen to the invective and obscenities from Carlson and Gutfeld’s fans.

Carlson, Gutfeld and those like them understand that their voices carry significant influence among their audiences, some of whom might be mentally ill, others clearly weak of mind, and many armed. All it takes is one person with an itchy trigger finger to pose a danger, as they are assured nightly that their world is under assault by imaginary forces of evil. These commentators are well aware that they can mobilize their followers with just a few carefully selected words to lash out against anyone for any reason they find offensive. All they need to do is offer a target they can identify as an “enemy of people like us …”

This is remarkably dangerous, and it places special obligations on Carlson and other commentators to be responsible and not to engage in behavior that could incite mob politics among their viewers, listeners and readers.

Specifically, Fox News should not stand for this from their employees — the Las Vegas Sun is advising Fox News, in no uncertain terms, that the death threats come immediately after their commentators make their arguments. Fox News should have standards that prevent that and should urge its commentators to advise their listeners to not advocate for violence nor commit violence.

We note that only some of the people contacting the Sun were making specific or implied violent threats. The rest were mostly screaming incoherent curse words about an editorial they had not read. However, we do worry about the ones contemplating violence who aren’t going to contact us in advance. After all, the worst intentions come by surprise, don’t they?

Because Carlson, Gutfeld and Fox News falsely suggested we said the Louisville shooter is a Republican, we shall be crystal clear about the people who threatened to attack the Sun: We do not know if they were Republicans.

Instead, we are sure of something more disturbing. The people last week who threatened violence against the Sun were dispatched directly from the audience of Carlson and Fox News. By not putting the brakes on this rhetoric, the network appears to be intentionally cultivating a violent subset of their audience that can be unleashed to try to bully targets. This nation has never seen anything like this before, although other nations have and it has not turned out well. The Sun has the wherewithal to handle such things, but imagine the other targets of this network who are individuals facing this baleful mob. There is no place for this in civil society.

For those readers who think the Sun is against all Republicans, we assure them that is not the case. We have been vocal in our support for former GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval, our Republican secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, and indeed in the past were vocal in our support of GOP Sheriff Joe Lombardo before he began acting like an extremist in the hopes of winning the nomination for governor of Nevada.

We support reasonable people and even admire people we might disagree with, but we do worry that traditional conservatives have no home in today’s GOP. It is true that the Sun is aghast at the extreme direction of the GOP and wishes it would get back to its conservative roots and be willing to work across the aisle. Likewise, we’re against extremism in the Democratic Party, and our history demonstrates that.

This week’s incidents, while alarming, will not deter the Sun from speaking our convictions. This is, after all, the first newspaper in America to stand up to McCarthyism, a newspaper that fought mob influence in Las Vegas (and had our press burned to the ground in the process) and a newspaper that believes to our core that the American people, the people of Nevada and the people of Las Vegas are decent, honorable and worth representing with a proud voice against division and hatred in our culture.

No one is served by commentators irresponsibly releasing the hounds as Carlson, Gutfeld and Fox News did last week.

That’s not to say they aren’t free to criticize us all they want. And we’re free to criticize them too, and will! But reasonable criticism should stop before proclaiming those you are criticizing are somehow the personal enemy of the listener or reader. Proclaiming “we’re the patriots and everyone else is the enemy” is an old American sin and almost always leads to violence, repression or other dark places. Our nation is reaching the point where we struggle to address any issue with a sense of shared purpose and we can’t have any exchange of ideas without someone taking such a hard line that compromise is impossible. At this moment, our nation deserves a media landscape where all — and we mean all — players urge calm, open discussion and repudiate efforts to vilify other Americans. Our nation deserves a media determined to encourage dialogue and one that implores all parties to work together toward a common goal.

The Sun will continue to speak out against talk of political violence and intimidation.

We’ve always been consistent on this point. We did exactly that in 2018 after individuals claiming ties with antifa surrounded Carlson’s home and terrorized his family while Carlson was away. You can see excerpts of that editorial reprinted on these pages: We stood against the attempt to intimidate Carlson, and condemned what happened at his home “in the strongest possible terms.”

That’s where we stood then, where we stand now and where we’ll always stand. We urge Carlson and those like him to stand with us, and to use their considerable power to unite Americans and encourage a civil dialogue, as opposed to setting Americans against each other.