Are newspapers inciting violence?

In an attempt to understand what drives abusive and threatening social media users, Sky news confronted two people who had publicly called for the hanging of Conservative MP Anna Soubry for voting against the government on the recent Brexit bill, in which a fellow Remain supporting MP had tabled an amendment calling for Parliament to have the final say over any final deal.

After the revelation that Ms Soubry has submitted a 35-page dossier of threats of violence made against her to House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, Sky News decided to attempt to confront the trolls responsible. The results were interesting, to say the least.

Quoted in their report, they say they “contacted one man from Kent, who suggested Ms Soubry and others should be hanged.

He was initially unrepentant when challenged about his threatening language.

"I don't care what you think, I want them gone... we should never have done away with hanging," he said.

When pressed on whether he really thought these politicians deserve the death penalty, the man conceded: "To say they should be hanged, it's a debatable point and maybe I regret [writing] that."

Next, Sky News contacted a woman from Warwickshire, who told Ms Soubry: "I hope you do spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder in fear, it's the least you deserve."

Challenged about whether she really wanted this, the woman said: "Well yes - I don't see why not."

But later, she added: "You're twisting it."

The focus has been on responsible reporting by tabloid newspapers since the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox during the referendum campaign by a man who reportedly shouted ‘Britain First’ before brutally attacking and killing Cox in the street.

There have been a string of potentially dangerous and inflammatory headlines from Leave supporting newspapers The Daily Mail and The Telegraph, routinely accusing Remain supporting MPs of being ‘mutineers’, ‘malcontents’, or even ‘traitors’. In perhaps its most controversial headline The Daily Mail even accused members of the judiciary of being ‘enemies of the people’, provoking comparisons to the propaganda unleashed by Joseph Goebbels during his time as Propaganda Minister in The Nazi Party.

The Mail, of course, being the newspaper that infamously published an article entitled ‘hoorah for the black shirts’ in support of Fascism.

When approached for comment, a spokesman for the Daily Mail said it was "preposterous" to suggest the paper "would call for violence of any sort".

In a statement, the spokesman said: "No one has been more outspoken than the Daily Mail in condemning the viciousness of social media, and in particular the threats and abuse directed at politicians of all parties.

"The Mail itself, its editor, commentators and columnists also regularly receive violent abuse on social media. As a paper with strong, passionate views we have learned to live with it.”

Are these accusations levelled against The Mail, The Telegraph and other media outlets fair? In times of deep suspicion against perceived ‘elites’ it seems preposterous to think that anybody would seriously consider newspapers owned by billionaires as ‘anti-elite’ but, then, people consider career politician, MEP and owner of a £4 million mansion in London Nigel Farage as an ‘anti-establishment’ figure so who knows?

If we look into the figures, however, things begin to become more alarming. In an article for The New Statesman, Azmina Dhrodia, of Amnesty International, wrote that “women politicians face an extraordinary amount of abuse on social media.

“Crucially, because we could only download historical Twitter data, our sample did not include tweets that have been deleted or tweets from accounts that were suspended or disabled. We made multiple requests to Twitter for access to a full data set covering the period of analysis but our requests were refused.

“Diane Abbott received almost half (45.14 per cent) of all abusive tweets in the run up to the Election. Excluding Diane Abbott, black and Asian women MPs in Westminster received 35 per cent more abusive tweets than white women MPs”

The BBC also decided to do some investigation and revealed that, according to MPs surveyed by BBC Radio 5 live, of whom 113 responded, just over half - 51% - said the 2017 general election campaign had been the worst they had ever experienced.

The abuse, the said, included death threats, racial abuse, somebody threatening to bomb an MPs office, and threats of violence.

Some things should be considered in the context. Firstly, MPs aren’t the only people that receive vile abuse on Twitter or other social media platforms and, secondly, tabloid media aren’t solely responsible for the problem.

The anonymity of a social media account seems to lead people to believe that they can say anything that comes into their mind, regardless of how vile or abhorrent that thought is. There also appears to be an element of reaction against a perceived threat to free speech, despite the internet providing people the freest outlet of speech in human history.

The freedom and right to say what one thinks appears to have been almost terminally conflated with the right to say what one thinks without consequence. Whilst we once seemingly understood the principle that freedom of speech includes freedom of reply, modern times seem to have instilled the belief that saying something racist or abusive only to be rightly rebuked by the right-thinking majority is tantamount to fascism.

In times where The President of The United States feels free to retweet anti-Islamic hate material from the far-right political party Britain First perhaps the lines are becoming fatally blurred. The President is, of course, free to retweet the material that he wants to but, crucially, those of us who find them an infantile abhorrence against modern equal democracy are free to accuse him of being an irredeemable buffoon for it.

Tabloid newspapers aren’t solely responsible for this outpouring of hatred and vitriol, that much is true, but words and connotations matter when you have a readership in the millions living in an atmosphere of suspicion and fear.

> Traitor: a person who betrays someone or something, such as a friend, cause, or principle.

> Malcontent: a person who is dissatisfied and rebellious.

> Enemy: A thing that harms or weakens something else.

In times of unprecedented fracture it’s more important than ever to our democracy that we understand disagreement isn’t equivalent to sabotage, and that it is very much the job of our democratically elected representatives to defend our best interests as they see fit.

Perhaps now is the time to hold accountable those who seek to divide us.