Media Avoids “Terror” to Describe Violent Campaign Against Pride Displays
Far-right violence and threats are reaching into retail giant Target, intimidating the retailer into removing merch and moving Pride displays to the back of their stores. Why can’t the media call a spade a spade?
by Evan Urquhart
Descriptions of far-right violence in the mainstream press has been muted as reporters mince words, referring to ongoing efforts to use violence and threats to drive queer people out of public life with euphemisms. Articles from the BBC and the Washington Post both chose the word “controversy” to describe an atmosphere where threats of violence intimidated Target into moving Pride displays to the back of their stores and remove some items. NBC’s story referred to “a wider national debate over civil rights for transgender people.”
screenshot from NBC news
To investigate whether news stories were systematically preferring the language of controversy to the language of violence, terrorism, or right-wing extremism, Assigned conducted several Google news searches on the story. These are not intended to be an exhaustive or foolproof method of surfacing all mainstream stories about the violent extremist campaign against Target, but it should provide a rough measure of the sort of language that is rare or common in these stories. (The descriptions of our search results were accuate at the time of publications, but following the search links may yield different results than those we saw on Wednesday morning.)
Here’s what we found: A search for “Target” “pride” “collection” and “controversy” returned seven stories, including the BBC and Washington Post articles linked above. A search for “Target” “pride” “collection” and “violence” did not return a single relevant story. Nor did “Target” “pride” “collection” and “terrorism,” nor the same three words with “terror” or “extremism.” A search with the words “far-right” returned a single Daily Beast story about the origins of the violent threats towards the retailer, describing a misinformation campaign in the far-right which falsely claimed the retailer was selling “tuck friendly” bathing suits for children. Although some stories did mention and debunk the rumor about kids’ swimwear, the origination of the threats with the far-right was not made explicitly clear in any of the other articles we surfaced.
screenshot from the Daily Beast
We did find a couple mentions of extremists. In the Washington Post article, a quote attributed to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Twitter account. Newsom reportedly criticized Target’s CEO for “selling out the LGBTQ+ community to extremists.” A piece in Insider that devoted numerous inches to detailing right-wing greivances also included the Newsom quote, near the end of the article. (The Insider piece refers to “an outpouring of anti-Target sentiment” and quotes fringe-right Colorado representative Lauren Bobert ahead of Newsom.)
A climate in which right-wing extremists are using threats of violence to intimidate the public is one that impacts every single American. By mincing words, the mainstream press is hiding the extrent of the situation from the American public. Reporters should be clear about the origins of the rhetoric and the climate of fear, often referred to as terrorism in other circumstances, which is succeeding at suppressing free expression in support of the queer community for everyone from large brands to individuals.
