O'Reilly Attacks Woman Who Connects Dots Between Hate Speech and Violence
Posted by Rory O'Connor, AlterNet
After Jenna Kern, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, decided to write an Op-Ed piece for Newsday questioning whether shock jocks and hate speech contributed to the recent murderous shooting spree in a U-U church in Tennessee, the haters started to come after her as well. The attacks started first in the comments section of Newsday. (”Hi Rory. Guess what?” Ms. Kern emailed. “Newsday has received 3,000 emails against my piece. The online forum comments at newsday.com have been 99% hateful… I actually had someone sitting in a car outside my house for a half hour. I got so freaked I called the cops!”)
The attacks then continued on the Newsbusters site — a project of the Media Research Center, “the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.” (Kern reports, “Wow, the blogs have gone crazy about the story I did. How did you handle all the nasty things! I don’t have the stomach for it, I’m afraid.”)
Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell sent a letter to Newsday Publisher Tim Knight demanding an apology for Kern’s opinion piece, and insisted that she “never again appear on the pages of Newsday,” stating that her article “was absolutely despicable ” and the newspaper “should be ashamed and embarrassed for having printed it…” since it was “nothing more than an in-print character assassination of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, a foray into absurd Leftist delusions of links between them and the vile murderer in a Tennessee church this past July 27.”
(Continued here. Here's the piece that provoked the attacks from O'Reilly:)
Does shock jock hate speech lead to violence?
BY JENNA KERN-RUGILE
August 13, 2008
On July 27 a man walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville and opened fire, killing two people and seriously wounding seven others.
As someone who has chosen Unitarian Universalism as her faith, I was shaken by the news. Unitarian Universalism congregations, like ours on Long Island, define themselves as a "liberal religious community" - not liberal in the political sense, but because we believe in open-minded discourse and welcome people of all persuasions.
How could such a community become the target of hate?
Police in Knoxville were quoted as saying that the man, later identified as Jim D. Adkisson, 58, targeted the church "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that ... the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."
(The rest is here.)
After Jenna Kern, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, decided to write an Op-Ed piece for Newsday questioning whether shock jocks and hate speech contributed to the recent murderous shooting spree in a U-U church in Tennessee, the haters started to come after her as well. The attacks started first in the comments section of Newsday. (”Hi Rory. Guess what?” Ms. Kern emailed. “Newsday has received 3,000 emails against my piece. The online forum comments at newsday.com have been 99% hateful… I actually had someone sitting in a car outside my house for a half hour. I got so freaked I called the cops!”)
The attacks then continued on the Newsbusters site — a project of the Media Research Center, “the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.” (Kern reports, “Wow, the blogs have gone crazy about the story I did. How did you handle all the nasty things! I don’t have the stomach for it, I’m afraid.”)
Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell sent a letter to Newsday Publisher Tim Knight demanding an apology for Kern’s opinion piece, and insisted that she “never again appear on the pages of Newsday,” stating that her article “was absolutely despicable ” and the newspaper “should be ashamed and embarrassed for having printed it…” since it was “nothing more than an in-print character assassination of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, a foray into absurd Leftist delusions of links between them and the vile murderer in a Tennessee church this past July 27.”
(Continued here. Here's the piece that provoked the attacks from O'Reilly:)
Does shock jock hate speech lead to violence?
BY JENNA KERN-RUGILE
August 13, 2008
On July 27 a man walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville and opened fire, killing two people and seriously wounding seven others.
As someone who has chosen Unitarian Universalism as her faith, I was shaken by the news. Unitarian Universalism congregations, like ours on Long Island, define themselves as a "liberal religious community" - not liberal in the political sense, but because we believe in open-minded discourse and welcome people of all persuasions.
How could such a community become the target of hate?
Police in Knoxville were quoted as saying that the man, later identified as Jim D. Adkisson, 58, targeted the church "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that ... the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."
(The rest is here.)
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