*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** Thank you Marc Weiss with Weblab for sending this in: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10869-2001Jan31.html MTV: Battling Hate Online By Kimberly Shearer Palmer Special to The Washington Post Thursday, February 1, 2001; Page C04 MTV thought it had a great idea: Let's fight hate. We can start an Internet forum so people can join in the struggle against discrimination and violence. Then the haters crashed the party. "You go ahead and fight for the minorities . . . because minorities are no match for the intelligence of the whites," posts whoman111 on MTV.com's Fight for Your Rights message board. Another participant, FyreFaerie, responds, "I'm sure you slap your knee all day with your banjo and your white trash hicks." "The haters come out of the woodwork," says Nicholas Butterworth, president and CEO of the MTVi Group, which manages MTV.com. "A frightening amount [of posts] have been hateful, homophobic, and racist." What went wrong? Or is showcasing hate a useful way of raising awareness about bigotry? MTV's experience also raises larger questions about the Internet. Can meaningful dialogue ever come out of anonymous exchanges? - see url for full article - http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10869-2001Jan31.html ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
