Modern day society has come a long way from the days where blatant racism and homophobia ran a muck and was socially acceptable, but this doesn’t mean that it has been completely eradicated as irrational hatred may never be truly purged from the world. Such acts of violence are categorized as a ‘hate crime’ we too often hear the media mention which usually has a minority or a non-hetero-normative person being attacked or even killed for being ‘different’ than what the attacker deemed acceptable. Thankfully, such a world is no longer accepted and these types of actions are taken seriously, but this does pose the question of whether or not people may abuse the seriousness and massive response such an action could provoke. I am, of course referring towards the topic of Jussie Smollett and his claims that he was a victim of a hate crime while on the streets of Chicago.
Now, while the story has not fully concluded and details may differ from what is now seen as truth, I can write with confidence that the actor known as Jussie Smollett has been charged with filing a false police report which he had apparently orchestrated for personal gain in hopes that this event shining attention upon him would increase his profile and in-turn get him higher pay wherever he went to act. Setting aside the horrendous and deplorable actions of which Smollett is accused of; it’s interesting to notice of the actions of the media before and after that charge against Smollett was filed.
While making an effort not to associate with either Democratic or Republican leaning news organizations in order to view all information from an objective point of view, I can see what may have been a mistake by the left wing media, notably ABC. During the early days which this story was getting coverage, many news organizations welcomed Smollett to give interviews of his experience of the event while demonizing ‘the right’ as that was ‘the side’ which his attackers associated with while continuing a targeted narrative towards the Republican political party and of course the President himself. As mentioned before, one of the most notable media giants to give Smollett a stage to tell his tale of survival of this horrendous hate crime was ABC. It would be naïve of someone to assume that the company had no intention to blast Republicans with some of the shame/fault for the attack by association of the attackers’ political stance. Weeks went by without a shred of doubt being uttered by either side as doubting such a sensitive claim would be grounds for being labeled some sort of racist or homophobe that relished in the idea of lynching of people of said association. This was truly a great time to be a democratic reporter as there was no ground to be doubted about such a crime while being able to draw heat onto ‘the opposition’.
While no public statement about it were made at the time, Chicago detectives and the FBI were hot on the trail of those believed to be the perpetrators and were ready for their capture and interrogation, but they weren’t prepared for what they revealed to investigators. These two men, whose identities aren’t crucial to the overall point of the story, confessed to having been paid a generous amount in order to orchestrate the scenario just like Smollett planned in such a way that would garner him attention needed to raise the status of his image. As a survivor of a horrendous hate crime, many major networks would’ve had him speak about the incident while leading his narrative about the corruptness, bigoted and overall negativity associated with the Republican Party and Donald Trump as a whole. While I do not and will never likely associate myself with someone as insensitive and rash as the current POTUS and his party, what Smollett did is unacceptable. But as of February 20, 2019 he was charged with filing a false report of a hate crime being, in addition to the other charges, landed him with over 15 felony charges. To the surprise of nearly nobody, Republican news sources jumped onto the story as it was developing and made an effort to point out the fact that the left news sources jumped the gun when reporting what is now seen as a fabricated story in order to gain leverage in what some can see as the public sphere. Although the story is still developing and no final verdict has been declared, the testimonies of the two accomplices have been enough to tear apart Smollett’s version of events which in retrospect was too specific for its own to begin with. The right has pointed and even, to an extent, ridiculed the eagerness and foolhardy decision to back this man whose actions and motives for greed have put in danger the credibility of real victims of hate crimes all over the nation.
While the actions of this one man have without a doubt put at risk the possibility of true victims being believed in the future, there is an underlying aspect to this story neither side seem eager to point out. That is that the ideologies of both major political parties clouded both sides to arrogantly side with what best suited their narrative. Similarly to what Williams noted as one of Marx’s main arguments in his text, the dominant powers took their personal interests and tried to reason that their beliefs, correct or incorrect, were without a doubt the way to go about seeing things (Williams, 1977). In this case the dominant powers being the political powers and their using their influence in the media whether it was Democrats using this incident as leverage to push another agenda or the Republicans using the backlash to mock and discredit the ‘other side’ and in turn gain more credibility themselves. This battle of behemoths raging on for social supremacy has in modern history brought waste to the public sphere that was once a source of unbiased news which presented facts and allowed the people to come to their own conclusions, but no longer do such principles that kept political opinions at bay exist (Habermas, 1964). Habermas’ point, though over 50 years old, is still applicable to our modern problems, political parties and news organizations should have established guidelines which dictate moral obligations that would help preserve and slowly restore the public sphere to the point where it no longer had an overarching influence on the hegemony. The point of keeping the public sphere free of political ideology is after all to protect the hegemony from being influenced into a single way of thinking. In a world where technology is more integrated into daily life more so than in any generation before, one can begin to see how control of media outlets, which can reach people in almost any corner of the internet, would grant influence over the public hegemony. Looking at Gramsci’s argument, one can see how past revolutions and social transformations were influenced by those who despite lacking great resources were able to make huge changes to the hegemony and to society as a whole in their time (Gramsci, 2009).
Cases such as Jussie Smollett’s are prime examples which reveal the true colors of the media and if followed closely enough, to the puppet masters pulling the strings, but seemingly inconsequential. The reality, however, is that what the media says and how they say it affects the whole of society and keeps the people from growing and developing their own views of things. Despite seemingly having the right to report what they see without the threat of silencing or external influence, modern media has been tainted by ideologies of those at the top which struggle for the power to affect the public sphere and eventually the hegemony, possibly bringing a change in society as a whole. Now I don’t have a whole hearted stake in the media or their rhetoric, but even I am displeased with the idea of being influenced and led to form beliefs not originally developed by me, but by some overseers which believe that their views should be the views of all especially in the land the free and home of the brave.
Works Cited
Hegemony, Intellectuals, and the State (2009) – Antonio Gramsci
The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964) – Jurgen Habermas
Marxism and Literature (1977) – Raymond Williams
The Man Who Cried Hate Crime 