Via Twitter, CNN’s Sally Kohn framed House Majority Leader Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) political work on federal health care regulations as akin to a mass killing.
On Monday, Kohn tweeted an image of a poster likening Ryan to a serial killer:
Two weeks ago, As a guest panelist on CNN’s Reliable Sources, Kohn called for a pulling back of “acrimonious,” “hateful,” “dehumanizing,” “demeaning,” “debasing,” “hostile,” and “aggressive” rhetoric – particularly from news media figures such as herself. She also expressed concern over social media platforms such as Twitter becoming fonts of political hostility (emphases added):
“Why don’t we [dampen our political rhetoric] before shots are fired or before we cross the line? Why don’t we realize… we have a hate problem in our country. We have a problem of dehumanizing, attacking, otherizing the other side far too much.
We can argue, we can disagree, we can do so in a civil way without demeaning and debasing our opponents. When it goes too far, we suddenly all go, whoa, wait a second. Why didn’t that happen before in our minds?
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[News media figures are rewarded] the more angry, the more hateful, the more extreme [their] rhetoric is. That’s a problem.
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I think we get a particular slice of reality on Twitter and social media that people maybe go on there to say the most acrimonious or hateful things.
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And when we are hostile and aggressive and uncivil, it actually encourages people to then repeat that in face-to-face communications and, obviously, in hand-to-hand communications as well in ways that are really destructive.
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We can have heated conversations without attacking, demeaning, dehumanizing each other. We need to do that more… We need to think about people reading the things we write.
Think about our kids reading them, think about our kids repeating them, that’s critical.
We [in the news media] focus on the animosity and the acrimony, the disagreement and the dehumanization. That’s what gets ratings.
That’s as much the media’s fault as it is our fault. That’s also the stuff we click on, we turn on, we tune into, and we have to all be held accountable for doing something better.“
NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 29: Sally Kohn attends The Women’s Media Center 2016 Women’s Media Awards at Capitale on September 29, 2016 in New York City.
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