Juno News - April 16, 2018


CBC Defends Nora Loreto


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

181.28886

Word count

1,069

Sentence count

52

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the wake of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash and the death of a young woman named Noreen Bousquet, we take a look at the impact of her tweet calling for more empathy for the victims of the crash.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Let me begin with you. What do you think of the terrible backlash to Nora and do you think she, you know, and her response?
00:00:12.560 Well, first I do want to say that that was a very powerful statement and she said some really true and valid and authentic statements or words within that statement that I think we should reflect on.
00:00:23.560 And those words are inequality, systemic racism, and the fact that she's been experiencing violent threats.
00:00:31.180 And this isn't new for anybody who speaks out against injustices within this country.
00:00:35.700 There's always a risk that comes with that.
00:00:37.920 And particularly when women, people of color, racialized communities, indigenous communities, when they do speak out against systemic racism, they often risk having these type of violent tweets issued towards them.
00:00:53.560 So what I think about all of this is, yes, the tweet may have been inappropriately timed, but nobody, nobody deserves what Nora has been, has gone through over these last couple of days.
00:01:03.960 Have you, what do you think?
00:01:05.480 I think the timing was probably ill-advised, but if you read what she said, she was in no way diminishing the grotesque horror of what happened.
00:01:14.600 She was acknowledging, as any sane person would, how grotesque it was.
00:01:18.560 What she was pleading for is a leap of empathy so that every community, every person who suffers should be treated with equal compassion and love.
00:01:27.840 And look, we have to be honest here.
00:01:29.680 When it comes to, for example, indigenous women disappearing, being murdered, inner city black kids, gay men in Toronto's village, is that same compassion and love and shared grief observable?
00:01:42.660 Well, I would say not, but that's in no way to diminish what happened. Surely we can define ourselves by more than just someone being like us.
00:01:49.940 So what she said was not actually wrong. Now, the response to her, and I've corresponded with her a bit since all this happened, has been extraordinary.
00:01:57.720 Vicious, misogynistic, racist. There were even anti-Semitic attacks.
00:02:01.780 She's not Jewish, but some of these people were so manic and so violent.
00:02:06.240 And I think this is a point that has to be made.
00:02:08.080 They were so compassionate towards the people who died in Humboldt that they wanted to kill someone.
00:02:14.360 They were so sensitive to other people's grief that they were screaming for someone to be killed and going after her family.
00:02:21.340 And I have to say, I mean, it is principally women and people who speak out about injustice.
00:02:25.840 But about five years ago, when I had a change of opinion on equal marriage and some moral issues, I saw the gates of hell. 0.84
00:02:34.360 I think the social media sphere is not the best place to have these sort of intellectual dialogues.
00:02:41.560 And it's very difficult to have these conversations when we're feeling so deeply.
00:02:45.220 It's very difficult to have these conversations when we're outpouring our love and support for people.
00:02:50.900 And I think, you know, speaking for myself, you know, there are times in my life where tragedy hits the LGBTQ community.
00:02:59.120 We can look directly at the Pulse Massacre and we hope that the nation stops and mourns.
00:03:05.360 And, you know, I'll be honest, there were people who didn't stop and mourn.
00:03:10.700 There were people who kept on walking.
00:03:12.680 And that hurts.
00:03:13.620 And I think Humboldt is a reminder that we as Canadians have the capacity for great compassion and great love and great financial support for people when they're in need.
00:03:24.280 And I think we need to look forward now and set this as the new bar, the new standard for that, for the next time when someone's hurt, that we step up in this significant and powerful way.
00:03:35.100 The notion of free speech, and this is something else that has to be said, you know, both left and right can be oppressive and rude and abusive and vulgar.
00:03:45.240 Anyone who thinks it's only the right or only the left doesn't understand social media and the nature of politics.
00:03:50.800 But some of those people who have been attacking this tweet and other similar situations are the first to say that their free speech is being limited.
00:03:59.360 For example, the Jordan Peterson issue, here was someone who has got millions of people now around him who says he's a champion of free speech.
00:04:06.580 Well, I'm not saying that he's the issue here, but does free speech apply to all people?
00:04:11.840 One tweet would not have hurt anyone, really.
00:04:15.600 And I can't imagine many people in Humboldt were even aware of this.
00:04:18.680 But it was made a public issue and a major issue and an international issue, but all the reaction to it.
00:04:23.740 And can I just say, just to circle back to the free speech conversation, it's very clear.
00:04:29.000 Free speech defenders are only interested in defending white nationalism, defending white supremacy within this country,
00:04:35.140 and defending those who don't want new immigrants, let's say, or racialized people within their borders.
00:04:41.220 So we always come back to this conversation when we ask, where are the free speech defenders?
00:04:45.760 When it comes to racialized communities who speak out against injustice, how come they aren't coming to our defense?
00:04:50.880 If we look at it time and time again, free speech defenders are only really interested in white nationalist conversations.
00:04:58.740 It was a poorly timed tweet, but no one in their right mind deserves to seek violent death threats.
00:05:04.400 And this should not be playing out on social media.
00:05:06.660 And when it comes to McLean's, it's quite interesting because they're casting subjective punishment,
00:05:12.080 depending on who you are as an individual.
00:05:14.360 They have many individuals on their roster, whether they're staff writers or whether they're freelancers,
00:05:19.620 who say wildly inappropriate things all the time.
00:05:23.080 So how is it that this one particular person faces this particular punishment and receives this statement while others don't?
00:05:30.020 How are they punishing her?
00:05:31.340 Exactly.
00:05:32.060 So I think there needs to be greater transparency.
00:05:33.880 Well, in terms of issuing the statement and slandering her, she got slandered through this statement, 0.97
00:05:39.580 which is going to follow her for the rest of her life.
00:05:41.720 But I'm just saying that there needs to be some standards set across the board.
00:05:45.100 I would like to see greater transparency from news outlets and from just publishing agencies in general
00:05:50.020 in regards to what is okay and what is not okay.