The problem with covering extremists

The problem with covering extremists
Coverage of figures like Clavicular raises an old question: Does attention inform the public — or empower radicals?

By Sophia Tesfaye
Senior Writer
Published April 6, 2026 12:50PM (EDT)


(Salon) For nearly a decade, journalists have wrestled with a deceptively simple question: Does covering extremists expose them or empower them? The debate came to a head after 2017’s Unite the Right rally, when images of torch-bearing white nationalists in Charlottesville forced newsrooms into a painful reckoning. Reporters had done what they were trained to do — show the public what was happening. But in doing so, they also delivered exactly what the marchers wanted: more visibility for their spectacle, and a sense of cultural relevance. The tiki torches and chants were not just expressions of ideology. They were media strategies.

With Heather Heyer’s body barely cold and her mother still making heartbreaking television appearances, the New York Times published a profile of an Ohio welder named Tony Hovater, co-founder of a neo-Nazi organization whose members had marched through Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.” ​​The Times followed up with a report on Hovater’s fondness for “Seinfeld,” his wedding registry at Target, four cats and Midwestern manners that would, as reporter Richard Fausset wrote, “please anyone’s mother.”

The backlash was swift and entirely warranted. While the intent may have been to show that extremism can hide in plain sight, the effect, critics of the stories argued, was normalization.

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The controversy ultimately forced newsrooms across the country to reconsider not just whether they should cover such figures, but how. The emerging consensus was not to look away but rather to shift focus away from personalities and toward systems. Instead of featuring humanizing details of extremists, stories focused more on the material harm experienced by the people extremists target. Naming things accurately was understood as a form of accountability. “Alt-right” became “white supremacist.”

But now, almost a decade later, the Times looks to be relapsing into bad form. If Charlottesville taught journalists to be wary of amplifying ideology, the current moment demands an understanding that, in an attention economy, amplification itself is the ideology. ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/04/06/the-problem-with-covering-extremists/