What The Media Can Learn From London’s Speaker’s Corner
By: Felix Simon
Tags: Politics, Donald Trump, Freedom Of Speech, Media, Journalism

Speaker’s Corner is probably one of the most bizarre free attractions that the London has to offer. At the north-eastern end of Hyde Park, just a stone’s throw from Marble Arch, passers-by can enjoy a bizarre spectacle every Sunday.

Leaning against fences or standing on small stepladders and armed with homemade signs that sometimes remind one of bad school presentations, a good dozen men (it’s usually men) cry out for attention. They scream and shout against each other, they shout at their listeners, and sometimes they just shout at the squirrels, who like to visit Speaker’s Corner not because it grants them absolute freedom of speech, but because of the abundant food supply, provided by tourists eager for a snapshot of the furrballs. The handful of policemen who are usually on the spot to watch over the spectacle are often partly amused, partly bored. They usually don’t have much to do.

They shout at each other, they shout at their listeners, and sometimes they just shout at the squirrels.

Speaker’s Corner offers everything— from radical animal rights activists to people who think chemtrails are reality. Militant proponents of radical Islam and the Sharia face off with men in “InfoWars” T-shirts who describe women as inferior and consider Donald Trump the saviour of the planet. It is doubtful that they all meet in one of the nearby pubs afterwards. The park has also attracted attention as a platform for right-wing extremists. When right-wing extremist Tommy Robinson, founder of the so-called “English Defence League” visited Speaker’s Corner last March and spread his usual mix of hatred and racism, over a thousand listeners came according to various reports. Speaker’s Corner briefly became a trend on Twitter.

In a sense, Speaker’s Corner is a bastion of absolute freedom of speech; and this bastion is mainly defended by fanatics. But even here the digital world has arrived. Some of the speakers are professionally organised. They have small camera teams who record their messages for the Speaker’s Corners of the Internet. British journalist Hussain Kesvani recently described this modernisation in an article for MEL Magazine. Some of the speakers, according to Kesvani, have managed to build up a loyal fan base away from the park. They run successful YouTube channels on which they present their Sunday speeches live or later upload them as a compilation. Titles like “Racism doesn’t exist” or “The Muslims want to exterminate the English people” are no rarity here but rather the standard, according to Kesvani — and tens of thousands watch these videos online.

A Lesson for the Media?

Speaker’s Corner is not only an interesting fieldsite to study how fanatics, conspiracy theorists and radicals use social media to make themselves heard — London’s most famous park corner also holds a lesson on how the media could deal with small but very noisy radical fringe groups and their views and conspiracy theories.

If you take a closer look during a Sunday visit, it quickly becomes clear that almost no one, apart from a small, devoted following, pays attention to these people. Not even the majority of tourists stop. Only a few of them occasionally stand in front of one of the speakers for a few minutes to listen before they walk on, often shaking their heads. Many just take a quick photo or a selfie. The vast majority walks by. And why shouldn’t they? After all, not every view deserves to be heard. What is the point of discussing the existence of “lizard people”? Why should one listen to a one-hour “Gravity is a Religion” lecture, if to prove the contrary, it would suffice to give the speaker a strong kick against the ladder on which he stands (Hint: don’t do this)?

And so it’s perhaps not surprising that not a single journalist or news organisation lurks around on Sundays to report on the views of those present at Speaker’s Corner— let alone to broadcast them live. Why should they? What would be won? After all, pretty much everything that can be heard at Speaker’s Corner is nothing of which anyone with a shred of common sense would say: “Everybody has to read about this in the paper tomorrow”. The news value of the speaker’s and their opinions? It’s exactly zero.

But once you leave Hyde Park for the world stage, the situation suddenly looks very different. Here, too, we find those who would fit in well at Speaker’s Corner. But instead of avoiding them, many outlets seem to offer them a platform all too willingly. How US and British media have covered racists or conspiracy theorists such Alex Jones or Internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos are just two examples. Trump’s ex-consultant Steve Bannon would presumably also have seen his nimbus fade a long time ago hadn’t new articles about him appeared with an astonishing regularity.

It’s perhaps not surprising that not a single journalist or news organisation lurks around on Sundays to report on the views of those present at Speaker’s Corner — let alone to broadcast them live. Why should they? What would be won?

Another current, albeit somewhat more difficult example is the coverage of the so-called “migrant trek” in the USA. Initially, it was a story about a larger group of Central Americans who had set out for the US in order to escape misery, violence and death squads in their home countries. Donald Trump and other groups have, however, abused the fate of these people in order to stoke fear ahead of the US mid-term elections. The NRA claimed that billionaire George Soros was financing the trek. The president tweeted about an “invasion”, claiming without evidence that terrorists were among the people (they weren’t). In a move widely seen as a campaign tactic he later deployed troops to the border with Mexico — although the trek was still thousands of kilometres away and posed no threat.

Even some of Trump’s conservative critics saw the spectacle as nothing more than an attempt to influence the elections in his favor. But instead of seeing the charade for what it was, many American media jumped over the stick that Trump held out to them. The migrant trek, a threat that was no threat at all but a humanitarian crisis, dominated the media coverage during the election campaign for long periods of time — and thus heated up an already racist and xenophobic climate even further. The sad climax was the terrorist attack on the synagogue in Pittsburgh. The assassin was convinced that “the Jews” would bring the “invaders” into the country “to kill his people”.