Professor Bill Grueskin of the Columbia Journalism School discusses the subtle racial messaging embedded in dog whistles, who responds to them, and the challenges for journalists in covering the ever-less-subtle dog whistling in current political messaging.

Transcript:
0:00: Lauren Shields:

With us today, we have Bill Grueskin, professor of professional practice and former academic Dean of the Columbia Journalism School. He also, co-authored, The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism. He's going to talk with us today about dog whistling. Bill Grueskin, thanks so much for joining us.

0:16: Bill Grueskin:

Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

0:20: Lauren Shields:

In your article, Stop Calling Racist Rhetoric a Dog Whistle, you described dog whistles as "language that some supporters will appreciate, but subtle enough" and I'm sort of paraphrasing here, that the user feels he can be credibly exonerated of racism. Can you describe for us how an effective dog whistle works and what you mean by being credibly exonerated?

0:42: Bill Grueskin:

So classically, what a dog whistle has been is a message, usually from a politician, but could be a business person, or anybody usually in some form of power, who says something that his close end supporters, the people who really know him and know the way he or she talks, will understand a subtle message, but to the general public will see my kind of an innocuous sort of statement?

1:12: Lauren Shields:

Okay, thank you. And who typically responds to dog whistles?

1:16: Bill Grueskin:

I haven't done a sociological study of this, so I have to say pretty much anybody who is close enough to the candidate and, or close enough to the candidate’s ethos, that they pick up on some more subtle, but important message that is being conveyed there. Something that may instill an emotional response, an intellectual response, but it's really designed to kind of drive, you know, obviously a vote for a candidate. It can also considerably be used by businesses with certain ads, for certain kinds of products and that kind of thing too. You know, when you see a commercial for a burglar alarm, there's ways of conveying messages in that, that can instill not just a fear of crime, but a fear of people moving into the neighborhood who aren't your type.

2:07: Lauren Shields:

And in the field of journalism, what challenge does the dog whistle present to those reporting it?

2:13: Bill Grueskin:

Well, that's a really key question and was something that I was interested in for this piece, which was you know, journalists insofar as they see their jobs as largely designed to basically transcribe quotes from officials or citizens or people involved in various news stories, they can do a real disservice by simply saying, this is what the candidate said, and then just leave it at that. And so, you have to bring in other contexts as well. And I think as we've seen to fast forward to 2020, as we've seen with Donald Trump, it's become even more important. Because I think particularly his message is around the suburbs and low-income housing. Those are where, as I said in the column, I think we're now transcending from a subtle dog whistle to a fairly overt appeal to people's baser instincts around who they do and don't want living in their neighborhood and why they feel that way.

3:20: Lauren Shields:

If you'd like to know more about Mr. Grueskin's work, you can find him on Twitter at @BGrueskin, or you can email him at BGrueskin@columbia.edu. Thank you again for joining us today.

3:31: Bill Grueskin:

All right. Take care.