When former FOX 13 journalist-turned-influencer Brandi Kruse said that FBI Director Kash Patel should investigate the Seattle-based Gender Justice League for “left-wing violence,” GJL’s Kai Aprill-Tomlin immediately started thinking about how to protect the team from violence and threats, he said.
“The first reaction we had at Gender Justice League was concern for our safety,” said Aprill-Tomlin, the director of communications and development.
Aprill-Tomlin’s concerns are backed by experience, he said. When right-wing influencers target LGBTQIA+ organizations, even a single post can trigger real-world consequences: harassment, doxing, threats to event venues, and the need for heightened security at gatherings like Trans Pride Seattle.
New challenges
Independent content creators are posing new challenges to both local newsrooms and LGBTQIA+ organizations, according to Aprill-Tomlin and Nicole Jennings, a board member of the Western Washington chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, a nonprofit nationwide organization that works to protect the First Amendment while promoting high ethical standards in journalism.
For example, Kruse and former KOMO reporter Johnathan Choe are influencers who have a combined following of almost 500,000 people across all platforms. Kruse left FOX 13 in 2021 to build a commentary brand called Undivided, while Choe — who was fired by KOMO after his controversial coverage of a Proud Boys rally — makes on-the-ground and political-take videos.
The presence of influencers at breaking-news scenes, and the freedom to operate outside professional media standards, has already caused issues for other reporters who work at traditional media organizations, said Jennings.
“There was one time that this influencer pretended he was from the station that I worked for to be able to get access as a journalist,” Jennings said. “It made me very concerned about the type of reporting he could do… ‘Reporting’ is a very, very loose term. I would call it pot-stirring.”
Jennings said that unclear boundaries around journalistic ethics, including identification, conduct and access, have the potential to create distrust among sources and harm the credibility of professional outlets.
“It would hurt me when I was trying to get man-on-the-street interviews,” Jennings said. “If people talk to him, or they knew about people like him, they'd be afraid to talk to me.”
Alex Bruell, the former president and a current board member of the Western Washington chapter of the SPJ, said some influencers disaffiliate from news organizations for one reason: they want to tell their stories independently. Some see platforms like Substack, Patreon, and Instagram as outlets where they can report freely.
“There's a lot of ways to do journalism, but there are professional standards for a reason,” Bruell said. “I think news readers should be discerning and should look at where they're getting their news.”
Bruell said audiences may not know that independent creators and newsroom journalists are held to different expectations.
“It’s two different ways that people are creating and consuming media,” Bruell said. “When someone goes independent, they’re doing their own thing. They may catch stories that other outlets wouldn’t, but their work hopefully doesn’t impugn the work of the places they left.”
Local effects of national shifts
Local media tensions in Seattle are happening alongside national shifts that challenge how "extremism” is defined.
In late September, the White House released a memorandum, “ Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, ” a national security directive that broadened the definition of extremism, classifying it as views that go against “traditional American” values like family, religion, and morality.
Following the memo, Kruse took to social media to call on FBI Director Patel to investigate Gender Justice League, a human rights organization that focuses on gender, for alleged “organized left-wing violence,” alongside five other organizations.
In a November SGN op-ed, GJL said federal prosecutors are already investigating other LGBTQIA+ organizations, and warned that the directive “opens the door to intensified state scrutiny of Trans people, activism, and nonprofits like Gender Justice League.” GJL said that the broadened definitions around “ideological campaigns" and “networked movements” makes it easier for the government to classify Transgender advocacy as extremist activity.
Real-world effects
“Kruse’s tweet is derivative of a broader right-wing playbook of online targeting and misinformation that fuels harassment against Trans and Queer organizers,” Aprill-Tomlin said.
Kruse’s tweet, Aprill-Tomlin said, has potential to escalate into real-world harassment and is a reminder of how powerful online narratives can be.
“This type of attention and visibility on the national scale from right-wing audiences has historically brought us increased harassment, both to our organization and to our staff as individuals,” Aprill-Tomlin said. “It signals to us the increased urgency and seriousness of protecting ourselves, so we can continue to do our work supporting the Trans community.”
Social posts like Kruse’s have prompted Gender Justice League to double down on community safety, security, emergency assistance, legal clinics, and legal safeguards, Aprill-Tomlin said.
“Part of me couldn’t help but think, ‘Little old us?,’ but the reality is that Gender Justice League is a key player in Trans organizing across Washington State,” he said. “For a political party that’s obsessed with Trans people, it’s not surprising they’d explicitly name and target Gender Justice League.”
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