The Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday released a report on anti-Semitic harassment of journalists online during the 2016 campaign cycle.
The report, from ADL's Task Force on Harassment and Journalism, found that out of the 2.6 million tweets "containing language frequently found in anti-Semitic speech between August 2015— July 2016," 60 percent "were replies to journalists' posts."
The research discovered "evidence that a considerable number of the anti-Semitic tweets targeting journalists originate with people identifying themselves as Trump supporters, 'conservatives' or extreme right-wing elements." In addition, the report found that "the words that show up most in the bios of Twitter users sending anti-Semitic tweets to journalists are 'Trump,' 'nationalist,' 'conservative,' 'American' and 'white.'"
According to the ADL's findings, "at least 800 journalists received anti-Semitic tweets," while "the top 10 most targeted journalists (all of whom are Jewish) received 83 percent of these anti-Semitic tweets."
Anti-Semitic Twitter harassment has become especially palpable during this election cycle for journalists like Julia Ioffe.
Ioffe's GQ profile of Melania Trump earned her unrelenting e-harassment after the Republican presidential nominee's wife lobbed criticism, calling the story, "yet another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting."
"The irony of this is that today, when I was getting all of this horrible antisemitic shit that I’ve only ever seen in Russia, I was reminded that 26 years ago today my family came to the U.S. from Russia," Ioffe told The Guardian at the time. "We left Russia because we were fleeing antisemitism. It’s been a rude shock for everyone."
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement to The New York Times, "We have no knowledge of this activity and strongly condemn any commentary that is anti-Semitic." Hick added, "We totally disavow hateful rhetoric online or otherwise."
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