AP issues guidelines for using the term 'alt-right'

In a memo to reporters writing about the "alt-right," John Daniszewski, vice president for Standards at the Associated Press, cautioned journalists to be specific and deliberate when writing about a label that many say is just a euphemism for white nationalism.

"Avoid using the term generically and without definition, however, because it is not well known and the term may exist primarily as a public-relations device to make its supporters’ actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience," Daniszewski wrote. "In the past we have called such beliefs racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist."


Daniszewski said that when writing about extreme groups, journalists should be as specific as possible.

"We should not limit ourselves to letting such groups define themselves, and instead should report their actions, associations, history and positions to reveal their actual beliefs and philosophy, as well as how others see them," he wrote.

President-elect Donald Trump has faced mounting pressure to repudiate the alt-right, which has been blamed for inspiring hundreds of incidents of hate speech since his election.

During an interview with the New York Times last week, Trump disavowed the support of a group of white supremacists who recently held a conference in Washington, D.C. and saluted him with Nazi hand gestures.

It was not clear whether Trump was disavowing the larger alt-right movement, however. In a separate portion of the interview, Trump was asked about his hiring of Stephen Bannon, a former Breitbart News executive who once described the website as "the platform of the alt-right."

"I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time," Trump replied. "If I thought he was a racist, or alt-right, or any of the things that we can, you know, the terms we can use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him."

Bannon has also distanced himself from the outright racist and anti-Semitic parts of the movement, and says he is merely a "nationalist," not a white nationalist.