- April 7, 2010
- 5:02 pm
- Don Wycliff
- no comments
Anonymous posts vex journalists
Don Wycliff
Distinguished Journalist in Residence
Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune carried a story about the controversial non-violent response of two sisters to the murder of a third sister in her Winnetka home 20 years ago. Instead of seeking “an-eye-for-an-eye” vengeance, the two women have dedicated themselves to fighting capital punishment, as they believe their sister would have wished them to.
It was the kind of story that stirs strong passions, and many of those passions received expression in the online comments that followed the story on the Tribune’s Web site.
But a large number of the comments had nothing to do with the story. Instead, they revolved around the removal by the Tribune’s online monitor of a comment by someone who signed himself “Earnesto.”
“Ernest’s posts were really not a big deal. I don’t know why they would have removed them,” wrote someone who called himself HOPIJOEL.
“Probably because he spends an inordinate amount of time posting simple-minded partisan political rheotoric on as many articles as possible, regardless of topic. Can you say troll?” replied another commenter, who was signed 1980NWI.
I was not able to determine what Earnesto’s original comment said, but he later posted a new one: “I’m baaack. I was kicked off all the Trib’s posts and my post here was erased again! I was abiding by the Trib’s monitor policy. The Trib is trying to suppress my voice. So sad.”
Instincts honed during my several years as the Tribune’s public editor suggest to me that Earnesto is one of those obsessive types whose voice will never be suppressed, but will never be heeded much either beyond his small circle of fellow obsessives.
But this little colloquy on one newspaper’s Web site calls attention to an issue that is getting a lot of attention in the journalism world nowadays: What kind of policies ought to govern online comment spaces of news organizations?
Should there be no restrictions whatever, making these spaces free-fire zones? Should commenters be required to identify themselves fully by name, as they are identified in most newspaper letter-to-the-editor columns? Should comment spaces be monitored, as the Tribune’s apparently is? Or should there be no traffic cop?
My personal position has always been that commenters ought to be required to identify themselves fully by name. Identifying yourself ought to be the price of participating in the public debates.
But there are smart, well-intentioned people who hold different beliefs.
Andrew Alexander, ombudsman of the Washington Post, defended anonymous commenting in his column last Sunday. While admitting that vicious, noxious comments can create problems in newsgathering and can be a turnoff to sane, serious readers, Alexander said that, nevertheless,
“For every noxious comment, many more are astute and stimulating. Anonymity provides necessary protection for serious commenters whose jobs or personal circumstances preclude identifying themselves. And even belligerent anonymous comments reflect genuine passion that should be heard.”
I heard all of those arguments from students in my Ethics and Communication class during a recent discussion of this issue.
On the other hand, some other students argued that anonymity has been demonstrated to bring out the worst in people in all kinds of situations, from road rage incidents to rowdy crowd behavior at athletic events.
Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts made this same point in a recent column prompted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s “outing” of a local judge as an potential abuser of the paper’s comment spaces. The paper disclosed that the judge’s e-mail address had been used to post critical and sometimes derogatory comments about Plain Dealer staff members and, crucially, about the lawyer for a defendant in a notorious mass murder case over which the judge was presiding. (The judge said it was her daughter who sent the postings and the daughter supported her mother’s statement.)
Whether the Plain Dealer should have outed the judge is an intriguing question for media ethicists—and students in media ethics classes. (Having implicitly promised anonymity to commenters, can you simply decide not to keep that promise in a particular case, even a life-and-death case?)
But there is no question, Pitts said, that “The fact that on a message board…no one is required to identify themselves, no one is required to say who they are and own what they’ve said, has inspired many to vent their most reptilian thoughts.”
Pitts’ solution is to eliminate anonymous—or pseudonymous—posting to comment boards. “Stop giving people a way to throw rocks and hide their hands,” he said. “Any dropoff in the quantity of message board postings will surely be made up in the quality thereof.”
Alexander said the Washington Post is trying a different approach. The paper soon will institute a system of tiered responses and responders. Web site managers and moderators will assign commenters to tiers based on their past behavior, whether they give their full names and other criteria. Only the postings of those in the tier of most trustworthy commenters will be seen automatically by visitors to the paper’s Web site. Visitors will have to click through to see additional tiers. And postings by the most vile and obnoxious commenters may be blocked altogether.
Alexander had the grace to acknowledge that there are business—i.e., money—reasons for not simply eliminating anonymous postings. Growth of Web site traffic is “critical to the Post’s financial survival in the inevitable shift from print to online,” he wrote. “The goal is to dramatically build online audience, and robust commenting is key to increasing visitors to the Web site and keeping them there as long as possible.”
That honesty is appreciated. One can only hope that the Post’s solution proves to be a winner. But I, for one, will not hold my breath.
