The CBC closed its comment section on its aboriginal affairs stories near the end of last year. The broadcaster stated that the racially charged, hateful and ignorant posts its moderators were forced to contend with were overwhelmingly more burdensome to wade through when compared to the rest of its website’s content.
The move followed Sun Media’s choice to close the comment threads across the chain and preceded the Toronto’s Star’s choice to also shutdown commenting on its website.
Online commenting for newspapers is rife with landmines. As an organization, whether we condone an opinion or not, we are ultimately responsible for all content published under our brand. The Gazette heavily moderates its comments to weed out as many personal attacks and possibly defamatory statements as possible, while trying to maintain public dialogue and respect fair comment. Thankfully we handle substantially fewer online comments when compared to the Suns, Stars, or CBCs of the world, which makes the task less daunting and I cannot imagine having to deal with the volume of comments those organizations do.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to the value of online comments. Some see it as an effective way to engage readers and drive people to online content; others find it disgraceful to give every misinformed, ignorant and oftentimes blatantly inflammatory opinion a public stage. Then there is the debate on anonymity and moderation. Some are vehemently opposed to anonymous comments and some choose not to moderate comments whatsoever. The latter believe no moderation frees them from the burden of responsibility for the thoughts some choose to spew from the dark basements they live in. I find that belief terrifying and akin to a game of Russian roulette.
Over the years I have become more and more opposed to online comments, especially ones of an anonymous nature. While I accept the argument that anonymity allows people who would be otherwise put at risk to express their opinion, for the most part, anonymous posters are sewer-dwelling trolls, though the Gazette’s are for the most part reasonable.
What about public engagement and driving traffic?
In terms of public engagement, newspapers have always offered readers a forum on the letters pages to express themselves, rant and even criticize the paper itself. Requiring all writers to submit their name, phone number and address lends a level of credibility to those opinions because people are willing to publicly stand behind them. To those who believe that is a hypocritical viewpoint considering there are no names associated with newspaper editorials, editorials are by no means anonymous. They are the opinions of a newspaper and constructed in collaboration with senior editors and the publishers. Those names can be found on our website.
We always have a backlog of letters to work through. That, to me, demonstrates a readership that is engaged not only with the stories we publish but the opinions our community members submit.
As for driving traffic, if a news organization needs provocative and antagonistic comments to attract readers, something is wrong, and no amount of gibbering lunacy will save it from poor quality content.
For the time being, the Gazette’s current commenting system is here to stay, though we frequently discuss whether it has value. I would prefer to allow moderated comments but implement a system that rejects anonymous posters. It all comes down to this question: does every opinion have value? In a country that is supposed to champion free speech that is an interesting debate and a topic that will have to wait for another column.
Chris Puglia is the Gazette’s assistant editor
