Metro Pulse waxes interactive, talks about online commenting
I thought I was going to be strung up earlier this year when I proclaimed to a filled room at the Baker Center that I think online comments should be unmoderated, because I feel it's wrong to abridge speech and expression. (By "unmoderated," I mean edited in anyway or otherwise pre-approved before being published.) This is not a Constitutional issue for me, because news organizations are private businesses, and there's nothing that says they must provide a forum for public discourse. For me, it's a matter of principal.
Allowing comments on news stories is a way to offer a venue for speech and expression. Moderating comments is subjective. Someone has to say what's appropriate and what isn't, and for me, as a journalist, I don't think news professionals should be in the business of deciding what constitutes appropriate speech, expression or point of view. It goes against that whole "objectivity" thing they teach you about in J-school. That, of course is just my opinion.
I don't think all news organizations have an obligation to offer the ability to comment on stories. I just think it should be all or nothing. Either you allow comments or you don't. Maintaining comments this way has the added benefit of limiting the liability of the news organization in question. Moderating comments increases liability, because responsibility for that comment moves from the poster to the host-er.
According to law firm Bullivant Houser Bailey PC:
I'm a practitioner of free speech as a journalist. As such, I feel like I would be a hypocrite if I felt it was appropriate to deny someone that same free speech, even if it's my right to do so."Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act shelters from liability a provider of an 'interactive computer service that merely publishes information provided by others. As such, if the interactive computer service is merely a passive repository and publisher of information, then it may not be liable under the act if the public posting is harmful or defamatory.
"On the other hand, if the interactive computer service itself posts the comment, the exemption from liability offered by the Communications Decency Act does not apply. There is no exemption under the act to the poster of a false or wrongful comment."
EDIT: The one exception to my "all or nothing" approach to online commenting is SPAM! Deleting SPAM is acceptable.
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