Eagle-Tribune Blogs: In the News

This week’s column…

It has been a little more than a month since we added online commenting to stories on salemnews.com.

The response has been tremendous, with thousands of comments by readers on topics ranging from the important (the override debate in Beverly) to the somewhat silly (the fight over racy T-shirts at the mall).

We’re learning the world of online debate is different from the give-and-take on our opinion pages. In the print edition, a byline and quite often a picture accompanies the work of our guest columnists. Letters to the editor from readers are signed, and the author’s hometown is added.
There’s no place to hide from the reaction to your opinion.

On the Web, meanwhile, anonymous comments are widely accepted, and the use of witty pseudonyms is something of an art form.

Unfortunately, that facelessness can lead to exchanges that are repugnant, and others that are merely sad.

That was the case on salemnews.com earlier this month.

One case involved a piece about a lawsuit stemming from the suicide of a Beverly teenager. While the story was straightforward, it sparked a long string of online comments from her friends, family and onlookers. Over the course of an afternoon, the discussion devolved into a string of accusations, each more specific and outrageous than the last. The final straw for us was the accusation that her father orchestrated the suicide.

Later that day, in a separate string on a different story, a commenter accused the subject of a news item of sexual assault. The anonymous accusation had nothing to do with the story and set off a string of requests for “more details.”

We removed those toxic comments from our site. It’s not a decision we make lightly. We like the free exchange of opinions. In several cases, the online debate has added texture to the stories they reference. This is certainly true of the discussions surrounding the funding of the schools in Beverly and the push to establish a gay and lesbian support group at Gordon College.

At times, even those debates have pushed the boundaries of propriety and taste. But we figure those using the comments tool know the unwritten rules of the Internet. It’s when those rules clash with the rules of fairness in journalism in general and The Salem News in particular that we feel we have to step in.

Our rules for Internet comments are written down. We reserve the right to remove comments that:
r make false statements about a person, business or institution;
r reference the personal health, sexual activity or other private matters involving a story subject or commenter;
r threaten a story subject or commenter, or suggest violence;
r accuse someone of criminal activity;
r make crude statements about a child or children;
r include swearing or obscenity.

We will allow:
r opinions some people will find offensive;
r conversation that is simply strident in tone;
r criticism of public officials;
r criticism of people who are subjects of stories;
r pretty much everything else.

Being fans of the First Amendment, we try very hard to err on the side of leaving comments on our site.

But even one of the nation’s greatest champions of free speech, Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center, thinks online comments can sometimes go too far.

In a recent speech covered by the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Policinski said even “the repugnant comments serve the function of telling the public that these ideas exist.” He quickly added, however, that newspapers still have the right to set rules and standards while providing the public with a forum.

“The freedom of speech ought to mean you have something to say,” Policinski said. “A loud bleat in public is just a bleat, not speech. The freedom doesn’t necessarily allow for a mindless grunt.”

So far, the mindless grunts on salemnews.com have been few and far between. Working together, we can keep it that way.

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