In further defense of uncomfortable comments

April 13, 2009 by Kurt
Filed under: commenting 
April 10 cover of the Post-Dispatchs Go! magazine.

April 10 cover of the Post-Dispatch's Go! magazine.

Cross-posted from The Editors Desk, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s blog about the news industry and our news organization.

In early August, STLtoday.com started allowing readers to post comments on our news stories (in addition to our blogs). We’ve discussed the reasons behind that decision and how we monitor story comments before. But it bears a re-examination in the wake of one story late last week. More on that in a moment.

Increasingly, we know that the audience for news and information online is not a passive one. More and more, readers are looking to be engaged and to interact with the media that they read and watch. A survey last year by the Associated Press Managing Editors group backed up that point — although the readers split evenly (at the time) over whether comments enhanced or hurt the credibility of news sites.

“Many of us have come to recognize that the age of ‘We report it, and you read it and view it’ is over,” said Howard Finberg at the time. He is director of interactive learning at the Poynter Institute, a Florida think tank on journalism. “The audience has demanded much more.”

We now allow reader comments, like many other news organizations, including the Washington Post, USA Today, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and the Miami Herald. Of the largest news organizations around, the Times is one of very few that devotes resources to screening comments before they are published. Most news organizations invite readers to register and post their comments immediately.

That’s how we handle them. And like most other news organizations, reporters and editors read as many comments as possible. We are continually developing ways to proactively monitor comments. But we also explicitly ask readers to report any violations of our guidelines that they find. Some days, we get a very few. Some days, we’ll get dozens. And we have a crew in the newsroom that receives and reviews those reports, rejecting comments that violate our guidelines.

Those guidelines ask readers to be civil, to avoid personal attacks, profanity and racist language. We ask readers to be on topic. That leaves a lot of wiggle room. It also means that we have to make some hard decisions about whether a comment actually crosses the line. We don’t delete a comment just because we disagree with it. Or because it’s angry. Or even if it expresses a point of view that makes us uncomfortable. That means ideas that some might consider racist may be allowed.

And to be clear, most of the comments posted on STLtoday.com are fine. Many are downright fascinating. We get story tips from time to time. Readers catch mistakes and help us fix them. When I checked at about noon today, readers had posted nearly 400 comments since midnight. We’ve deleted about four of them for violating our guidelines.

Meanwhile, last week, the Washington Post’s Doug Feaver posted a column “in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments.”

When Feaver was editor of washingtonpost.com, he did not allow anonymous comments on the site. He’s since changed his mind. He wrote: “Too many of us like to think that we have made great progress in human relations and that little remains to be done. Unmoderated comments provide an antidote to such ridiculous conclusions. It’s not like the rest of us don’t know those words and hear them occasionally, depending on where we choose to tread, but most of us don’t want to have to confront them.”

When we started A Conversation about Race, one of the people I consulted beforehand was Chester Hines, chair of the Commission on Dismantling Racism for the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. He supported the idea that readers needed to be exposed to racist attitudes. He was encouraging about the blog.

That brings us to our story late last week. Our cover story for Friday’s Go! section was about the “7 Best Places to Smooch” in the St. Louis area. As it happens, it featured a very tasteful photo of a couple lightly kissing. And the couple happened to be biracial — a black man and a white woman.

Almost immediately, we were dealing with comments from readers, some of whom were appalled at the photo. We deleted a number of comments that were far over the line, violating our commenting guidelines and using clearly racist and intolerant language to describe this couple. Other comments did not violate our guidelines, but, to be candid, were hard for some people to read. For example:

From “taxpayer”: Now that TV has to show blacks in every commercial, notice that they are always posed beside a blonde woman. Not a brunette, a blonde. Its done for shock value. Sickening that a once proud newspaper would resort ot this. Joe Pulitzer is turning over in his grave in shame.

From “dahlem”: Well the wonderful PD will be out of business in no time using putrid photos like this. The sooner the better and good riddance.

From “jwr8369″: Acceptance and diversity are fine as long as you don’t choke people with it, this is where I have a problem. PD strikes again.

Meanwhile, the Post-Dispatch has been criticized in other blogs (here and here) for letting such comments stand. One blogger has even gone to the trouble of beginning a “racist comment of the day” thread on his blog. More power to him. I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed for his thread. If that’s how he chooses to help us, I’ll take it. We’ll review the comments and deal with them as needed.

On one of those blogs, ShowMeProgress.com, a reader made my case better than I could have, although he was critical of what we allow in the comments: “As a child and through my whole adult life,” he wrote, “I have been taught/told that we have an obligation to object to racist and cruel talk.”

That’s my point exactly. I do not believe that obligation is best served by ignoring such talk or letting it go unchallenged. Those who disagree with racist attitudes should stand up to them. And while responding may not change the mind of the original author, it might influence others. There are a lot more readers than writers, a lot of minds to influence. In our Conversation about Race blog item about the Go! cover, readers posted 144 comments on Friday. But that day, that single blog item got more than 4,700 page views.

We do not want profanity, racist language or personal attacks. We don’t want trolls picking fights in our story comments. We work hard to try and stay ahead of them. And we continue to ask you to help.

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Comments

  • On the other hand, stories like that one, and the associated comments can also serve to discourage people--by making it seem as if racism is much more rampant in Missouri than it perhaps is.

    If one takes the comments at St. Louis Today at face value, then our community has an unusual number of racist, bigoted, intolerant, small minded, ignorant, selfish, libertarians. Do you believe this is so?
  • Hey, Shelley. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

    Here's why I don't agree: Because there are lots of comments from
    readers rebutting those who objected to the photograph. In fact, if
    you parse the comments on the blog item carefully, it seems to me
    there's a broader number of people supporting the photo than not.

    That blog topic brought in people who weren't regulars on STLtoday,
    people who had to stand up and say something. At least, that's how it
    looks to me, based on my experience watching the site.

    And I frequently see people rebutting those who are less tolerant.
    That gives me hope.
  • Eric
    Conversely, I would say that it always seems like it's largely the same eight or so people saying horribly racist things over and over on every article or blog post's comments section to the point that St. Louisans with social beliefs that aren't quite so much in the "horrifyingly regressive" category are alienated to the point of not even wanting to even look at the comments sections except for the mere spectacle of how depressing it all is.
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