Dialogue or Diatribe?

By Pat Walters
Contributors: Jeremy Gilbert

News organizations are dealing with comments in a number of different ways. We looked at three newspaper Web sites, a news aggregator and a radio program Web site. Here are their approaches.

The Wall Street Journal

Bill Grueskin, WSJ.com managing editor, from a recent internal memo:


The New York Times

Heather Moore, NYTimes.com community editor, from an e-mail message:


Washingtonpost.com

Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com editor, from an e-mail message:


Slashdot

Jeremy Gilbert, Poynter Online design editor, summarizing the site's FAQ page:


Open Source

"An Introduction," from www.radioopensource.org:

This means that we rely on our listeners and readers -- whom David Sifry calls "the people formerly known as your audience" -- to help us produce the show. At its most basic, we look for this production help in the comment threads of this website. Every time we have an idea for an hour of radio we post it to the site. That show may not go on the radio for another month, but we immediately start reading comments -- suggestions for guests, questions for guests, suggestions for ways to frame the show or reading material -- and following up on them.

You, the people formerly known as the audience, know more than we do. Frequent commenter razib understands -- intimately -- how DNA testing works; sidewalker sometimes weighs in about his adopted country of Japan; jeffakboston helped us with a list of theoretical physicists. So pick your handle and name your obsession. We're reading.

Conversations are happening everywhere on the web, and they're not just about computers or Star Trek. They're about God and the world, people taking pictures and and comparing notes of what they see around them. It's why we chose to run our website as a blog; a blog functions naturally as a conversation, asking for input and correction and responding in turn. Broadcast media can't just be a bullhorn anymore; it has to be an invitation, or it misses out on some of the best stuff happening around it.

By Al Tompkins
Broadcast/Online Group Leader

As newsrooms across the country grapple with online user comments, the discussion often turns to legal implications. I wanted to demystify the matter and sort through the rumor and rhetoric. So I went after some straight answers from people who actually know.

I consulted two media attorneys in a market I covered for years, Nashville, to learn more about what legal concerns journalism organizations should have when they allow members of the public to freely post comments on public Web sites. I interviewed (by e-mail) Alan E. Korpady, of King & Ballow, and Robb S. Harvey, of Waller, Lansden Dortch & Davis.

What are the legal issues that newsrooms should consider when opening their Web sites to public comment?

Harvey: Newsrooms not only as a matter of common sense but also for reasons of self-preservation must consider whether their Web sites are likely to attract comments that could pose liability risks. In recent years, numerous claims have been asserted regarding Web site postings, including defamation, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of likeness and right of publicity, infliction of emotional distress and negligence. Even if lawsuits by those being commented upon, posters or even other readers may ultimately be found wanting or even frivolous, those claims impose time demands, expense and substantial distraction. Newsrooms and their counsel must carefully consider immunity and safe harbor protections under statutes such as the federal Communications Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as other recently enacted state statutes and common law.

Korpady lists the main legal concerns:

• Potential liability for direct, contributory or vicarious copyright infringement

• Potential liability for trademark infringement

• Potential liability for defamation by bloggers

• Application of the "journalist's privilege" to blogging

• Application of the "media exemption" from the definition of expenditure under the Federal Election Campaign Act

• Application of licensing laws to bloggers giving or disseminating what might be characterized as "professional" (e.g., legal or medical) advice
  

• Vicarious liability for the wrongful acts of a blogger as a "general partnership," especially if the blogger accepts advertising

Is there any truth to the commonly held belief among news executives that if they do not edit comments they are more protected from defamation and/or libel claims than if they edit feedback?

Harvey: There is some truth to this belief, but like most things, it cannot be assumed to be an absolute rule. Substantial case law has developed over the past several years recognizing "Section 230 immunity" under the federal Communications Decency Act. This immunity is broad, and has been applied to entities such as Internet service providers, Web site operators, computer equipment lessors, municipalities and forum board operators.

Korpady: Generally, it is likely that is true. The case law has not developed to the point where we can provide such advice with anything approaching real comfort. Section 230(c) of the federal Communications [Decency Act] provides broad protection to the "provider of an interactive computer service" for statements or information provided by "another information content provider." In the limited research I did to support this general response, however, I found no case that expressly extends that protection to newspapers. If, however, a newspaper is put on notice of defamatory speech, it is also protected by Section 230(c) if it restricts access to such speech. Some courts have held that even a distributor of information (no editing or selection of content), must act "reasonably" when put on notice of defamatory speech.

If newsrooms do allow public comment, what would you recommend as rules of engagement for the public to follow?

Harvey: Although the following is not provided as legal advice -- the reader should consult counsel of his/her choosing in this area -- among the considerations to be taken into account [is] the need for the newsroom to impose robust "terms of service" on all posters. Posters should be informed that they are responsible for their own postings. The newsroom should consider advising readers that the newsroom does not control or monitor what third parties post, and that readers occasionally may find comments on the site to be offensive or possibly inaccurate. Readers should be informed that responsibility for the posting lies with the poster himself/herself and not with the newsroom or its affiliated sites.

Korpady: Adopt and include in the access agreement with bloggers a "notice and take down" policy reserving the right to refuse to post or to restrict access to defamatory or infringing speech.

Adopt and include in the access agreement with bloggers an agreement not to post defamatory, infringing or other harmful content.

And be aware that the blogging community is very jealous of its unfettered right to speak and has on a number of recent occasion "mobbed" an Internet service provider that took down clearly infringing content (e.g., Digg.com). You may be caught, without a remedy, between a defamed person and the defaming blogger or between the owner of a copyrighted work and the infringing blogger that posted it.

By Bob Steele
The Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values

I recently spent a couple of days trying to help people in The (Cincinnati) Enquirer newsroom come to terms with ethical challenges that affect journalists almost everywhere in this cyber era.

How do you honor the values of accuracy and fairness when immediacy and speed are new priorities? How do you protect the credibility of the journalism when you deploy more reporters to breaking news? How do you guard the integrity of the newspaper when online journalism looks so different? Are the values different for how stories are judged? Are the sensibilities different for how readers react to the content online compared to the paper?

Nowhere are those questions of values and sensibilities trickier than in the area of online comments by readers. Our spirited discussion at The Enquirer echoed themes from a recent piece by Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell.

(I talked to Howell about her column and the reaction it provoked for a recent Poynter podcast.)

Tom Grubisich explored similar issues, also in the Post.

In our conversations at The Enquirer, some staffers championed the value of freewheeling online comments from the public. Others expressed concern about the consequences of comments that run from roughshod to racist.

After the workshops, I asked two of the Cincy editors to weigh in on these matters in an e-mail Q&A with me. They offered insight on some of the high and low points so far in their experience with inviting readers to comment -- about content on both the newspaper's main site and on a newer, more narrowly focused site.

Tom Callinan has responsibility for The Enquirer newspaper and online news coverage at Cincinnati.com:

What is your sense of the pros and cons of encouraging the public to post comments to online forums and/or to story comments/chats?

Inviting readers to partner in the news has upsides and downsides. Here's an example of crowd-sourcing that serves the public interest:

Recently, we broke a story online about persistent power problems in a suburban township. The reporter asked readers to help report the story with power issues and got dozens of useful comments. The story received more than 10,000 page views -- and the utility company heard from the public about paying attention to the problem.

Among the 40,000 township residents affected by the frequent outages was a 49-year-old woman whose life depends on using a home kidney dialysis machine 10 hours a day. She received an apology from the president of the energy company, and a local firm that specializes in protecting local companies from unreliable power contacted her and donated a $6,000 uninterruptible power system in her home.

That clearly served the public interest. But less desirable are occasions when flamers post racist, profane or insensitive comments.

What are the competing values at stake when we create these forums?

We need to balance the public interest with our need to build audience online. While discussions about controversies and celebrities may get more traffic, we have a responsibility to invite people in to talk about important issues that may not be as sexy.

That said, readers will participate in constructive dialogue about civic issues if we put a bit of thinking into how we present issues to them. A good example was a recent online discussion about downtown's "missing ingredients." More than 180 readers contributed to a "wish list" and the conversation attracted 13,500 page views.

How has this worked for The Enquirer? When do the public forums/story comments work well? Do you encounter ethical challenges? When? How do you address them?

The comments on the story about the woman who was killed by a drunken driver in a bar parking lot showed how coarse online anonymous posts can become. The verbal assault on her (why would she be out at 2 a.m. on a school night, etc.) had to be very hurtful to her family. The bigger issue with that situation is that we had put standards in place that would have said "no" to enabling conversation on that story. We had been steering away from stories that we could predict would bring out the worst in people ... and top editors all agreed that decision should have been cleared. Obviously our system failed us, so we went to a default "no" on story discussions until we can get a better system in place and more clearly define and communicate standards.

We still are seeing good traffic from chats that we can monitor -- the story about a local restaurateur who refused to serve O.J. Simpson in Louisville, for example, drew hundreds of comments and 67,000 page views. But we are being selective and not just turning conversation on every story without the ability to keep an eye on the comments.

What specific protocols and procedures have you put in place to facilitate the most productive online conversations? What can other news organizations learn from your experiences in this territory?

We find it best when we carefully choose the topic, require registration and then moderate the discussion. Even anonymous posters tend to be more civil when they have to do any sort of registration to join and know we and their fellow posters are watching.

That may cost us some traffic but we need to be comfortable with the conversation, and I still believe readers have higher expectations of online discussions hosted by our business than they see elsewhere in cyberspace.

---

Karen Gutiérrez is managing editor for one of The Enquirer's offshoot products, a Web site called cincyMOMS.com:

What is your sense of the pros and cons of encouraging the public to post comments to online forums and/or to story chats? How has this worked for cincyMOMS.com? When do the public forums for comments work well?

Public forums work well when you have a diverse group of people participating, because the different personalities tend to balance each other out. Some people become leaders, others agitators, others a calming presence. We run the gamut of moms -- emotional, brainy, single, married, impulsive, measured, funny, long-winded, etc. The mix is very important. Forums can get out of control when they attract, say, mostly ideologues who drown out the other voices. I did some viral marketing through e-mail when we launched the site, and I tried to inform a wide variety of moms about the site with this in mind.

Also, I choose my top headlines on the site very carefully. Early on I put topics there that would appeal to a diverse group of moms. One time I promoted a playgroup for African-American moms. Another time a group for the moms of children with autism. It's important to send these signals that the conversations are for everyone.

I have also learned to write headlines about controversial conversations in a way that invites thoughtful response, as opposed to knee-jerk crazy stuff. Today [May 17], for instance, one of our headlines links to a discussion on the site about teenagers who wear very baggy pants in an apparent imitation of "prison culture," as one mom wrote. This is the type of thing that could get out of hand on forums with a certain audience.

The discussion has been going on for a while and has been very respectful, with moms even suggesting reading material on the issue, so I felt it was safe to link to. My headline was "What baggy pants say about teenagers," and the photo shows only pants from the waist down, so the race of the teenager is not visible. The teaser under the photo says, "Moms discuss the origin of the baggy-pants phenomenon. Cardamom suggests reading Cora Daniels' Ghettonation."

You can see the discussion here.

Do you encounter ethical challenges? When and how do you address them?

There are certainly a lot of challenges for me, but I'm not sure they're ethical ones per se, in the sense that I'm wrestling with how to do the right thing, or anything. Here's an example: I've had two daycare centers object to posts made about their centers and call me. I have read those posts, agreed they were unfair and taken them down. It didn't feel like an ethical quandary to me. I e-mailed the posters to explain what I was doing and told them it's best to stick with the facts when they're posting. None have complained or tried to re-post anything. The centers seemed pleased with how it was handled. (Promptness is very important.) One director told me he reads the site precisely to see if people are posting information they might not want to tell him directly. It's as if he uses the site to see what he needs to fix about his business. Considering that we have 50,000 messages on the site, we've had remarkably few complaints of this sort.

My challenge is more along the lines of managing personalities and mediating disputes so that people continue to feel good about the site and continue to visit. Sometimes moms will e-mail me to say that a discussion has gotten out of hand or become "childish" and that I should weigh in or even lock the discussion to further posts. This is almost always because people have gotten very passionate about a subject and have started to call each other names instead of sticking to the issues, which is to be expected. I will usually wait a while to see if any of our regular posters add something to redirect the conversation. And then eventually I will post something to calm everyone down. On two or three occasions I have locked posts to further comment with a note at the bottom explaining why.

What specific protocols and procedures have you put in place for cincyMOMS.com to facilitate the most productive online conversations?

One thing we've done is require full registration -- name, e-mail and mailing address -- in order to make posts. It's important that people jump through some hoops first, to cut down on script kiddies and others who are just making trouble.

One of my other policies is to answer all e-mail promptly and personally. I would probably read a cincyMOMS feedback e-mail before I would read one from our publisher. This helps me stay on top of conversations so that I'm not too far behind if there's a controversy. Personal customer service also helps people develop an attachment to the site. They get protective of it, which cuts down on irresponsible posting.

We've said all along that this site belonged to the moms themselves. We wanted them to feel in control, talking about what they want to talk about, as opposed to having content dictated to them by the newspaper. So I follow the moms' lead. I do ask my colleagues and bosses for advice when I have a tough issue to mediate. But I'm not sure that any protocol or procedure could anticipate some of the situations that happen on forums, and a protocol that works well in one instance wouldn't work well in another. This is an evolving venture for us, though, so I'm sure more procedures will develop as we learn more about what we need.

By Scott Libin
Poynter Online Managing Editor

Where I work, the legendary status of Eugene Patterson is perhaps second only to that of Nelson Poynter himself. Patterson won a Pulitzer Prize for his Atlanta Constitution columns on civil rights during the 1960s. He became editor of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times in 1972 and, upon Poynter's death in 1978, became chairman of the board of the Modern Media Institute, now known as The Poynter Institute.

A more-revered figure around here would be hard to name. So, when someone said on this site last week that Patterson should have been shot for those civil rights columns, well, those would be fightin' words -- if we at the Institute weren't such a collegial group.

The comment came from Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Workers' Party, whose magazine cover for April features a swastika and the huge headline reading "Happy Birthday Hitler." White was responding to a piece by Poynter's Roy Peter Clark titled "They Shot His Dog: Historical Lessons on Incivility," which drew a parallel between the racist hate letters that appeared on op-ed pages in the South during the '60s and some of the online user comments causing concern among journalists across the country today.

Why would we allow on our site the suggestion by a white supremacist that Gene Patterson deserved to die?

In one sense, it seems to violate our own guidelines on user comments, which say, "We will remove messages that contain ... personal attacks, insults or threats."

On the other hand, in context, the comment could constitute an attempt at humor: "Its [sic] a shame they shot his dog -- they should have shot him instead. I can't see what the dog had to do with it," White wrote.

He went on to offer his perspective on the broader issue that was at the very heart of Clark's column and the coverage that accompanied it -- the conflict between the values of civil discourse and of freely expressed opinion on significant issues:

"You can censor anything you like but you guys don't own or control the media any more -- and what you do or don't do in your increasingly irrelevant publications really just doesn't matter," White wrote.

That sentiment is probably shared by many people who would like to think they have nothing in common with the politics of people like White. The same could be said for his closing comment:

"So continue the self-absorbed debate from the position of your own 'importance' while that very importance -- and you [sic] ability to act as gate keeper of public opinion -- fades away."

White's comments also offer insight into the tactics of the group he represents -- insight that may be troubling, but that has clear relevance to those who report on issues that are important, emotional and divisive:

"Now, we don't just protest at the newspaper -- we go to the writer's homes and protest there," White says.

It didn't make my day to encounter such a subtly menacing message aimed at journalists on our site. But the mission of Poynter Online is not to protect journalists from unpleasant truths or unpopular political positions. It is to inform and help journalists do their jobs.

Sometimes that means encountering comments that offend.

What do you think?

By Kelly McBride
Ethics Group Leader

April Branum is used to the teasing. As a child, she was the fat kid. Now she's a big woman. Her entire life she has endured stares, jokes and rudeness.

If anyone could stand up to the withering criticism of an anonymous Internet mob, it's Branum.

But when The Orange County (Calif.) Register published a story on March 2 about the birth of her son, Walter -- a baby she did not know she was carrying until two days before his arrival -- Branum saw a whole new side of mean. Online readers were unforgiving and cruel.

"I just couldn't believe how far they went," she said. "And how wrong it was." By wrong, Branum means both morally wrong and just plain inaccurate.

Although the details of the Register's story were complete and authentic (except for one cut line that made her name into Barnum, an unfortunate but common mistake) that didn't stop the public from making up information about the woman.

One user claimed Branum was immobile, that her house was a mess because she's too fat to get up to clean it. She can walk just fine, Branum said. But it was hard to get up and clean after the C-section.

Another person claimed she ate Krispy Kremes all day, another that fast food was her every meal. Not true and not true.

One poster suggested that Branum was inherently unqualified to be a mother and that the state of California was going to take her baby away. Because she had no prenatal care, a visiting nurse checks in once a week, Branum said. The baby is healthy and thriving and the state is not trying to gain custody.

Several posters concurred that Branum was making a lot of money off her story. She is not making any money. The only donations she received were baby items, funneled through her church.

But the biggest lie of all came from a user who claimed to be April Branum. That person posted a nasty response calling the others nasty names. Other critics then used that false posting as evidence to bolster their own conclusion that because Branum is obese, she must be lazy and vulgar too.

"That's not even me," she said of the post. "How come people can use my name?"

Like I said, Branum's a pretty tough woman and all that was tolerable. But the new mother lost it when her critics turned their sites on her baby, suggesting that the child was doomed to grow into a fat, unhealthy drain on society's resources.

"That was the worst," she said. "Disrespecting an innocent little baby."

Of course Branum's case is not an isolated one. An Internet mob is generally ruthless, fueled by the ease and anonymity of posting. News Web sites around the country are struggling to address the viciousness of commentary on stories, blogs and message boards. Some sites have turned off comments in specific areas. Many are developing mechanisms to help the online community police itself.

The Orange County Register, a Freedom Communications newspaper, had allowed comments for only about six weeks when the April Branum story surfaced. Comments are a central feature of a new push toward interactivity among Freedom properties. A "remove comment" button appears next to every post, for users who find a comment objectionable. If two users click the button, the post comes down. Before the attack on Branum, it took three users to remove a post.

After the attack, editors added this note:


OCRegister.com editor Jeff Light has not tracked how many comments were removed from the story about Branum. The process is far from perfect.

Online users "get into many stories and flame or post nonsense," he told me in an e-mail. "We have also seen stories where an entire point of view is deleted," which is a laborious process since the entire page must reload after each click.

"I imagine there are some sore mouse muscles in a few companies' PR offices," he said.

There are better systems, Light said, including those that block the IP addresses of offensive users or delete all of a single user's posts. Light does not advocate pre-screening comments.

"The entire point of the comment tool is that users -- not us -- have a chance to frame the discussion and to set the bounds of propriety," he said. "Many people reject that notion, but I believe it is essential."

Ugly words generate a lot of attention and reaction, but there are just as many if not more examples of healthy debate and discussion, Light said.

Some journalists fear mean-spirited online mobs may hinder their ability to tell intimate stories.

Scott Martindale, the reporter who originally wrote Branum's story, was horrified to watch the online discussion deteriorate. He's been at the paper for one year. It's his first job out of college. He felt responsible for not warning her.

Many reporters at the Register are upset by the tone of the commentary, Martindale said. The tenor of the public discussions could turn away more people than it attracts.

"Our obligation is to be a forum for people to get the news," he said. "They shouldn't have to wade through attacks and bigotry and racism on our website to get the news about their community."

In the future, Martindale said he would feel obligated to warn sources about the potential critics waiting for them in the anonymous world of the Internet. A few days after the story, he called Branum to do a follow-up story and to see how she was holding up.

She told him she could take it. She told him about the radio disk jockeys from around the country who had telephoned and put her on the air. She tried to be a good sport about it.

Branum didn't have the heart to tell the kind young reporter who came to her home what she's been telling her friends: If you think you have a nice personal story to tell, don't go to the news. See, Branum's sister actually called the newspaper about baby Walter in the first place. The way she saw it, the healthy baby was a miracle, a gift from God. Branum had tried for years to get pregnant and failed. The fact that at age 40, a healthy baby could arrive seemingly out of nowhere seemed like a pretty special event.

Now April Branum wishes she had just sent all her friends an e-mail instead.
 
"I shouldn't have put it out there," she said. "I should have kept it quiet."

By Aly Colón
Reporting, Writing, Editing Group Leader

How does uncensored, uncivil and anonymous commentary on blogs and Web sites affect online conversations about diversity?

We asked contributors to Poynter's "Journalism with a Difference" column, along with some other journalists who deal with diversity issues, to e-mail us their thoughts.

Here are their responses:

Sally Lehrman, national diversity chair, Society of Professional Journalists:

Some of the hostility does give us a sense of where people really are with these issues because they feel a freedom to say things they would never share in public. That can help keep the conversation going in a way that doesn't let anyone throw up their hands in disgust. I've found this with some of my race and science stories -- on some blogs, some very interesting back and forth ensues in which one writer will correct another on the ignorance, stereotyping or assumptions behind whatever they've said.

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Interested in diversity? Check out our diversity seminars. Sign up to receive Journalism with a Difference by e-mail: Click here

When I'm having conversations with people one on one, I often hear a great deal of anger leaking out, as well as some shallowness in thinking. If we could figure out a way to create a safe place to express fears and misunderstandings, the discussion about diversity could go much further.

Personal attacks, though, are scary and should be zapped, especially when they start snowballing.

Ricardo Pimentel, editorial page editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

As a target of "uncivil" commentary from time to time, I've realized that they have their uses.

1. It tells me that I've hit some buttons.
2. It tells me that, because there are haters out there, it is all the more important to be a non-hater, and to get your commentary read. Validation, in other words.
3. These are genuine feelings coming from folks who are part of the body politic, like it or not.

Generally, however, the question perhaps supposes that we can get that genie, loose on the Internet for a while now, back into the bottle. There are different rules out there now that we should learn to adapt to, rather than asking whether we can or should tame it, to make it sound like us.

I'm not saying that we should become uncivil in our commentary or news. But I am saying that perhaps editorial speak, as we now know it, will change. We will be edgier, more immediate, shorter. The trick will be to make it remain relevant and fact-based.

Phillip J. Milano, writer, "Dare to Ask" column, and The Florida Times-Union communities editor:

I've always tried to distinguish between "hostility" in online commentary and outright "hate."

Over the last nine years of doing my cross-cultural diversity dialogue project, I've decided to allow "hostile" commentary if it appears that the person making the posting is at least interested in furthering the conversation in some way. Haters, by contrast, just want to post their hateful commentary and get out, with no interest in how people might respond.

I think we have to allow hostile commentary (again, commentary that still may have redeeming value if it furthers a conversation), or we will not be offering an accurate picture of how people really think and feel about certain topics in this country. And to not know how people really feel (even if that commentary is insensitive at times) is dangerous. We can't afford to have only inoffensive commentary posted. We need to know who's out there and what they are thinking.

Eric Deggans, TV/media critic, St. Petersburg Times:

I have struggled with this quite a bit in maintaining my own media blog for my employer, the St. Petersburg Times.

From the beginning, I formatted my blog so that any comment is immediately e-mailed to me. I can usually make a decision on keeping the comment within an hour.

Initially, I avoided deleting comments to preserve the free flow of ideas. But I soon discovered all that did was allow the knuckleheads to dominate the conversation with pointless insults and awfully racist rhetoric. I began to feel it was stupid to allow something on which I work so hard to become a billboard for racist comments about me.

So I set new ground rules, basically saying any racist humor gets deleted. Any personal insults, especially about me, also get deleted. The Times' Web people helped me out by drafting a code of conduct for commenters, which is now posted on the left-hand rail for all our blogs.

Basically my approach is that this is my editorial space. And while I'm willing to let people have their say, even if they don't agree with me, I'm not willing to let them be abusive jerks. And if they have a problem with that, there's 59,999,999 other blogs where they can take their perspective.

Terry Mattingly, co-founder of the GetReligion.org blog:

The key, for me, is that many of our GetReligion.org readers want to argue about what divides them -- religious doctrine -- when the purpose of our site is to focus on a very specific journalistic theme, which is what the MSM (mainstream media) get right and what they get wrong on religion coverage.

Also, so many angry religious believers -- primarily conservative Christians -- sincerely dislike, or even hate, journalism. Now, our site does more than its share of criticizing the press, but we are starting out from a positive position. We believe that journalism will be improved by people who love it, rather than hate it.

I am afraid that all of this has to do with the niche media realities of the World Wide Web. Like old-continent European journalism, it is easier to command a small audience advocating a narrow point of view than it is to do media that tries to cover a wide spectrum of bases.

So what happens when niche partisans read mainstream newspaper online sites? You get busy copy editors, working around the clock trying to maintain sanity and some degree of civility in the comment boxes.

Susan LoTempio, assistant managing editor/readership, The Buffalo (N.Y.) News:

At The Buffalo News, we are still so new in this area of online comments that we haven't even begun to track the issue. Part of the reason is that we don't yet have the software to elicit comments on local news stories and columns.

All reader comments come from our blogs, and we've already started to see hateful comments on the blogs that are personally directed at our writers and people in the community. Our columnist who deals with issues in the local African-American community receives very troubling letters and e-mails, and we are very concerned what will be posted when we open his column to comments. Many of us in the newsroom feel that if comments had to include the writers' names, that would help to control racist and hateful remarks.

By Roy Peter Clark
Senior Scholar and Vice President

Every day from 1960 to 1968, Gene Patterson wrote a signed daily column on the editorial page of the Atlanta Constitution. Many of those 3,000 pieces concerned race. Patterson and his mentor Ralph McGill sought to persuade their white kinfolk that legal segregation of the races was wrong, and that the South, in the name of justice, had to change.

You can imagine the response.

The Klan picketed the newspaper. Lester Maddox, who would become a segregationist governor of Georgia, took out ads to advertise his restaurant and condemn in crude language the mixing of the races. Signed and anonymous letters condemned Patterson and denigrated black citizens in the vilest way. Someone shot Gene's dog, Lizzy. For that day when a violent stranger might visit his office, Gene kept a ball-peen hammer handy in a desk drawer.

More than 40 years have disappeared since then, but not some of the incivility associated with race. So obnoxious were recent comments about presidential candidate Barack Obama, that CBS was moved to shut down a section of comments on its Web site.

The experience of journalists from the civil rights era helps us put "incivility" into some historical context.

Gene remembers that, when it came to letters to the editor, "the comments could be as derogatory of me as they wanted to be." He felt that part of the conversation about race required "strong representation of the other side," which meant that readers could and did advocate the continuing separation of the races, even to the point of making arguments about the inability of black children to succeed in public schools.

But providing opportunities for dissent did not require Patterson to abandon "certain standards of civilization." He felt a profound duty to "protect the commonweal from violence," and to remove from letters hateful and derogatory insults against what then would have been called the Negro race.

"I had control of the editing process," said Patterson, who could hold every letter in his hand and wield his red pencil before publication.

Gene says that he understands that when it comes to electronic comments to news Web sites and blogs, written anonymously and without responsibility, complete control of the editing process may no longer be possible, or in some cases desirable.

"There are cretins out there who go way beyond the pale of decency," Gene said, "and I just don't know what you do about that."

A red pencil and ball-peen hammer no longer seem enough.

By Roy Peter Clark
Senior Scholar and Vice President

If we crave a civil discourse about incivility, we might begin by gazing through the various frames people build to express their opinions on this topic. These frames contain sets of values, which exist in tension if not in conflict. When these values compete, one instinct is to retreat inside one of them. A better move is to work toward a set of standards and practices in which some of these values can co-exist, if not be reconciled.

Frame #1. The Freedom Frame: Those who see the problem through this frame value freedom of expression as a primary value. They sometimes cite the First Amendment, an argument that may confuse the right to speak with the duty to publish. Democracy is messy and impolite, they argue. Over time civility has been used as a weapon of oppression against words or ideas at the margins of acceptability or antagonistic to the status quo. Our ability to tolerate even obnoxious expression is a sign of our strength. While traditional newspapers provided few opportunities for public comment and expression, the Internet has democratized expression as never before. The examples of crude extremism should be interpreted not as a vice of new media, but as a virtue. Obnoxious speech can be tolerated, even if it's not encouraged.

Frame #2. The Responsibility Frame: Those who see through this frame argue that with all freedoms come responsibilities, not just for news organizations, but for any person who chooses a public platform for expression. Responsible restraint includes not publishing certain military secrets, or directions for building bombs, or promoting the abuse of children, or threatening someone's life. In our day, it also includes taking special care with language that insults a person on the basis of race, gender and other familiar categories of identity. Through this frame, words like community, dialogue and conversation are valued -- sometimes at the expense of unfettered speech. The worry is that crude or hateful speech crowds out responsible speech and chases away many who might want to be included. Obnoxious speech, they argue, crowds out reasonable speech.

Frame #3. The Business Frame: Those who see through the business frame invoke a duty to create healthy, profitable news enterprises. They argue that we are in the midst of a technological and media revolution in which news Web sites will soon become the first place most people turn for breaking news. While newspapers experience drops in circulation and advertising revenue, more money is being made on the Web -- but, right now, not enough to offset the losses experienced in traditional media. Who will pay for good journalism? What does a viable new business model look like? What we need, they argue, is more and more business on the Web, more and more eyeballs on the page. On the Internet, readers demand interactivity. Unbridled comment sections are central to the culture of new media. Some controls are necessary and desirable, but current budgets cannot afford the manpower necessary to preview hundreds of comments in advance of publication. Nor do they want to assume the legal responsibilities that come with the decision to preview and edit public commentary.

Frame #4: The Journalism Frame: Those who see through this frame argue that, while journalism changes all the time, some values in the practice of journalism should endure -- even when challenged by social, political and technological shifts. One traditional value requires journalists to check things out before publication. Journalists also value the process of editing, protocols of judgment based on experience and buttressed by sets of standards and practices. To support their arguments, they would cite cases in which people's lives and reputations were damaged by lies, fabrications, misrepresentations, identity piracy or threats online. They would likely argue that -- at least within journalism Web sites -- a culture of civil discourse must be encouraged and enforced, that new-media owners must provide the resources necessary to make this work.

Frame #5: The Self-Policing Frame: Those who see through this frame argue that there is wisdom in the collective, that truth can be achieved over time, and that the best online communities of interest are self-regulating. They cite evolving practices that have helped shape, in a short period of time, the cultures, communities and markets expressed via the Internet. These practices, they argue, help correct the record; hold traditional journalists' feet to the fire; marginalize the worst offenders; give authority to the most reliable commentators; and democratize a process that in the hands of traditional journalists has become something of a self-anointed priesthood.

Those who develop standards for news Web sites will be drawing on all these arguments, no doubt, and many more. On this issue, it may turn out that some yet-to-be identified center will hold -- and not the extremes. Comment without boundaries creates a wasteland in which reason cannot breathe. And comment surrounded by palisades ostracizes points of view all citizens need to face.

On May 14, Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter scholar for journalism values, talked with Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell about her concerns with user commenting on news Web sites.

In Howell's May 6 column, "Online Venom or Vibrant Speech?," she discussed the challenges journalists and newsrooms face as a result of allowing comments on news Web sites.

In this Poynter Podcast, Steele and Howell take a look at the ethical, economic and legal implications of enabling readers to post comments on Web sites; Howell shares her perspectives on user accountability; and they discuss Tom Grubisich's Washington Post article from May 14, "Sunshine for the Virtual Town Hall."

Since 2002, Poynter Online has allowed users to share feedback on stories they read. Bill Mitchell, editor of Poynter Online, answered questions in the user commenting survey on Poynter's approach to commenting. Here are his responses:

How do you allow readers/viewers/listeners to comment on stories?

At the top and bottom of most articles and blog entries on Poynter Online, users are invited to "Add Your Comments on this Article." The major exception: We do not enable feedback to individual items on Romenesko. We did enable them originally, when we introduced feedback capability in November 2002, but users told us they didn't like that approach.

Feedback is handled in two ways on the Romenesko page: (1) Readers send letters to Romenesko and he selects the most interesting to post in the letters section of the page, and (2) readers post to a general feedback area on Romenesko, with their comments appearing in the feedback area of Romenesko as soon as they click the "Submit" button.

How much do you screen their comments before posting them?

With the exception of Romenesko Letters, as described above, Poynter does not screen user comments prior to publishing them on Poynter Online.

How much do you screen their comments after posting them?

Our content management system displays the most recent user comments near the top of our main admin page. We scan that page in search of red flags that might prompt further reading, but we also rely on other users to alert us if they spot a violation of our posting guidelines.

How much do you allow other readers/viewers/listeners to screen and flag comments?

Every page of user feedback includes links enabling users to submit a complaint about what they find on the page -- as well as links to enable users to read our feedback guidelines or add some of their own.

What written guidelines, or as some newsrooms call them "rules of engagement," does your newsroom have governing reader-posted comments?

Our guidelines

How often has your Web site spiked comments? What does it take for a comment to get spiked?

In the four-and-a-half years we've been using our current comment system, I would guess that we've spiked fewer than 25 of the many thousands of comments posted. Anything in violation of the guidelines posted in response to question #3 above, but we bend over backward -- too far, according to some -- to avoid spiking comments.

As of Thursday afternoon, some 62,857 users had registered on Poynter Online since we introduced our existing publishing system in November 2002. Fewer than 10 percent have posted feedback the past four-and-a-half years. Of the 5,399 users who have posted feedback, we have suspended a grand total of three people for repeated violations of our guidelines.

How often, if ever, have you disabled commenting on a story or issue?

With the exception of the way we handle comments on individual Romenesko items, described in response to question #1 above, I don't recall disabling comments on a story or issue.

How valuable would you say it is for a Web site to allow readers/viewers/listeners to comment on stories?

It can be quite valuable. As a reader, I sometimes find it not worth my time to wade through irrelevant and/or raging comments in search of useful material.

Why do you allow readers/viewers/listeners to comment on stories?

As Dan Gillmor and others have pointed out, the audience often knows more about a story than those of us writing or editing them.

What legal guidance/standards are you following in dealing with comments?

Our guidelines reflect the legal as well as ethical standards we strive to live up to on Poynter Online.

How often have you encountered problems with the tone/language of
comments?

Relatively infrequently, but that no doubt reflects my tendency to lean over backward to avoid spiking. See discussion below.

What kind of problems?

Several colleagues at Poynter believe that we should spike many more comments than we do. They argue that comments written in a sarcastic, condescending or overly critical tone -- sometimes all three at once! --don't fit with the kind of collegial environment we strive to create at Poynter, online as well as on campus.

Their perspective is well taken, but I often find it in conflict -- or at least in tension -- with my own point of view that a journalism site such as ours has a special obligation to accommodate opinions that challenge what we publish.

I'm quite willing to spike comments that clearly violate our guidelines, but I've found a fair number of sarcastic, condescending or overly critical comments that really don't violate our guidelines as they currently exist.

An important reality in the world of comments, though, is that it's not just what the editor of the site thinks that matters. What do you think? Should we be spiking more comments than we do?

What interesting methods have you seen other Web sites use for handling
comments from readers/viewers/listeners?

I had not heard of the user-driven system, described in Kelly McBride's piece on the recent case at the Orange County Register, that automatically spikes comments when at least two users have suggested doing so. Pretty interesting. Should we adopt something like that on Poynter Online?

Take the Survey:How does your news organization handle user commenting?

Survey Results: Read news organizations' user agreements

By Ellyn Angelotti
Interactivity Editor

Take the User Commenting Survey and tell us how your news organization regulates user feedback.

RELATED RESOURCES

"Poynter's Take on User Comments" By Bill Mitchell Read News Organizations' User Agreements

This survey is a tool meant to compile information about how news organizations across the world are handling user comments on their Web sites.

This will open a pop-up window with a form. If you have any questions, please contact me.

In a portion of our survey, we posed the following questions:

How much do you screen users' comments before posting them?

How much do you screen their comments after posting them?

How much do you allow other readers/viewers/listeners to screen and flag comments?

I synthesized the anecdotes we received through the survey to a more quantitative format by sorting the results based on two approaches: 1) who screens the comments (no one, users, staff, or users and staff) and 2) when and to what extent the comments are screened (not flagged, edited or spiked at all; flagged, edited or spiked before the comment was posted on the Web site; or flagged, edited or spiked after the comment was posted on the Web site)

I put this information into a spreadsheet and uploaded it to Swivel.com, a really helpful (and free) tool for displaying information from a spreadsheet or database using a variety of tables and graphs. You can also browse through data that other users have posted to the site.

Below are the results from survey so far displayed in a bar graph and a data cloud.

See this same data displayed through a variety of graphs, tables and charts.

Bar Graph: How do news organizations screen user comments?


Data Cloud: How do news organizations screen user comments?
In a data cloud, the size of the text is relative to the number of responses in that category. So, the more responses of a certain type, the bigger the text appears. I find that this format was the best way for me to understand the survey results.


One clear trend has emerged so far: Most news organizations that responded approve comments before posting them online. Several organizations involve users in that monitoring process.

We want to hear from more. Take the user comment survey for yourself.

Take the User Commenting Survey and tell us how your news organization regulates user feedback.

This will open a pop-up window with a form. If you have any questions, please contact Ellyn Angelotti at (727) 456-2375.