This is a big topic and although it's being discussed right now with respect to the Washington Post, it's a lot bigger than the story of a mainstream media publisher censoring one of their blogs.
Here's the 60-second summary:
- Washington Post shows its hipness factor by opening up blogs with comments no less.
- WP readers (and window-shoppers) take issue with remarks made by ombudsman, Debbie H:
But the trigger was an explosion of vicious personal attacks against Deborah Howell, The Post ombudsman, attacking her Jan. 15 column for saying that Mr. Abramoff had made "substantial campaign contributions to both major parties."
- WP yanks all defametory, inflammatory and any other words ending with -tory comments from the site, but fortunately one reader (by Wiki's definition, also an ombudsman), keeps a record of all the posts for public record and service.
- Shallow Hal responds: (dude, this wasn't software related)
Problems With Comment Publishing
Some of the comments posted to this blog's entries aren't appearing on the site. We're working with our blog software vendor to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
The problem may be related to the large number of comments (more than 700 so far) received over the weekend concerning Deborah Howell's Sunday, Jan. 15 column on The Post's coverage of the Jack Abramoff story.
We may also have unintentionally caused or made the problem worse by trying to remove a few comments -- about a dozen -- that failed to make a substantive point and were simply personal attacks on Howell and others.
We apologize for the problem and will post updates here.
Hal Straus
washingtonpost.com Opinions Editor
Here are some of the general issues about this and other instances:
1) Should unmoderated comments be in fact moderatored and ultimately censored?
2) Can we (or shouldn't we) trust an established brand like WAPO to use its discretion when determining what is egregiously and blatently unacceptable?
3) If so, does erroneous suffice as reason enough to pull the plug on a particular comment? What about "personal attacks, profanity and/or hate speech" (to quote Ad Age in their report)
4) In this case, was WAPO justified in their actions (pulling the plug)? Should they be applauded for getting with the program...and by that I mean, opening up themselves and their asset to their audience? In which case, did readers take advantage of the opportunity to participate?
5) From a PR standpoint, was WAPO asleep at the wheel? At what point did they realize that the walls were coming down? From a purely business standpoint, how could they let this happen?
In the past, I have expressed skepticism about the ability for established media brands to "go naked", invite and accept readers as co-authors and contributors. I guess it's one of those cases where you can't be half pregnant....but perhaps there is a middle ground. Surely this case would have been avoided had WAPO utilized a moderated comment approach?
Perhaps, but ultimately even that solution would have backfired. What happened here was a combination of two very volatile ingredients: mixing POLITICS and the ability to be called out, critiqued and held accountable to a questionable/controversial statement.
Final thought: whether you believe comments are required or not...whether you go the moderated route or not...hell, whether you have a blog or not....your readers/consumers are still going to express themselves - good, bad or ugly. So I guess the real issue is which is better...they shit on your doorstep or their own. And if the former, if it still can be cleaned up?
Will WAPO return to comments? Will they give up on blogs entirely? Your feedback and comments are welcome here.
I'm sticking it to the man
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