Online commenting has revolutionized the media. Instead of relying on viewpoints or letters to the editor — eating up editorial time and column inches in the print edition — campus media can encourage reader interaction 24/7.
Some comments are clever. Many are idiotic. Some are just cruel.
Online commenting is a new media innovation that has outpaced the ethical considerations that surround it. I encourage editorial boards to revisit their online policies, and I urge the commenting public to be more thoughtful and judicious in their posts. But I'll write mainly to editorial boards, since they have the strictest control over their ethical standards.
The only Tufts policies I could find were from The Observer and The Daily, which have essentially the same policy, recently changed. The policies allow editors to remove or edit comments that are offensive or slanderous, but comments may remain anonymous and, in practice, they are not subjected to an editing process.
I applaud the efforts of each editorial board to craft some language managing this issue, and they are certainly much better than those of other campus publications that accept online comments and have no published policy for accepting, editing or rejecting them. But I think both policies fall short of the ethical standards espoused by both publications.
According to David McCraw, assistant general counsel to the New York Times, federal law does not hold websites legally responsible for defamatory postings made by readers (although court rulings could limit this). Certainly, someone who is defamed by an anonymous post remains free to sue the poster if he can find out who the poster is. This law protects "thumbs up, thumbs down" policies where websites can flatly reject comments, but it might not protect the website if it significantly edits comments.
But does case law reflect good journalistic ethics? Examples abound from spring 2009 of false reports being spread in Daily online comments, from those about the Tufts Community Union Senate elections for the class of 2012 to the bias incident against the members of the Korean Students Association (KSA). Did the Daily, as a forum for false reporting, neglect its responsibility to inform the campus? A written publication would never accept a letter to the editor from an anonymous writer. Why are online comments any different?
The best feature of online comments is that they promote reader discussion about the news, but since Tufts' media cater to different audiences than The Wall Street Journal and we can expect students to comment differently, perhaps more guidelines need to be in place. Here is a succinct policy from The Christian Science Monitor: "We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate — even pointed disagreement — is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published."
Online commenters should not be able to hide behind their anonymity in order to insult or slander, and people quoted in the article, no matter how public, should be protected from unrestricted bashing from unnamed assailants. Also, comments with slanderous or false information should not be given one minute's attention in the public domain. With this in mind, I propose two additions to campus online commenting policies:
1. Require an e-mail address, to which the submitted comment is sent and confirmed by the user. Since the law lets victims of slander sue their accusers, let the law work and abolish anonymous posts.
2. Do not publish comments immediately. Have them sent to an online editor who then clears them for release.
One of the most interesting uses of online commenting I've seen happened last semester when campus activists, upset with the Daily's delayed coverage of the bias incident against members of the KSA, posted their version of the events on unrelated articles of the Daily's Web site. This presented a dilemma between a community's need to spread and receive information and the Daily's need to vet information to meet its editorial standards.
There needed to be a faster response from campus media to important recent developments, a problem that has been improved by edited blogging features on the Daily and the Roundtable, and hopefully more outlets to come.
I encourage any and all feedback. And don't worry about holding back. I promise I've been called worse.
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Duncan Pickard is a senior majoring in history. He is the Public Editor of the Media Advocacy Board, and his opinions are strictly his own. He can be reached at tufspubliceditor@gmail.com or through his blog at www.tuftsroundtable.org/publiceditor.
*This article was changed from its originally published version on 10/19/09 for reasons of clarity.
