The Free Press online offers readers a chance to give their two cents on stories published in The Free Press and there is no shortage of opinion, rancor and vitriol.
Of course, as a community newspaper and arbiter of civil discourse, it's our job to provide guidelines for the discussion. We do that by gatekeeping the comments.
We review each comment that is sent in and posted. We publish some and reject others.
The main reason we reject comments: they make personal attacks on other commentors or people in the community. Our brand is promoting civil discourse and allowing personal attacks does not further that brand.
But it's also just the darn right thing to do. Our parents always taught us not to fight with our siblings or anyone else, and if we did happen to get into a fight, to fight fair.
Fighting with personal attacks, attacking someone's character, intelligence or upbringing, is not fighting fair.
Whether someone is challenging an idea or a person is sometimes a judgment call: If someone says, "Bill, your lack of reasoning just astounds me." Is that an insult, or and observation?
It's a judgment call.
We, absolutely do not, ever, ever, never, never reject a comment because we don't agree with its point of view.
Doesn't happen folks. You can take that to the bank.
It would make no sense for us to do that. Free Press readership, as well as online viewership, is very diverse politically.
We want to welcome ideas of all political stripes. I think we do a good job of that.
We are more selective about allowing comments that involve a crime, especially, if that trial has not yet happened.
Sometimes, we'll get a commentor writing in something like "I'm glad they caught that dirt bag, he ripped me off blind."
This is obviously inflammatory, and we believe is not a good idea to publish while the person has not yet been judged guilty.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment