When free speech is ugly speech

Posted by editorsblog

Posted: March 27, 2007 - 10:21 am

Hello Pat,

I’m passing on to you the Seattle P-I’s policies on blog posts. I also sent them to Kyle, with whom I’ve shared my opinion on the tenor and content of the posts on his blog (not his, but those who write in). As an ardent free-speech supporter, I believe anyone has a right to say what they want about others but I don’t see that it’s the paper’s job to provide a forum for people to make unsourced and libelous claims under cover of anonymity. Here’s the gist of what I wrote to Kyle last week:

I have these nagging questions about where it all fits in with the journalistic mission and ethic. Are libel laws just suspended for anonymous posters? Are the rules for sourcing totally moot? What’s the public purpose of legitimizing anonymous claims, threats and bullying? I don’t see much evidence of policing or ground rules and some of the statements people make are destructive to other people’s reputations.

Seattle P-I policy on blog posts:

Inappropriate posts include content that is:

Defamatory or libelous
Abusive, harassing, or threatening
Obscene, vulgar, or profane
Racially, ethnically or religiously offensive
Illegal or encourages criminal acts
Known to be inaccurate or contains a false attribution
Could expose the P-I to liability
Infringes copyrights, trademarks, publicity or any other rights of others
Contains a virus
Violates someone’s privacy
Impersonates anyone (actual or fictitious)
Deliberately disrupts the discussion area
Off-topic or spam
Solicits funds, goods or services

I appreciate your blog and the thought you put into what the paper does and why. Thanks.

Rebecca Braun
Editor & Publisher
Alaska Budget Report

Rebecca:

You've read my blog, so you have some idea of my attitude about letting knuckleheads post. I finally got fed up and had a serial idiot poster on Kyle's blog banned from adn.com. He'll be able to come back, under another name, but if he continues to act the same, he'll get banned again.

We are searching for a way for comments to be a constructive part of the site. I am skeptical that it's possible. In general, the choice is binary: either let everything go or turn it all off. Allocating staff time to monitoring/editing/deleting is not a realistic option; I don't value the comments highly enough to divert staff time to enable that process.

In answer to your question, there is no public benefit to the bad posts (except perhaps to show you what's behind the public mask of certain people). I think the public benefit of the thoughtful, well informed posts is self-evident. The problem, as I suggested already, is how to get the latter without the former.

I tend to think the "damaging to reputations" complaint is overblown. I don't think readers take those comments at face value. There may be as much danger of "reputations being polished" beyond what's justified.

I read something today suggesting the conduct of posters would improve if people had to use their real names. Perhaps we should try that, although I'm sure it will raise verification issues, which may or may not be surmountable.

Libel laws are not suspended for posters. Someone who feels libeled is welcome to try to identify the libeler and sue his pants off. The law is such that the newspaper is not complicit in libel as long as we don't start editing what's posted, and thereby assume responsibility for it. Once we do that, we have potential liability, and that's not something we would ever do.

That’s how we get to a choice of everything or nothing.

Two things that drive me crazy are bigotry and stupidity, and in the end, I won't let adn.com become a soapbox from which to spout them.

Pat,

Thanks for the response. I agree with your all-or-nothing notion — you don’t want to be the arbiter of appropriateness for every individual post. I do believe most of the problems would resolve themselves if people had to use their names.

There are the occasional individuals who are apparently unfazed by making their idiocy public, but they are quite rare and, as you note, can be banned. Would it be too difficult to apply the same verification policy for blog posters as you do for letter writers? I don’t see a whole lot of difference — the ADN is providing a public forum for discourse in both cases. I don’t see why the standard should be so much lower in one case.

In Juneau some years ago the Empire established a message line where people could leave an anonymous message up to two minutes long and the messages were published daily in the paper. The messages got so vitriolic and mean-spirited that after about six months the paper changed the policy and required names. The comments quickly tapered off to a trickle, but those that came in were far more thoughtful and respectful.

The notion that someone could “try to identify” the blog poster and sue them for libel doesn’t seem like much protection to me. But libel is just one issue — the bigger issue, as you note, is finding a way to promote thoughtful contributions to the public dialog. I don’t think it’s too much to ask people to use their names, and I think the quality of that dialog would improve.

Rebecca

Rebecca:

Using the letters to the editor verification process for individual blog posts would be prohibitively expensive.