Laura Janecka was the Visuals Editor for the Spring 2009 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism. If You Don’t Have Something Nice to Say…
...then you can just say it in online comments sections. Laura Janecka and Eve Tobolka look at the benefits and challenges of letting readers and listeners speak their minds
Illustration by: Gavin McCarthy
After a nine-year-old girl died in a house fire on Sandy Bay reserve north of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, cbc.ca was one of the first to report the tragedy. As soon as the story went up, user comments began popping up on the site: “Native people do not have the knowledge to look after a house” and “… the house went up completely in 15 minutes due to the large amount of alcohol in the building.”In a news conference the Southern Chiefs Organization, which represents dozens of bands in Manitoba, publicized its grievances over the offensive comments on cbc.ca. The event was sparked by a complaint the SCO received from a resident of Sandy Bay who discovered allegedly ignorant or hatred-filled comments were going unmonitored.
The organization asked the provincial government to launch an investigation into CBC’s Manitoba website, suggesting charges should be laid against the public broadcaster, which, in some members’ opinions, should be held to a higher standard than other news organizations. Lyndenn Behm, SCO’s communications coordinator, says there’s been no apology from CBC since the posts on February 11. He says Aboriginals, First Nations and the residents of Sandy Bay also deserve an apology.
The response
CBC’s approach to its online comment sections is to provide as open a forum as possible for an exchange of views. But spokesperson Jeff Keay says, “We’re rethinking that now.” He adds that the broadcaster isn’t sure it sees the value in the discussion due to an “excessive degree of intemperate commentary.”
Online news providers are not held to the standards of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), so sites must develop their own guidelines and make individual judgment calls based on the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and libel laws. This can mean a choice between curbing free expression (and losing traffic) or allowing potentially defamatory comments (and being legally vulnerable).
The legal area concerning online user comments isn’t just a “grey area,” says Bert Bruser, media lawyer for the Toronto Star, “it’s a mess.”
Value of user comments to journalism
Mathew Ingram, communities editor for The Globe and Mail, encourages journalists to use and experiment with the comments sections. One of his colleagues who has enhanced her stories this way is Globe reporter Tavia Grant. She has reacted to new information from readers by doing more interviews and then updating her article for a more accurate picture.
Ingram acknowledges that some people use comments sections to vent or ride their hobbyhorse, “but there are people out there who do know something about the story you’re writing about, and who have valuable knowledge, perspective or comments.”
Monitoring online comment sections
CBC outsources the moderation of its comments sections to Manitoba-based ICUC Moderation Services Inc., which deals with the over 200,000 posts made on cbc.ca each month. ICUC says its services work within its mandates of its clients, including trendy companies such as MuchMusic, Coors Light and Calvin Klein, as well as CTV and the Government of Canada.
On the other hand, most of globeandmail.com is semi-moderated, says technology editor MattFrehner. A comment is flagged only if a reader finds it offensive. Flagged comments are reviewed by an editor who either accepts or removes them. Frehner says roughly 85 to 90 percent of stories are semi-moderated, but there are closed stories as well, especially ones dealing with court cases that could be jeopardized by information posted online. The Globe also asks journalists to check for unsuitable posts but moderating 100,000 comments every month is unrealistic. As Frehner says, “You can’t spend your entire day reading comments about the conflict in Israel.”
Despite the dangers, open forums-be they comment sections or live chats-increase traffic. Frehner says that when the Globe hosts an open discussion, with someone such as the political columnist Jeffrey Simpson, there is a huge spike in user participation.
Meanwhile, Neil Sanderson, assistant managing editor of thestar.com, says that his paper’s site receives around 2,000 comments a day and employs five in-house moderators. From a variety of educational programs (none with a background in journalism), moderators are trained to check for 18 different problems, ranging from hate speech to libel. Sanderson also says reader comments are valuable because “from a philosophical point of view, the media depend on freedom of speech. We can’t exist any other way.”
Still evolving
Roger D. McConchie, a B.C. lawyer practicing internet and defamation law, recommends that online news organizations apply the same rules to user comments that they use for daily print retractions. That could mean publishing an apology on the site or on the page where the “hate speech” or libel has been flagged as well as eliminating the offensive comments from the original article.
While Canada’s internet laws have improved in the last 10 years, news organizations still must work on balancing openness with their own regulations. So the struggle to provide forums for lively and insightful discussions without being interrupted by ignorant and unconstructive comments continues. “I would have never imagined five years ago how widespread and serious the problem for individuals who are defamed has become,” says McConchie. “It’s just grown topsy-turvy.”
Share
CBC moderation of reader comments is getting worse as every day goes by. Canadians who pay a billion dollars a year for this organization are getting a poor return on their investment, and while our Charter or Rights allows us the privilege of free speech, and one would think the national broadcaster’s stories would be an opportunity for Canadians to engage in a dialogue, the opportunity has been throttled back to a trickle. How do they do this? (1) by imposing a highly censored filter on anything which challenges the ideas being put forward by the main published story itself. If it is any way critical of content of the CBC story, for example by pointing to elements that have a contentious nature, or by challenging the ‘sources’ of their story, chances are you’ll be filtered out. (2) by slowing the publishing of comments to a point that it takes hours (4,5,6) for comments to even appear. By doing this they deliberately discourage interest and the following of the conversation among Canadians that follows the story. (3) by squeezing the window of opportunity to comment down from days to what appears to be only hours now .. readers have little opportunity to get involved with the ‘small’ window of time that is available to participate. It has perhaps gotten worse since some of the implementation of Harper’s C-51 began to kick in, and so any challenging of the official story (which has been proven so many times to be absolutely false, misleading disinformation and propaganda), any contest to the narrative which is presented by the story, is quickly removed. Mark Twain once said that “If you don’t read the news paper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” The appearance of alternative sources of news has been a major challenge to the MSM, but they have been the cause of their own demise through the telling of their false narratives. Many readers responding on this issue have said that the ‘reader comments’ were the best part of CBC stories, because it was in there that one could read the pulse of the Canadian people. It’s true; the comments have often been the best part of the story, with frequently better crafted, more insightful, intelligent writing. It’s criminal that Canadians are moderated by a company in another part of the world, too (I.C.U.C.) .. this company is utterly failing in it’s responsibility to Canadians ‘and’ the CBC .. their moderation is driving readers away. CBC fails Canadians once again by imposing this draconian control over the publishing of reader comments, and this militant censoring of reader feedback. It’s offensive, and a lot of people are abandoning the broadcaster for this reason alone. I certainly am. Canadians would be far better served if the billion dollars a year that goes into this white elephant were spent on something more worthwhile. Shut CBC down; they are not worth it any more.