Newspaper watch: To comment, or not to comment

I’m personally on the fence when it comes to newspaper websites allowing comments. I feel that there are a lot of great viewpoints out there in the public sphere that don’t get heard, and newspapers have a duty to seek them out. Comments on stories are an easy way to fulfil that repsonsibility.

On the other hand, comments on the Internet? Have you read any? Yikes.

For a while, I thought that the solution might be to require that commenters use only their real name. Perhaps require that they have a credit card or other ID to sign up. Not to charge, but to verify a real, actual name. Like letters to the editor.

But there’s something to be said for anonymous/pseudonymous comments, too. Sometimes people have valid reasons for not exposing their identity.

On this site, I automatically allow any and all “true” comments (ie. no spam) — so long as you’ve commented once before. Once you’re trusted (and, assuming you use the same nickname and email address) your comment is automatically approved. The volume of comments on this website is low enough that it’s easy to police for any offensive comments. And there haven’t been any yet, anyway.

But for some large newspaper websites, I imagine it’s a full-time job just to moderate comments. And so they delegate the duty to computers and to readers (asking them to “flag” offensive comments, for example). That doesn’t always work, as you will have noticed if you read comment sections on, oh say, the Washington Post.

Now, the Post is feeling some heat. No one’s threatening to sue, that I know of. But the vitriolic comments are starting to scare off potential interviews.

Any first-year reporter knows that lots of people are timid about “being in the paper.” They’re worried that they will be portrayed in a way that they don’t approve of. They’re worried that they’ll be misquoted, or that they’ll be taken out of context, or that the story will attract unwanted attention.

Most reporters know several techniques to soothe these fears. Now, though, sources need to be worried about how anonymous internet commenters will snipe at them. And it’s costing the Washington Post at least one source, according to this column:

He wasn’t happy with the comments that readers posted on washingtonpost.com about the story.

You could hardly blame him …. among the comments were these hard-to-stomach posts:

“What scum….Scam-acne-face-Sutherland and all his little minions, scum….special place in Hell for them,” wrote someone who went by the screen name griffmills.

“They should be hung up by their private parts and shot,” wrote billdinva2.

Sutherland said such comments were “why I was so hesitant in doing an interview” in the first place. “Lesson learned,” he wrote, “I will never allow for another interview.”

Thoughts? I guess you could, uh, comment.