FROM THE NEWS DIRECTOR: Why do we remove some comments from our web site?

Commentary from WBIR News Director Bill Shory

At the beginning of this year, we launched a new feature at WBIR.com. Almost every story we publish now includes a section in which viewers can post comments about that story, about us, or even about other comments on that story.

Forums like this have been on the web for quite a while, and they?re becoming more and more common on news sites. The result is that news is becoming less of a one-way delivery of information, and more of a dialogue between news organizations, their users, and other users.

Our comments feature has been a big success. Over the past few months, we?ve seen questions (that we?ve answered online and on-air), outpourings of emotion, and some valuable discourse about issues that are important to our community.

However, we have also seen some things we wish we hadn?t, including unfounded accusations, attacks, and, most disturbingly, some of the darkest hatred imaginable.

We have struggled with these kinds of comments, and how to handle them. We do not apply the same editorial standards to the comments section of our web site as we do to our own stories, nor would it be appropriate for us to do so.

But one thing is clear: we cannot host a forum exclusively for opinions with which we agree. On the other hand, we do not want anyone to think our station endorses some of the extreme viewpoints that are sometimes posted, and we do have the ability to remove individual posts or simply shut down discussion altogether on a particular story.

However, we?ve come to the decision that we will only do that in the most extreme of cases. In order for us to even consider removing a post or an entire discussion thread, it must meet one of the following criteria: · It is vulgar or uses profanity.

· It threatens violence.

· It alleges a specific fact that we know to not be true.

· It makes a serious accusation that cannot be reasonably supported.

· The entire discussion has become abusive or off topic, and no longer offers a productive discussion of the story.

This last point leaves the most room for interpretation. In order to be consistent, there are a very limited number of people in our newsroom who can delete a discussion for that reason. However, that?s exactly the reason that we?ve chosen to eliminate the comments section from most of the stories about the murders of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom.

This is obviously a news story that people want to discuss, and there was some great dialogue in the comments sections we chose to take down. In some ways, these discussions represented exactly the kind of exchanges we hoped would take place when we first launched our comments feature.

However, these discussions also included a great deal of profanity, invective, and what can only be described as hate. Some of the comments that appeared on our site were vile, frightening, and simply disgusting.

I recognize that those same adjectives apply to the crime itself, and that posting a comment could never compare to the taking of two lives. But that isn?t the point. The purpose of the comments section on our site is to facilitate a productive discussion of issues, not to provide a place for people to anonymously spew profanity, accusations, and hatred. That?s why we chose to eliminate the comments from these specific stories.

While we did make that decision in this case, we want our viewers to understand that we will rarely be taking this step. In all but the most extreme cases, the comments section will continue to be a tool that the community can use to exchange its thoughts, even if some of those thoughts are unpleasant.

We will continue to use our air and our web site to report the news in the accurate, fair, and responsible manner that our users expect.

You can contact Bill Shory at bshory@wbir.gannett.com