During my City University lecture on Monday I was extolling the joys of participation between journalists and readers in the new digital environment when several hands went up. The students were amazed at my largely benign view of the opportunity the net has provided for people to post comments on newspaper websites.
A couple of them who had worked for the online sections at The Guardian and The Times reported that hundreds of commenters sent in abusive messages that they found revolting. Aside from the vulgar stuff, they also thought many of the contributions wholly inappropriate, offering nothing of value, whether to the paper or to the audience. Many simply abused other commenters, trading increasingly infantile tit-for-tat insults for hours on end.
This took us on to a brief discussion about the problems caused by moderation, balancing the freedom of speech with the necessity to ensure that comments are neither grossly offensive nor, of course, illegal (eg, likely to incite violence, libellous, racist and so on). Those problems are exacerbated by the sheer numbers of comments, the speed with which they are transmitted and the fact that forums are open 24 hours a day.
Now Shane Richmond, communities editor with telegraph.co.uk, has touched on the same problem. He was recently warned about the burden faced by the BBC in moderating millions of comments every day. So, he asks, why moderate at all? First reason: the legal risk of unmoderated comments. He explains: "As a publisher we are legally responsible for what appears on our site. We can argue that we don't read the posts, or that we always remove things when a complaint is made or publish a disclaimer denying responsibility for the content of the posts but, though those may mitigate against damages, we can't dictate our own liability."
But he concedes that "moderation is a burden, and a costly one." Then again, the costs of non moderating could, potentially, be higher still in the case of defamation. He quotes Jeff Jarvis, who has argued: "Libels laws are outmoded and increasingly dangerous, for they threaten to chill and silence the voice of the public."
But he also quotes media lawyer David Price who says: "You are liable for what is being published, so the only responsible thing to do is read the comments before they are published."
My solution: no comments should be published unless the commenter uses his/her own name or - in special circumstances - a pseudonym, having provided the paper with a reason for withholding his/her real moniker (a version of the name-and-address-supplied tradition used in all newspapers' letters pages). In other words, we treat comments just as we do letters to the editor. Now what's wrong with that?
