Field Analysis: Online Forums

As journalists adjust to an online news medium, they face numerous challenges, including how to handle public forums on their Web sites. These public forums consist of comments on articles and sometimes message boards. Everyone quickly realized that the Internet was the new Wild West, says Kevin Kemper, a journalism professor at the University of Arizona. The Internet provides a platform for everyone to voice their opinions and to choose whether to identify themselves.

News organizations face ethical dilemmas because they must decide how to handle comments that may fall in one of many categories: libelous, profane, racist, sexist, obscene and/or insensitive. Many of these Web sites receive anywhere from 100 to 4,000 comments per day, which also creates a problem: How does the news organization go about managing these comments?

The solutions are as varied as the type of comments one might find online. Some journalists suggest completely shutting down forums and comment features, but this takes away from the Web site’s interactivity and page hits (Sands). Closing the public forum also counters the idea that “journalism must provide a forum for public criticism and comment” (Kovach). Some news sites, such as the Arizona Daily Star (azstarnet.com), do not allow comments on selected articles, such as local crime stories or stories of soldiers who have died in the Iraq war (Bolton). The staff decided that comments on such stories were mostly inappropriate.

Other journalists suggest moderating comments, either through pre-screening or post-review. The sheer number of comments, however, could overwhelm a news staff’s resources. Some sites, such as The Spokesman-Review, receive up to 1,000 comments a day. Also, this moderation places journalists in an awkward position: They must decide what comments cross the line, which suggests subjectivity and counters the ideal of objectivity. Comments frequently fall in a gray area, so that even members on a news staff may be divided about whether the comments are inappropriate.

Still, others suggest using technology to help solve the problem. Examples include mandatory user registration (with addresses and phone numbers), filters for profanity, algorithms that allow all users to self-govern the site by rating articles and links for any reader to flag questionable comments (Steele, Outing and commenters on Outing). These all come with drawbacks. Internet users discovered long ago that they could create multiple accounts on any site by using false information and/or multiple e-mail addresses ; filters often block words that are not profane but that have similar constructions ; self-governance raises a question about readers’ motivations; and flagging links requires that the staff have enough resources to address the readers’ concerns.

Finally, some journalists suggest allowing all users, anonymous or identified, to comment as they choose in accordance with the First Amendment right to free speech. However, un-moderated user comments could damage a newspaper’s brand image and result in lawsuits against the newspaper (most notably for libel) (Gahran).

Because journalism is going digital, and viewers favor interactive forums, all news organizations must address this issue. Every newspaper must come up with its own procedure for managing online forums; in the Internet age, forums are here to stay.

References

Bolton, John. Personal interview. March 13, 2009.

Gahran, Amy. SLAPPing Discussion Forums: 1st Amendment Threat?. 2005. 10 April 20
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=82163

Grubisich, Tom. Sunshine for the Virtual Town Hall. 2007. 10 April 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/13/AR2007051301121.html

Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism. New York: Three Rivers, 2001.

Outing, Steve. When Discussions Go Wild. 2006. 10 April 2009
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=96629

Sands, Ken. If News Is a Conversation, Who Monitors the Conversation?. 2004. 10 April 2009
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=56&aid=62714

Steele, Bob. Baggy Pants, Drunken Driving and Day Care: Cincy’s Challenges with User Comments. 2007. 10 April 2009.
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=103&aid=123629