Newspapers need to manage Web comments

If newspapers hope to complete the coming transition from newsprint to the Internet with their credibility and integrity intact, they may want to rethink those often anonymous, sometimes vicious and even racist reader comments that they run on their Web sites but wouldn’t dream of allowing in the real paper.

Almost every daily newspaper I’m aware of now allows readers to comment on their Web sites and to do it without practicing such quaint journalistic customs as identifying the writer or checking his facts.

Papers like The New York Times have the resources and the will to monitor the comments with some care, but others seem to have an anything goes view of reader responses.

The most offensive comments are usually anonymous, but even signed reader responses can and do go over the line, often to the newspaper’s considerable — and richly deserved — embarrassment.

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Recently, The Washington Post found itself in that predicament over a story on people who lose their jobs but pretend they haven’t, even to the extent of getting up every morning and going to “work.â€

“For weeks after he was laid off, Clinton Cole would rise at the usual time, shower, shave, don one of his Jos. A. Bank suits and head out the door ... to a job that no longer existed,†The Post reported.

The account continued in this vein in the printed version of the newspaper, but when the same story ran on washingtonpost.com, it was accompanied by comments, including one from Cole’s wife, who seemed pleased to report he was not laid off, but “fired for poor performance.†Then, to complete the online assault, another comment from a writer identifying herself as Cole’s 13-year-old daughter reported her father had mental problems. It’s a safe bet neither comment would have made it past the person editing letters in the print edition of the Post.

The unemployed subject of the story complained to the newspaper’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, that the reporter who did the story had assured him the paper monitored abusive comments like those of his nearest and dearest.

Alexander, who represents reader concerns, a position that doesn’t exist at most newspapers today, was as upset as the victim. He pointed out that washingtonpost.com guidelines prohibit comments that are defamatory, invade personal privacy or are “intended to intimidate or harass.â€

He also noted federal law makes the commenters, not the paper, liable for what is said, “but,†he added, “what about accuracy and fairness? Is it all right to say someone is mentally ill without proof? What if Cole wasn’t fired?â€

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All good questions that inspired bad answers. Alexander said several readers had flagged the wife’s and daughter’s comments along with others by pushing a “Report Abuse†button but the Web site’s monitors decided they were acceptable.

Then things got really messy. The wife contacted the paper and asked that her comments be taken down because she had acted in anger. But her comments had led to 40 or so others and the managing editor of the Web site decided he didn’t want to remove all those others. “We don’t take down comments just because someone later changes their mind,†said this 21st-century version of a newspaper editor.

The comments were defended by another editor, who said there was no evidence they were false and the wife and daughter had direct knowledge of Cole’s situation. Neither he nor the ombudsman examined the propriety of having a 13-year-old analyze a person’s mental health on a newspaper’s Web site.

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After several hours and more comments, someone finally decided to remove all the comments and determine if Cole had been fired or laid off, a question that might have been resolved in the initial editing process. The no-longer-angry spouse produced a letter to Cole advising him he was being terminated for “unsatisfactory job performance,†which seems to have settled things, but not really, because Cole produced a form letter that authorized him to seek a transfer within the company. At last reports, the editors were deciding if they had enough information to make a correction.

In trying to be more competitive and contemporary, the newspapers have transformed what had been a signed letters to the editor system in print and turned it into an online lynch mob. In doing so, they seem to have severely eroded historic standards of journalistic accuracy and decency, which is no way for them to survive into a new, uncharted era.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.