Last week, Web site comments came to the forefront of news.
Virginia Tech’s Commission on Student Affairs decided that anonymous Web comments should not be allowed because they are harmful to the community. They threatenedto cut funding and advertising for the college paper, The Collegiate Times, if they did not comply with their decision.
I understand the concern of their students and faculty. The comment section of most news media cites is ugly. Anonymity allows people to say whatever they want, and hurt whoever they want, without being held accountable for their actions.
I would like to assume that people are responsible enough to be able to handle the freedom of anonymity, but the reality is that people aren’t. Sometimes, what people say about each other and articles is a borderline hate crime.
Here is where college newspapers run into a dilemma. Monitoring a Web site for comments brings up several issues.
• Resources: Reading and monitoring comments is a full-time job by itself. Oftentimes, college papers don’t have the money to hire someone else, and the current staff don’t have the time to add it to their job description.
• What is the line between insensitive comments, offensive comments and a hate crime? People can be offended by almost anything.
• Freedom of speech: By removing someone’s comment from the Web, is that censorship? Have we violated First Amendment rights? Normally I’d argue that people should be allowed to say whatever they want and be prepared to face the consequences of what they say. However, anonymity creates a strange conundrum. People don’t have to suffer the consequences for what they say anymore.
• Is it in our best interest to pull anonymous comments from the Web? It isn’t. One of the beautiful things about the Web is that it is all-inclusive. The stories and their comments section create a network of people who can talk to each other. It also allows for the audience to tell newspapers what they want. On a sad note, people also like to read the horrible crap people spew in the comments section. I’m guilty of it as well.
The Lantern does have a policy regarding comments. Our multimedia editors keep eyes and ears open so, if they see a terrible comment or someone complains, we can decide if the comment is bad enough to remove. This happens very rarely.
We also hold our commenters accountable, to a certain extent. To comment on a story, the reader must register with www.thelantern.com. So, even though they appear as anonymous to everyone else, we can look up who they are if we want to.
For example, last year a commenter issued a death threat anonymously on thelantern.com. We found out who he was and he was by tracing the IP address and he was arrested by police.
The Collegiate Times has a similar policy in regards to their paper. They managed to argue their way out of a serious situation. Citing breach of contract and the First Amendment, The Collegiate Times escaped a terrible fate. They threatened to pursue legal action if Virginia Tech continued to threaten them. Without the $70,000 and advertising from the university, the paper could have gone under.
This is a significant victory for proponents of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. However, it also brings awareness to the anomaly that is the anonymous comment. How can we hold up the ideals of freedom, while trying to make people responsible for their words?
