Constant comments
We are covering an immense tragedy today, the death of four young people in a car wreck off of Yadkinville Road. If you go to the bottom of the story, you will find a running dialogue of comments that is startling. Boiled down, it is this: Some writers think the ethnicity of the victims explains the deaths. Others think that is beyond cruel. It is the megaphone and the microphone unleashed among the population.
Our policy on these sorts of comments is to tread lightly. Offensive is a difficult word to describe in a way that garners broad agreement. From time to time, we do remove comments. But generally, we don’t.
I find some of the comments offensive, but there is a conversation that nonetheless is worth having. I’m sure there are folks who think this isn’t really a conversation, but rather various anonymous folks talking and typing past each other. And that’s true to some extent. But the alternative is not to have them at all. And that’s a worse alternative. I’m interested in your thoughts on these online dialogues. They are a staple of online news stories now—everywhere. It’s the media, w/o the filter.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Wow. Some of the comments are outlandish and unbelievable in this day and time. Do newpaper editors consider the business angle in responding to some of these people? What I mean is even though you personally consider some of the comments offensive, calling them that might make one of some customers, or would be customers, angry enough to cancel a subscription.
I too have customers I don’t particularly like but business is business so I bite my tongue and do all I can to retain that business.
I think our response is somewhat different than that. We certainly get our share of conventional complaints that have some component of “Do that and I’ll cancel my subscription.”
If somebody went over the line, I would get the comment pulled. Period. What we’ve been told—and it’s difficult to come around to after a career of essentially deciding what gets into print—is that we need to back off a bit and let things sort themselves out on the Web comments. As with most opinions, there’s a sliding scale, and less black and white and more gray. Where does public policy end and xenophobia begin, for example.
sickening. chalk it up to lou dobbs and his 5-year LSD trip in being an independent (republican). next thing you know they will tax holy water. in conway, sc at our church there would be a dozen or so baptisms a week from hispanics. then our christian coalition-county auditor told a family to go back to mexico.
i’d hate to cover that tragedy. it’s the kind that stays with you a few weeks. oh yeah check out my freelance travel piece in last sunday’s salisbury post with news of the upcoming art show at reynolda. god be with the dell plant.
Ken, I’ve a question for you. In the Journal’s news articles in which Hispanic surnames are mentioned (most of these articles involve crimes), would it be possible for the Journal to tell its readers whether or not the Hispanic person(s) is in the United States legally or illegally? The local Hispanic community leaders have inasmuch admitted that most of the Hispanics in our area are here illegally, and I think the Journal’s readers are predisposed to think that all Hispanics who commit crimes are illegals. In fact, of course, that is not the case. Unfortunately, the legal Hispanics are being painted with the same brush, so to speak, as the illegals. Is it possible for the Journal, in future, to tell its readers the legal status of Hispanics who are mentioned in Journal stories? This involves someone’s legal status, not someone’s “race”. Thanks, Ken.
That’s an interesting question. Quite often, a person’s immigration status isn’t available at the time of arrest. And there has been considerable debate in the law-enforcement community about how to treat that status when investigating crime. But assuming the information is readily available, the question then becomes whether to use it and use it all the time. I think it’s problematic. An example: Let’s say we write about a gentleman named Jose Garcia who is arrested for attempted murder. Let’s say his immigration status isn’t known at the time of arrest. I’m not sure I want to publish a sentence that says “His immigration status wasn’t available.” That seems to be pejorative, and it would require us to write a little update the next day/week/month when that info became available. In addition, a surname is not the only indication of potential immigration problems; I don’t think just using this test on Hispanic surnames would be fair. So the same sort of rule would have to apply to Joe Smith as well. That said, we have published people’s immigration status and we’ll continue to do so on a selected basis. Good question.
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