Special report: Local media talk the impact and issue of web, social media comments

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Lessening hate speech, but allowing free speech. Monitoring for bullying and harassment, yet producing news content in a timely manner.

These are issues media outlets deal with every day locally, nationally and internationally. 

In Galesburg, WGIL sat down with our operations director Brian Prescott and Register-Mail Editor Tom Martin to talk about these issues for a special report on online comments and how media outlets work with public feedback. 

In the past decade or so, online commenting has vastly increased the relationship between media and its listeners, viewers or readers. Locally, it has caused both the Galesburg Broadcasting Company and the Register-Mail to cope with the changing times. 

As far as web sites go, Prescott tells WGIL that GBC has never allowed commenting on any of the four station’s sites. 

“Honestly, it was because of what we saw going on at Galesburg.com — The Register-Mail’s website — and the comments to their stories,” Prescott says. “We knew it was going to be a full-time job policing that and we just didn’t care to go there. There was a decision early on about our websites not to do that.”

Prescott says allowing listeners to e-mail, call or comment with their name attached via our Facebook pages provides sufficient means to voice an opinion.

Martin says before web changes were made a couple of years ago, anonymous commenting was allowed, but it was a new medium for many newspapers and many of those comments became “mean spirited.”

“A lot of commenters remained anonymous,” Martin says. “They sort of became notorious for whatever their handle was. They took shots and whenever when we would shut down a thread, if we saw that they were taking shots that was at somebody in the story, it’s the same that we would do now but the big difference is they were anonymous. It did change the decor of what was being discussed and how it was being discussed.” 

This past week, the Quad-City Times announced they would be doing away with anonymous commenting on their web page, largely due to bullying. National Public Radio has taken nearly the same stance for all of their online web portals, though they also cite web commenting as an outdated medium.

Martin says since the R-M’s switch, most comments come on Facebook, which still requires plenty of monitoring. Both Martin and Prescott say allowing communication between media and the consumer is crucial, which is why neither expect comments on that medium to be shut down. 

Neither of our local media sources allows harassing or threatening comments on either a company web or Facebook page.

PART TWO: 

Locally, most news consumers who comment have seemed to make the switch to Facebook to connect.

Both Prescott and Martin have said they see Facebook as a medium that provides a place for lively conversation, though it still creates issues like harassment and bullying–maybe even more so than before.

Martin says that the introduction of Facebook created a whole new kind of platform.

“I think there’s a level of comfort on the Facebook page that didn’t exist when you would speak on somebody’s website,” Martin says. “I think sometimes people feel like they’re speaking in their own room but actually it’s being amplified out to hundreds and maybe thousands of people.”

Martin says though they encourage discussion and value public feedback, ultimately the company owns the brands represented on their sites and can remove comments as they see fit. 

Prescott essentially echoes that sentiment but says the next issue becomes censorship.

“Is it censorship if we don’t allow people to express themselves?” Prescott adds. “I think I used the word ‘policing,’ which sounds really bad. We have to police our social media to make sure comments are within our guidelines, but it has to do with what kind of environment, when our listeners come to our websites or come to our social media pages, what environment do we want them to experience? We don’t want them to experience a hostile one, we don’t want them to experience an environment that they don’t feel comfortable in because a conversation got out of hand. Is it censorship of free speech? I don’t believe so, no.”

As for the future? While some media outlets have resorted to shutting down commenting all together, local companies don’t see that happening anytime soon.

“I’m surprised to see people pulling down commenting at this stage,” Martin says. “It seems so natural now with social media and Facebook that it’s never going to go away. I think any media outlet is healthier with it than they are without it.”

Our thanks to Tom Martin with the Galesburg Register-Mail and Brian Prescott with the Galesburg Broadcasting Company for helping with this report. -The WGIL News Team 

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