Readers' online postings enliven site, merit caution

I strictly police comments on my web log. Anything hateful I simply delete. It is not a freedom-of-speech issue, they are free to create their own weblog and say whatever they want.

The result has been that many people of gentler, more reasoned voice, have told me they now feel free to comment where in totally unrestricted comment environments they just give up amid the din.

Writers of the crude comments in these forums most certainly lack the courage to speak the same aloud lest they be considered mentally unstable.

That's not the only problem with the filtering.

I used the nickname for the name Richard, but because of its connotation as a slang term for a male body part, it got blipped, leaving blog readers to wonder who I was talking about.

For the record, it was a man named 'Richard Tuck'(you substitute the nickname for 'Richard'). Tuck was a political prankster who took special delight in picking on candidate Richard Nixon.

The problem with delayed posting with manual review is that some columnists simply edit out comments that disagree with their point of view. That's why I stopped reading and replying to Eric Zorn's 'Change of Subject', for example.

Many posters to the Swamp have pointed out that the advisory seems to be followed loosely by the editors,if at all. There are several people who seem to have little to offer beyond insults and namecalling who are allowed free rein there.

I agree entirely. What bothers me the most about many reader comments is the very often complete lack of civility shown by many posters. The Trib is pretty judicious in it's efforts to cull to most offensive, or most irrelevant, comments. Frankly, I think the Trib could do a little more screening - I see far too many posted comments that are rude, mean-spirited, personal attacks - often on other posters. Free speach is one thing - free ranting is quite another.

George, what's your URL?

I would read blogs more often if they weren't so full of idiots just sounding off in as insulting a manner as they can put in print. Oftentimes blogs are full of bloggers sniping at each other with absolutely nothing in their messages that has anything to do with the subject matter of the article. Quite a few bloggers only blog to insult and anger others. They have no desire to communicate or inform. Too bad there's not an equitable and fair way of identifying this type of blogger when they cross a certain line of behavior.

I imagine I'll get slammed for this too...

I think I agree with you, but then again, I might not.

Basically, your position on editing or moderating or censoring is still pretty vague.

Too, you changed horses rather quickly, from standing up for a free and immediate internet comment exchange to throwing your full support behind that little Tribune bot, the one that checks for "hot spots" (but as you noted, with a little help from its online human, finally allowed us to write Ho Ho Ho! rather than *******.)

So I'm still confused as to where you stand, as much as I was before I read what you had to say.

You're not running for any public office, are you, Tim?

I agree with the filtering wholeheartedly. I recall seeing the "N" word on yahoo message sites after any story concerning an African American, and when I complained to Yahoo!, their reply was simply "Don't read it if you don't like it." How inane! and to Richard, I saw a post on one of the sports boards that bleeped out the first name of former Bears coach Richard (you know the nickname) Jauron. That's goofy too.

Freedom of the press means that you can print what you want. The Trib should filter out hate speech.

That said, it would be good to allow comments to appear quickly. Perhaps after a poster has posted 8 "acceptable" comments they get the benefit of the doubt until they sin. This would save review time.

Dave wrote:

George, what's your URL?

I wasn't sure if it was OK to include it in my comment but it's www.decrepitoldfool.com

And yet other comments seem to be deleted without any apparent bad tase teasons. This very afternoon there was an on-line story about the family in the "ghost town" created by a builder who had gone bankrupt. Many of the posts seemed to read something like, Why did the Tribune delete my post? It was not mean or profane, it just was about real estate developers. Two or three posters had similar remarks about being cut without good reason. One poster suggested that the Tribune was afraid of losing revenue from the real estate advertisers. Anybody else see these posts? LF

You forgot to mention another reason the Trib deletes posts, politics. If the Trib doesn't agree with a poster's comments, they are deleted. Foul language, bad taste, meanness, none of those need be present for the Trib to delete opinions contrary to the extreme right wing editorial position of the board.
Henry Hyde's recent death brought out a lot of comments from readers who disagreed with the Trib's hailing him as a man of principle instead of the partisan hypocrite he really was. They were deleted.

Socrates wrote:

You forgot to mention another reason the Trib deletes posts, politics. If the Trib doesn't agree with a poster's comments, they are deleted. Foul language, bad taste, meanness, none of those need be present for the Trib to delete opinions contrary to the extreme right wing editorial position of the board.
Henry Hyde's recent death brought out a lot of comments from readers who disagreed with the Trib's hailing him as a man of principle instead of the partisan hypocrite he really was. They were deleted.

It's also in bad taste, it might be argued, to comment *in an article about his death* that he was a partisan hypocrite.

You got it in here, now, and you weren't censored.

I'd say your timing was wrong.

Just because you have an opinion on something or someone, it doesn't mean you have to voice it immediately, if the time and place is inappropriate.

For the Tribune, it's always been in bad taste to mention that Henry Hyde was no saint in many eyes. When he got a Medal earlier this year, the story in the Trib said that he would be best remembered for his anti-abortion activities, not that he was a leader in an effort to remove a president from office (first line in his obit, of course, was the latter). When the Trib wrote an editorial saying half would love him, half would hate him for what he did in the impeachment fight and in his efforts to criminalize abortion? Not so much--a large majority opposed what he did in both cases. It's hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil regarding Republicans for the Tribune (how much have you read in the Trib about Giuliani's scam covering up city money spent caring for his mistress, for example? Precious little.) Allowing on-line voices is wonderful, as far as it goes. But what's galling is the fact that voices other than occasional Letters to the Editor (columnists, editorials, news stories) critical of the Bush administration, or of conservatives in general, are few and far between in the print edition.

Hahahahahah... Ho Ho Ho ....

Blogs of anytype are a laugh.

What about the blogs that some Chicago Tribune "journalists" have? I understand that blogs are not necessarily the unbiased works of journalistic quality, but isn't journalism supposed to be the facts without any emotion or opinion built in? Some of those blogs are not journalism nor are they correctly structured opinion pieces. They too fall in a gray area...do they get monitored by editors of the Chicago Tribune?

In theory, a newspaper article is supposed to answer the 5 W's: Who, What, When, Where, Why.

And that's it.

There's should be no opinion or bias in a newspaper article. Theoretically.

Opinions are relegated to the (gee what a concept) the Op Ed page.

Few papers if any follow this structure in its print editions, much less the electronic editions.

Everyone's got an opinion, especially newspaper journalists, and everyone thinks their opinion is worth airing--rules be damned.

Ultimately it's less a matter of good newspaper reporting than it is a matter of $$$. Newspapers were once considered the Fourth Estate, whose job it was to keep an eye on the doings of the government (the 3 branches, or 3 Estates) and report on it to the people.

Newspapers have fallen so far away from the status of the Fourth Estate, I'd be embarrassed to call myself a journalist. The Fourth Estate has been in bed with the government for many years now, and it's no position to function as a watch dog over it.

I suppose we could create a Fifth Estate, but to what end?

When money, power, and influence come calling, it, too will fall.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

That's just the way it is...