It happens on every news site that allows comments. What the news organization hoped would be a civil conversation about a story winds up devolving into name calling and negativity that have nothing even to do with the story posted. On Wednesday, NPR made the announcement that may upset some of its audience. As of Aug. 23, online comments, a feature of the site since 2008, will be disabled.
This is not a first as NPR ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen points out. Many other news organizations are closing down the comment section under stories, and there are two reasons why. The negativity as mentioned above and the fact that many, more civil conversations, are taking place on social media sites such as Facebook, where the cannot be done anonymously.
And check out these numbers discovered by NPR managing editor for digital news Scott Montgomery. In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. Those comments came from just 19,400 commenters. That’s 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
Read the very long explanation from Jensen about the upcoming change HERE
I’m afraid this isn’t surprising to me. Polite discourse in comments sections, as well as on message boards, has been drowned out by those who don’t bother to fact check before posting* and then attack those who correct them, usually by assigning them to the opposite party or philosophy of the original poster.
When name-calling overwhelms the actual discussion, there are only two choices left: Moderate the discussions and ban the offending poster, or shut down the comments because it isn’t worth the trouble to moderate.
* – I’ll give you an example: Without even looking, I bet someone has already posted somewhere at NPR that their First Amendment rights are being violated by this move. Last time I checked, NPR wasn’t a government entity, so the First doesn’t apply. But try telling the complainers that …