Cleveland Newspaper Turns Off Racist Comments

Recently, the Cleveland Plain Dealer announced that it had turned off comments on stories about Tamir Rice because “just about every piece we published about Tamir immediately became a cesspool of hateful, inflammatory or hostile comments.”

Why we turned off comments on Tamir Rice news stories.

Quote:

[W]hy, a lot of you have asked, have we chosen to turn off all comments on stories about Tamir Rice? The simple answer is that we don't fancy our website as a place of hate, and the Tamir Rice story has been a magnet for haters. We tried to maintain the conversation. The Tamir Rice case offers lessons for Greater Cleveland, and hashing out those lessons in an online community forum could be a healthy exercise. A lot of people firmly believe the police broke the law when they shot Tamir, but others feel just as strongly that the shooting was justified. Passions are strong, and because our comments section could provide a place for venting, we allowed comments on Tamir stories for months. We enlisted a small army on our staff to monitor the comments and delete any that violated our standards. The trouble was that we couldn't keep up. Just about every piece we published about Tamir immediately became a cesspool of hateful, inflammatory or hostile comments. Rather than discuss the facts of the case, many commenters debased the conversation with racist invective.

Related:

Newspaper Announces Plans to Reveal Commenters' Real Names Retroactively.

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