What?
See what I did there? You may forget everything I communicate to you in the next few hundred words, but you will probably have that title kicking around in your head for a few days.
Although I personally hope the title will turn out to be false, the shock value behind such a declaration seared it into your mind’s eye. It gets better when you have an exchange of these radical statements, going back and forth. There is nothing like a quaint, ALL-CAPS SCREAMING MATCH to capture one’s Twitter-trained attention span.
On the bottom of nearly every single online article, you can find said screaming matches. On a high profile website, it is par for the course for any standard story to dissolve into a conservative vs. liberal bullfight, complete with “ooo’s” and “ahh’s” from the crowd. These comments range from wise and well versed to unintelligible and downright offensive. Most end up being the latter. Scroll to the bottom of this article on Fox News’ website, written about Michelle Obama’s low profile since the election. For a relatively benign column, the comments that poured on to the site are thick and strong. Most are passionate, many are racist.
News organizations allow these comment sections to run rampant because it increases website traffic which thus increases ad revenue. I’m sure that the publisher of the HPR would be pleased if such a comment war occurred at the bottom of this article.
But I, on the other hand, would not be pleased. And no, it is not because I am sensitive—who doesn’t love some good old-fashioned hate mail? Instead, think of it as an infringement on my opinion.
Journalists, especially columnists, write articles to share an opinion on a given topic. The ultimate goal is not to see one’s own name in print (although sometimes you wonder), it is to generate thoughtful discussion. And thoughtful discussion, through thoughtful comments, would be thoroughly enjoyed by author and audience alike.
Thoughtful comments do not include anything you would be uncomfortable attaching your name, address, and phone number to if you were running for public office. Imagine the author to be a respected player in a face-to-face conversation—how considerate would you be in “real life?” Disagreement outside the realm of the Internet is enjoyed, perhaps encouraged, by any serious columnist. But that disagreement must be tempered—it is socially unacceptable to blatantly state our opinion, without consideration for other human beings (especially when running for political office, where accountability is vital). We must tiptoe with political skill.
When comments fall into the vicious pattern found on a majority of online news outlets, they rip a reader’s perception of the opinion presented. Although you don’t remember the author of the Michelle Obama article, your subconscious impression of his work (and the topic in general) is heavily swayed by the comments you read at the bottom of his page.
That is a simple theory of memory: we remember what we read last, and we remember what is shocking. Both of these occur at the bottom of an online article. Most likely, this distorts our perception in a way the author did not intend.
Before the Internet existed, whatever authors wrote was solely what readers based their opinions on. If they had thoughts, they would put them on paper and send them out, for better or for worse. The anonymity afforded to complainers and bigots makes writing much less attractive these days. No one wants nasty comments attached to their work.
Being a “wet-behind-the-ears” liberal (as I have been called in the commentary of a past article), I’d like to believe that there is no need for a fix here. I have an unshaken faith in education to create meaningful debate, and I have an equally unshaken faith in debate to educate. But the way the online comment space is set up is too open to uneducated thought.
Getting rid of all comments would be a quick fix, but that would hardly help the author’s idealistic goal of starting discussion. Perhaps a small charge to comment would weed out the majority of commentators looking to start a fight (while generating enough income to make the publisher content). There are many possibilities. But individual publications must decide how they want to build their online identity.
That being said, I urge you to spare me the irony of having no comments at the bottom of this page. Please start a discussion. Feel free to disagree. But keep it classy and informed—have some respect and show some propriety for my territory as the primary contributor.
Photo Credit: bigthink.com