We won’t mince words here. We’re leaving because for some time commenters have been posting virulently racist anti-aboriginal comments on our page and tagging photos in a similar way, including our profile photo of the Thompson Citizen building this morning.
It ends here.
READ THE SOURCE HEREThis newspaper is not going to stand by and let anti-aboriginal racists and haters spew their evil on a vehicle we’re facilitating them using.
We can’t control Facebook to any real extent, nor can we control what commenters think and say. Nor should we. But we can control where we have an online presence and where we don’t. Newspapers, needless to say, are about free speech and the exchange of ideas in a democracy, often hotly contested ones, so leaving Facebook is not an easy decision. But it is the right one.
If you want to know where we stand as a newspaper, read our editorial, “Thompson: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’” You can read it online
HEREAnother excerptWhy online commenting on news stories seems so often to bring out the worst in some people is a puzzle that researchers continue to study and those of us in the media never cease to wonder about. Is it the anonymity afforded them by many commenting modules that don’t require real names, but only pseudonyms as usernames the problem? Perhaps. It seems likely much of what is said in online commenting would never be said face-to-face, person-to-person.
If you are interested in a broader discussion on some of these issues, you might check out these links:
“Robert Fisk:
Anonymous comments and why it’s time we all stop drinking this digital poison” , or
Margaret Sullivan:
Seeking a return to civility in online comments , or
Katie Roiphe’s Slate magazine article,
“What’s wrong with angry commenters?”.
