Media in Trouble: All the news thats UNfit to print!: The Internets

"The information of the people at large can alone make them safe, as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson 1810

Friday, January 20, 2006

The Internets

OK quick one. Basically, the Washington Post started a general blog (besides the others that are already on wapo.com). This one allowed commenting. They hosted their ombudswoman Doborah Howell who said basically that Democrats got Abramoff money. not Indian Tribe money possibly related to Abramoff. No she said and asserted quite a few times, that Dems got Abramoff money. So people started leaving comments. The Editors, after seeing themselves getting lambasted turned off comments (see also Atrios).

Then they update the site and say the following:
We removed hundreds of these posts over the past few days, and it was becoming a significant burden on us to try and keep the comments area free of profanity and name-calling. So we eventually chose to turn off comments until we can come up with a better way to handle situations like this, where we have a significant amount of people who refuse to abide by the rules we set out.


Here is an idear. If in fact people were being profane and immature, do what all other group blogs and comment allowing blogs do... Ban the immature asshats and move on.

I guess thats all a bit too complicated for the Intelligentsia at WaPo.

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