Comments start and continue discussion on a particular story. Should media organizations and journalists moderate comments on their websites? Does the story content matter?

Photo by: Basheer Tome

One of my journalism professors raised this point:

“If news websites moderate comments then the news organization may bear some of the responsibility for the comment since they chose what gets posted on the website. However, if comments are not moderated on a website then the person who commented is 100 percent responsible.”

What do you think? Should news organizations moderate comments on stories?

  • Patrick Phillips

    In a perfect world, there should be no such thing as anonymous comments, the person who posts the comments would be responsible for that content, and the site owner wouldn’t be responsible for what other people say.

    Since this is not a perfect world, and since the law seems to want to go after the news organization for content someone else leaves, comments shouldn’t be moderated.  A flagging system, wherein other readers can report inappropriate comments that the news organization can then remove, seems to get the news organization off the hook for everything else.  And that may be as good as it gets.

    • http://www.joegullo.net Anonymous

      I 100% agree. I used to moderate comments for the spam, but it’s not worth the risk. How do you feel about requiring people to register before leaving a comment?