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Dialogue is good; good dialogue is best
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An anniversary is upon us. The Cocklebur Blog turns two years old this week.
I told a group last week that the blog has been around for three years now. It just seems that way. After all, time flies when you’re having, um … fun?
The group that I misinformed was Leadership Anderson’s Class 24, a lively, curious and opinionated congregation that visited the Anderson Independent-Mail as part of Media Day.
We had things to show and tell, but in no time the discussion was “hijacked” (as they say on the blog). These people — some of them Cocklebur participants, many of them Cocklebur spectators — wanted to talk about the blog and other interactive features on IndependentMail.com, including the comments that readers can post at the bottom of stories, columns, editorials, etc.
Many of these leaders questioned why we allow people to post anonymously. They asked us to reconsider that policy. We said we would discuss it.
Before the day was over, “Porter Osborne” had started a thread on the Cocklebur Forum:
Requiring posters to post on this blog under their actual names is being considered by the AIM powers that be. Do any of you bloggers out there have an opionion on this idea?
The “opionions” poured in, and the sentiment was mixed.
As promised, I discussed this subject (as I often do) with the Cocklebur himself: Nick Charalambous, our multimedia director and columnist. We are not inclined to change our policy, but we won’t decide this alone.
Make no mistake: I respect and admire the people who post under their real names. But I understand why others prefer screen names (though multiple identities puzzle me), and I worry that the blogs and comments would shrivel and die if we changed our policy. And that would be a shame, because dialogue is good.
Good dialogue is best. This virtual town square is beautiful to behold when discussions are civil. Free speech is a wonderful right.
But it’s a shame that a handful of chuckleheads can’t control themselves. Personal attacks cross the line of common decency. It pleases us when bloggers and people who post comments on stories scold cyber bullies.
Let us call more attention to a feature on story comments. If readers find a comment offensive, they can click on the words “suggest removal.” This automatically sends an e-mail to our online staff. The Cocklebur home page includes directions on what to do if you see obscene or objectionable posts.
When parents allow a child to invite several friends for a sleepover, mom and dad allow for a certain amount of noise. But as the night gets later and the volume gets greater, a parent usually cracks open a door, sticks a head in and says, “Settle down.”
This editor proverbially is sticking his nose in the blogs and the comment sections and sending the cyber community a polite but firm message: Please behave.
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There are 12 responses to this article.
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I like the sentiment, but you are not our parents. Bloggers are people. I would be happy to post under my real name, but retribution is a forte of some in power. Tammany, Dailey, and Preston all come to mind. You are trying, though. I think you have good intentions, but it’s hard to bite the hand that feeds you; I understand. Do you think that you spend too much time talking about the blogs as opposed to talking about what is contained within? Muckraker doesn’t articulate it well, but he does have a point. Best.
OK, ENOUGH. I have posted this twice today, and twie it has disappeared. Here it is. This is to muckreaker:
Also, if Mr. Preston has done all of these things that I have discovered to be in question, why hasn’t anyone contacted federal authorities? The amount of money changing hands, coupled with the possibility that some of these questionable transactions could involve money crossing state lines, makes this a federal case. If you want to indict a public official, you have to have the justice department on your side. You should call them and ask them why a U.S. attorney hasn’t convened a grand jury. You could also call the FBI and report what you know. There is a Secret Service office (Department of the Treasury) on McDuffie Street. I mean, you need more than the Anderson Independent and a few other detractors to help you. Good luck.
The point...please make your point. No need to continue bickering with the Independent, they will not budge. They are apparently on the payroll.
Editor Kausler,
The day the you require full disclosure of everyone’s identity on your website forums and blogs is the day you will operate to a double standard. Unless, of course, you start disclosing the full identity of your anonymous news sources. In both cases, you would lose something. News reporters have served jail time rather than disclose confidential sources. Confidential news sources and anonymous blog posters both have the ability to render a positive or negative effect on the subject of their writings.
Publishing or applying one’s trade in the public eye under an anonymous name, pen name, stage name, pseudonym, or nom de plume is an American tradition. It is nothing new. (Perhaps those who most object to anonymous publishing are just not well read.)
List of pen names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
List of pseudonyms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
List of stage names
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
Andrew Heenan's Real Names of Famous Folk
http://www.famousfolk.com/
Furthermore, the First Amendment right to free speech that you so cherish and hold dear may never have come to be, were it not for the efforts of those Founding Fathers of the United States of America who published their arguments for ratification of the Constitution, under fake names:
“List of pseudonyms used in the American constitutional debates”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
Of course, the world in which we live might be a much different and better place, and Joseph Stalin might not have occupied the world stage as he did, had he chosen to use his birth name of Ioseb Vissarionovich Jugashvili.
Better to establish consistently applied standards regarding what is not allowable for people to post. In the past, there were more community leaders posting their comments and names with some regularity on the Cocklebur Blog/Forums. Our local leaders seem to do so much less now, probably due to a lack of effective moderation.
Civil discourse must be facilitated.
JK
For the record: It's extremely rare when we base a story on an anonymous source. For good reason: Readers should know who said what.
Not to mention Hamilton and Madison wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym Publius, after the great Roman senator Publius Valerius Publicola—meaning “fiend of the people”. In fact, I can’t think of a time that Alexander Hamilton ever published his real name as the author of any news relevant article that he wrote, though he may have. The point is that he often didn’t.
Having said that, on the other side of the issue lays the argument that people like Patrick Henry, who said, “…give me liberty, or give me death”, believed so vehemently in his cause that there was no time for safety in his words. Henry believed in his cause; this cause of liberty, unto death.
If you are going to require people to post by their actual names, then you are only inviting trouble. The only logical reason to do that would be to allow those who are being attacked (substantively), to plan retribution.
Oh, and Mr. K, it was an anonymous source called ‘deep-throat’ that forced a corrupt president to resign. President Nixon was the first and only president in history to resign his office.
Editor Kausler
For the record: It's also extremely rare when our wives get pregnant; very few times during a lifetime. Even rarer when mine bears triplets. But it does happen.
JK
Of course, but it's an everyday thing for people to post comments on our stories or blog forums anonymously. It is not an everyday thing for the Independent-Mail to attribute information to an anonymous source. I'm guessing that we did so no more than five times in 2007. This so-called "liberal" newspaper is quite conservative in this regard.
But you're reacting as if I'm arguing for changing our blog/comments policy. I am not.
Well put, Mr. Kausler. You make a valid point. You have not said that you are arguing for a change in policy. I think what JK is trying to say is that it is ludicrous that the idea of requiring disclosure of identity on the blog was ever discussed. I think that JK and I both would say that if you are on the side of keeping anonymity intact, then you are doing the right thing—especially because the people posting on this blog do not carry the weight of the Anderson Independent nor do they generally serve as sources for your reporters.
As for the liberal v. conservative aspect of your comment, the paper does tend to lean left. I don’t know that that is necessarily true across the board at the Independent, but the same trend is reflected in the media in general. I don’t know, but it may be time to take that issue off the table, because you are actively engaged with the people in open conversation—if the ideology of your detractors is the right and true way, then it will prevail. Unfortunately, the age of William F. Buckley and John F. Kennedy has come to an end.
Mr. Kausler,
I realize that I have a lot of typos in my writing, but there are some obvious typos in some of the stories printed online. Let’s step it up and proof read these editorials. Since you can’t hear the inflection in my voice through type, I’ll tell you that I say this with all due respect.
Best
Yeah, you too muckraker. Sorry I was so harsh, like I said. What I was saying in my post, though, was that you should eliminate the good ole boys from the equation. Take care of yourself, and good luck in your endeavors. Also, you could start your own forum, association, and collective voice box.
I've decided not to post on the issue anymore. I do not have any hard facts nor do I have any evidence to show that the things that I hear and read about are absolute truth. I don’t live in Anderson anymore, so I guess I would have to agree with the point that I think you are trying to make: I am too far removed from the issue to form adequate judgment. Like I have said, best of luck in your effort.
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