CBSNews.com is turning off comment functionality on existing and upcoming stories on presidential candidate Barack Obama. “It’s very simple,” said Mike Sims, director of news and operations for CBSNews.com. “We have our Rules of Engagement. They prohibit personal attacks, especially racist attacks. Stories about Obama have been problematic, and we won’t tolerate it.” While CBSNews.com deletes objectionable comments after they’re posted, Sims said the “volume and persistence” of the racist comments made it difficult to keep up. “We’d like to be able to return to them, and I’m not ruling that out,” said Sims. “But at this point it’s not possible.” (Thanks James for the tip!)
Also, Howard Kurtz on WashingtonPost.com notes that his site is experiencing “a surge in offensive and incendiary comments.” Like CBSNews.com, WashingtonPost.com does not pre-screen comments before posting them — they receive some 2,000 a day and delete offensive comments when they’re alerted to them — but executive editor Jim Brady says he plans to devote more staff to the monitoring process and use new filtering technology. “The medium allows for readers and journalists to engage in conversation, and to say we’re not going to take advantage of that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” he says. “I’d rather figure out a way to do it better than not to do it at all.”
Adds Saundra in comments: “In and era of shrinking resources, what newsroom wants to devote full-time eyeballs to police the nut-jobs that persist in trying to spoil the comments area with offensive posts. I know you guys love the dialogue, but this is a real problem. I would much rather use my limited manpower to uncover real news rather than babysit the comments section of my website.”