I’ve had a few rubbish jobs over the years. Bottling lime juice at the Britvic factory, subbing greyhound results late at night after four pints of Ben Truman and fielding calls on the newsdesk from an over-inquisitive proprietor (Murdoch, R.) among them.
But none came close to my self-imposed torture as web-jockey in charge of online comments at the Trinidad Express in the Caribbean.
As editor, I could pick and choose the jobs I wanted to do. I should have picked tea on the lawns of the Governor’s residence or chosen carrying Brian Lara’s clubs at the golf course, but I could see both the potential and the pitfalls in the livewire online comments sections and put myself in charge.
It was – and still is – a great newspaper. Full of the political intrigue, skulduggery, murder and mayhem that sums up Trinidad and Tobago. We sold as many papers as we could economically produce and put up just about everything online in the early hours of the morning.
And then the world began to wake up. First it was the UK and Western Europe, five hours ahead and poised over the ‘comment now’ button as soon as the stories were posted. Then eastern North America – most notably New York and Toronto – followed by the West Coast Trini homes-from-home of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver.
Oh, and of course in between all this, the locals in the Caribbean lucky enough to have scaled the twin peaks of both a computer and an internet connection joined in too.
On an average day, around 2,000 comments were posted. They were mad, sad, bad and a multi-headed beast that pulled me this way and that. As self-appointed moderator and moral and legal guardian, I started to put them into workable categories:
* No, no and thrice no. Defamatory statements like, “I saw that murder and it was Toothless Bob what done it”; lewd comments about the extra-curricular activities of politicians / singers / sportsmen; hard-core swearing; impenetrable language.
* Home thoughts from abroad. Wistful views on why Trinidad was such a great place thirty years ago and why it’s all gone downhill since, written from Boston (Mass) or Boston (Lincs).
* Insight. Some people clearly knew a lot more than the reporters and were prepared to share what they knew.
* Meaningless comment. Blah, blah and more blah.
* Instant condolence book. With so many violent deaths, there was plenty of scope to remember the dearly departed, either fondly or otherwise.
* Tip-offs. The golden nuggets dredged from the bottom of the pan. The ‘Psst, did you know?’ is what every journalist wants.
And so I created and nurtured a digital space for free speech. Provided I wasn’t going to end up in jail or dead in a ditch (both not as unlikely as you might think), I posted the comments. They ebbed and flowed. Some posters complained about other posters and everybody complained about the moderator. It was great fun, ridiculously difficult to keep on top of and impossible to get right.
It took up far too much of my time, didn’t do anything to contribute to the profitability of the business and was generally seen as a drain on resources. But in a place and an age where it was difficult for the ‘ordinary people’ to have a voice it hit the spot.
Fast forward to the United Kingdom in the summer of 2010 and where are we now in the ‘Digital Free Space’?
Closing the doors, that’s where we are.
Few of our national newspapers allow you to comment freely. Most want you to register and others have a little ghetto hidden beneath the weight of their ‘proper journalism’ where the great unwashed get to have their say.
Thank goodness for the regional and local press. Having been round the houses more than once with their digital offering, most newspapers groups have now dumped the ludicrously time-consuming, all-encompassing multi-media approach of adding video and audio and gone back to what they do best – finding and telling stories.
And the comments section is a great tool for helping to do that, providing insight and direction and often just a good old leg-up on a story that’s difficult to pin down.
Social Networking
* Facebook. Most newspapers have jumped on the social networking bandwagon. When not running stories that say ‘Facebook ruined my life’, they’re hyping up their net worth by showing off to their ‘Friends’ and anyone else who can be bothered to look.
All they want is to drive traffic to their branded website or, horror of horrors, get people to go and buy a newspaper. The real value in Facebook and its Friends is as a research tool looking for pictures and comments that can be outrageously stolen and passed off as the newspaper’s own endeavours.
A breaking news story involving anyone under thirty will send reporters scurrying to social media. There’s still an amazing naivety about the reach of these sites as pictures, comments, emails addresses and ‘friends’ are easily accessible much to the outrage of many members who think they’re just in a loop with a few mates.
* Twitter etc. More time-wasting opportunities to show off. I don’t care what you had for breakfast, think about England’s goalkeeper or hope to do tonight. Will tweeting ever help you make money from print or digital publishing? You read it here first: No.
Legally Speaking
As a result of a High Court decision involving publishers Newsquest last year, the law provides a publisher of user generated content in general, and web postings in particular, with a defence to a libel claim provided he:
a. was not the author of the words in question;
b. played no part in the publication process;
c. did not know that its website was publishing defamatory words;
and
d. the publisher acts expeditiously, so that on receipt of a complaint, it removes the offending words from the website forthwith.
Many publishers have adopted a system of post-moderation, where they don’t look at anything in advance, and can therefore satisfy the first three conditions above in a sort of legalistic ‘Wasn’t Me, Guv’ defence.
The key, then, is to ensure anything that is subject to a complaint is taken down as soon as possible. The element still exercising some publishers, who have separated the news and digital functions, is the need to find a swift way of ensuring a complaint that is made to the newspaper quickly finds its way to the digital enforcers.
As Tony Jaffa, from media lawyers Foot Anstey, says: “The uncertain aspect of all this concerns the position where a complaint is made to a paper rather than the digital publisher. As long as someone at the paper passes on the message quickly, there is no problem.
“What is uncertain, however, is the position when there is a delay in the message being passed on. For example, if someone emails a paper on a Saturday evening and digital is not alerted by someone at the paper until Monday morning, has test d. been met? I am not sure that we can confidently say ‘yes’.”
