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CBC suspends online comments on Indigenous stories

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CBC has temporarily closed comments on stories related to Indigenous issues, citing the number of comments that violate its guidelines against hate speech and personal attacks.

Brodie Fenlon, acting director of digital news, announced Monday that CBC hopes to reopen online comments in January, following a review of how those comments are moderated.

“We believe it’s important to provide the public with a democratic space where they can freely engage and debate the issues of the day,” Fenlon wrote on the broadcaster’s editor’s blog.

He noted that CBC topped one million comments in September and October.

“We’ve seen thoughtful, insightful and moving comments on our pages. We’ve seen ignorant, ill-informed and objectionable comments, as well,” Fenlon wrote.

All of the above is acceptable, he said.

“But as our guidelines make clear, we draw the line on hate speech and personal attacks.”

Articles on Indigenous issues draw a disproportionate number of comments that cross the line, Fenlon wrote.

“Some of the violations are obvious, some not so obvious; some comments are clearly hateful and vitriolic, some are simply ignorant,” he wrote. “And some appear to be hate disguised as ignorance (i.e., racist sentiments expressed in benign language).”

The violations by a “small minority” will not derail the CBC’s work, including a concerted effort the broadcaster has made to connect with Indigenous communities, he said.

“We will reopen comments as soon as possible,” wrote Fenlon, who promised more detailed guidance for the gatekeepers of the comments sections.

Fenlon tells Yahoo Canada News that the decision is not the result of a complaint or a single comment or story. Rather, the broadcaster had noticed an increase in comments and decided to take the action.

He says the review will be conducted by a small group of CBC staff that will include reporters, editors, producers and news management that work both on Indigenous and non-Indigenous stories.

Muting the masses

CBC is not alone in its battle with online trolls, though many media outlets have simply silenced comments altogether.

Popular Science was one of the first to mute the masses, disabling the magazine’s comments section in 2013. The Chicago Sun-Time, Reuters and, for controversial stories, CNN have followed suit.

Already this year, Bloomberg, the Daily Beast and Vice’s Motherboard have done the same. The feminist website Jezebel had to put some filtering in place after the website was inundated with violent rape GIFs from an anonymous troll.

Sun Media newspapers announced in September that the online comments feature would be removed for most of their stories.

That followed on the heels of the National Post’s decision to join the ranks of its Postmedia brethren and put a stop to anonymous comments. Postmedia outlets require commenters to sign up with Facebook and log into their account in order to have their say.

“This system… forces more accountability by connecting online comments back to the individual’s Facebook account,” National Post editor-in-chief Anne Marie Owens wrote in a note to readers.

“We want to be the place to house intelligent, respectful debates on our online forums. With Facebook comments, we believe we can create a more civil place for readers to talk about important issues.”

James Wallace, vice-president of editorial for the Sun Media chain [also owned by Postmedia], lamented the loss.

“However, the increasing use of Sun comment boards for anonymous, negative, even malicious personal attacks, albeit by a minority, has led us to conclude our current commenting system is not serving the interests of the majority of our readers,” he wrote in September.

The outlet is “sorting out” a better way to allow readers to interact, he said.

CBC’s website says it has both internal and third-party contractors overseeing comments, depending on the platform and subject matter.

ICUC, the Winnipeg-based social media management service that moderates much of the online traffic, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The CBC website says more than 80,000 comments are processed every week. With such volume, “our efforts will minimize problematic submissions from appearing but cannot totally eliminate them.”

On average, 85 to 90 per cent of comments submitted are published, it says. On sensitive or controversial topics, though, that average drops to 50 per cent or less.