The Mysterious East

The Globe and Mail reports this morning that a native group is urging people to make complaints about racist statements in the cbc.ca “comments” section on its website. The Globe story notes: “While the chiefs are targeting CBC, their charges have potentially far-reaching implications. The issue of who is responsible for comments posted on online message boards remains a legal grey area in Canada and affects virtually every media outlet in the country.”

I have already approached the CBC about this issue several times, and continue to be concerned almost every time I look at the comments section and read the latest from the “Lone Ranger” and his anonymous colleagues. When I referred questions to the CBC Ombudsman they were passed on to a manager of “User Generated Content.” Here is the record of my exchanges with CBC managers. At the time, I was expressing concern over comments posted during the investigation of the murder of a St. Thomas University professor. For the record, I think the CBC’s final response below is weak, displays a lack of understanding of defamation law, and fails to address the corporation’s ethical responsibilities. Obviously there are a lot of people who disagree with me. Maybe I am just an old school newspaper guy who believes in the principle that we sign our names to the words we publish.

This is certainly an issue that needs to be explored as the new journalism (whatever that is going to be) moves online.

Vince Carlin
CBC Ombudsman

Dear Mr. Carlin,

I have written to you about this subject before, concerning the practice of allowing people to post non-mediated comments on the cbc.ca website using false names. I received a response from cbc.ca about this, defending the policy. Nonetheless, I think it is a matter for you to investigate from a journalistic standpoint. Example: Today cbc.ca was reporting on the murder of a professor at my university in Fredericton, New Brunswick. For journalistic reasons, the professor’s name had not been included in the story earlier today – as soon as the carefully written story was posted someone named “brunes” added the professor’s name into the comment section. Then someone named “Abomb78″ wrote “It’s mob related”, and that was posted in the comments section. I’m all in favour of a national dialogue and free speech and all that. But this is speculation on a sensitive, legal story, and a personal story, and if a reporter wouldn’t put the information in the story why is it okay for it to be in the comments section? CBC.ca owns those comments, just as if a reporter wrote it into the story. These are not moderated with a journalistic sensibility. These anonymous comments degrade the CBC and its reputation – this is not an isolated case. Please look into this.

Thank you,

Philip

Philip Lee
Associate Professor
Journalism
St. Thomas University

Dear Philip Lee:

I write to acknowledge your e-mail. You raise a very interesting point. I will share your note with both the Moderation Manager, Brenda Szymborski and the Executive Producer of News for CBC.ca, Mary Sheppard and ask them for a co-ordinated reply.

Yours truly,

Vince Carlin
Ombudsman, CBC

Dear Mr. Carlin,

FYI: Through the weekend there has been a stream of speculation,
abusive and defamatory comments on the cbc.ca site regarding the story about the murder of the professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB. Lots of talk about the family history, who did what to who. Speculation that the prof may have done something to deserve the killing and so on. This is not a free speech issue. This is an issue about the integrity of the CBC. Of course Canadians have the right to say all kinds of things. And CBC has a responsibility not to publish this stuff. A newspaper never would. A TV show never would. A radio show wouldn’t let these people on the air – give them free airtime. Why is it different on the web? What about its legal
responsibilities? What if someone is defamed in the comments? Thank you for passing on my previous note.

Best, Philip

Philip Lee
Associate Professor
Journalism
St. Thomas University

Dear Philip Lee:

I write to acknowledge your latest note. I should have been more careful in explaining my role in relation to the “Comments” sections of CBC’s websites.

Because of the volume and nature of what’s come to be called User Generated Content, a couple of senior journalists have been named to look after issues which arise under the recently developed Guidelines for User Generated Content. The Ombudsman’s main responsibility is content generated by CBC journalists, although I maintain a strong interest in how policies derived from CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices are implemented. So, I have shared your note with the Moderation Manager, along with the request that your concerns be addressed.

Yours truly,

Vince Carlin
CBC Ombudsman

Dear Philip Lee,

I am writing to respond to your notes of October 31, 2008 and November 1, 2008 regarding the audience input we receive on CBC.CA.

To recap, in our note to you of October 1, 2008 we addressed the issue of real names vs. nicknames. We allow our users the choice of using nicknames for privacy and security purposes. This is common online, and can be seen on many other sites similar to ours that provide a venue for user input. The difficulty to fully authenticate real names is another aspect of this issue. For robust authentication of an individual’s identity, we would have to resort to a method like a credit card authorization. This is something that would be a significant barrier to participation. Many users would not, or could not, be willing and able to provide us this sensitive information.

Let me now address the two issues illustrated in the example you provided us in your note of October 31.

Your example cited a story we published on the murder of a university professor in Fredericton, New Brunswick. When we originally published the evolving story we did not include the name of the professor. In the comments section, user “brunes” included a name in his post, and user “Abomb78” posted “it’s mob related.” At the time the story was published, both of these claims were speculation on the behalf of the user.

In practice, it is often a difficult line to distinguish opinion from fact; particularly in the realm of user-generated content. Many contributors pose strong arguments, and position their input as factual and true. It is a challenge for our moderation team to always get it right.

In the case of the input by “brunes,” she/he used the name in the context of a question:

Posted by Brunes on 10/31/2008, 12:52 PM EDT
Is this is reference to the death of Professor John McKendy?

The user did not claim to state the identity of the professor, but rather mused about it. Four minutes later, another user responded to “brunes” question, stating that there was nothing official on the identity. Eight minutes after that, another user posted a link to the press release on the St. Thomas University web site. This press release stated the name of the professor. Shortly thereafter we updated this evolving story, and published the name.

We allowed the question by “brunes” to be posted. The name in his post may or may not have been the identity of the deceased, and “brunes” had framed it as such. We continue to publish this user input on the story in question.

On the second issue, user “Abomb78” had speculated the death was “… mob related.” As mentioned in our note to you on October 1st, occasionally inappropriate comments do slip through our moderation system, and generally our users are quick to alert us via the “report abuse” link. This is what happened in this case. Allowing this speculation to be published was our error, and our moderation team promptly removed it.

CBC is pleased to be able to offer this space for active public debate on our web site. Although we do provide this public space and encourage Canadians to use it, we don’t feel we own their discussion. The posts are the opinions of those making them. By and large, the appropriate response to a post should be a post in response; or the use of the “flag abuse” function that is available to all visitors. It is up to the community to use this space as they wish, as long as it conforms to our fairly extensive guidelines.

It may well be that user generated content is an important factor in making news break to the public faster and faster. The gap of time in the example above can be measured in minutes. As the nature of news production and consumption changes, we continue to review and evolve our policies to provide what we feel is the best possible service to our audience.

In your note of November 1, 2008, you claim that there continues to be “…a stream of speculation, abusive and defamatory comments…” on this story. I have reviewed posts on this story. Yes, many of the posts are speculative in this rapidly developing story, but overall the community did provide balance with calls to wait for facts to emerge. Of the inevitable negative comments that we allow as part of free expression, balance was gained in equal measure – if not more so – from the many extremely positive, understanding and supportive messages related to this unfortunate situation. One of these comments I have provided below.

Thanks once again for your feedback.

Regards,

Brenda Szymborski, Moderation Manager