Free speech! (Except on the internet)
Newspaper editors love to rail against anonymous postings on the internet.
Here, for example, is what Tim McGuire of Arizona State University said this week: “It’s time for newspapers and every other adult working on the web to realize and admit that we are not fostering democracy when we encourage and enable vicious, anonymous comments.”
It’s a small excerpt from a lengthy article that makes many fine points. You can read it here. But making other good points can’t erase this very bad one.
I truly wish people would be civil on the web, talk radio and everywhere else. But anonymous speech is still speech. It still has value and it still deserves protection.
The argument also is deeply hypocritical coming from newspaper editors, who every day hide behind anonymous editorials and a barrage of anonymous sources. Freedom of the press, A.J. Liebling is said to have written, belongs to those who own one. Editors such as Mr. McGuire want to keep it that way. We’ll decide, they say, who gets to express an opinion and whether or not they can do so anonymously.
Demanding that people identify their opinions publicly is a form of intimidation. Nothing more. It’s why we hold anonymous voting so sacred.
I am glad that the internet allows me to be read the unfiltered hate speech of groups I detest (many of who hide behind anonymity). Those people are acting on their hateful opinions anonymously every time they walk into a voting booth. I like having them out in the open so I can try to understand where the hatred is coming from.
Having run anonymous forums at a newspaper for many years, I definitely did not like the sometimes vicious comments people sometimes posted about me. At the same time, I found it educational to know that things I did or said, however innocently, could be interpreted as being malicious. Had I demanded identification I might have protected myself from these slurs, but I wouldn’t have done anything to prevent people from being angry at me and I wouldn’t have learned anything from their anger.
I wrote a column about these anonymous postings at the time, because the paper’s editor was demanding names be made public. In it, I pointed out that the vast majority of postings were not hateful, and some were very uplifting. In the column, I asked if anyone knew the original author of the Golden Rule. I got dozens of responses, almost every one citing a different source.
Nearly everyone agreed, however, that what people say is more important than who says it.
p.s. Soon after that column, the paper got burned by a frequent letter writer who often espoused what I considered to be offensive ideas. He was published because he didn’t so anonymously. He had a name, which made it OK. Only it turns out the name he was using wasn’t his own. He was in reality the top aide of a Republican legislator. A top aide who was sometimes quoted anonymously in news columns. So much for accountability.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Your paper was foolish for not verifying the identify of its letter writer(s). A simple I.D. check would have fulfilled that purpose.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The editorial assistant did call him more than once, but short of checking drivers licenses there’s not much one can do but trust that people are who they say they are.