If you do comment on news stories, do you post anonymously or with a fake name? I sure hope not. If you do, you just went to a big fat ZERO on my coolness scale.
Leonard Pitts Jr., a Miami Herald Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, once wrote that anonymity has made comment streams “havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.”
I’ve seen it first hand… and I know you have too. You read an article and by the time you finish reading the crazy comments from even crazier people, you wonder if they even read the same thing you did. I get the whole free speech thing. I do. But I also believe in taking responsibility for what you say and what you do. When you can blab blab blab about crap (it doesn’t matter if it’s even true or not) and throw in the word “allegedly” every now and again and remain this secret savior of the world (in your own mind of course — because everyone else sees through the smoke), it’s just plain wrong. I love hearing about reputable journalists that don’t like it any more than I do (as opposed to some “news” entities who care nothing about integrity, but only about making more money in whatever way they can).
I read the following in an article written by PR Daily:
After 40 years of writing for the Seattle Times, columnist Steve Kelley said, “The reader comments section, it’s a free-for-all. The level of discourse has become so inane and nasty. And it’s not just at the Times, it’s ESPN, everywhere—people, anonymous people, take shots at the story, writers, each other. Whatever you’ve achieved in that story gets drowned out by this chorus of idiots.”
Think about it… if you have an opinion strong enough that you want the public to know about it, why would you be ashamed to say who you are? Certainly you wouldn’t be embarrassed to tell your family and friends that in reality, all you are is one big baritone in a chorus of idiots.
