April 12, 2010: The Immediate Past Chair of PRSA (Public Relations Society of America), Mike Cherensen, sent out a Tweet this morning about an article titled “News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments” (http://amplify.com/u/4gkl ). The article originally appeared in The New York Times, and talks about various news sites, including the Huffington Post, The Washington Post, and the venerable New York Times itself, gradually moving toward requiring the real identities of people posting comments on their sites – although that information would not show up on the site itself.
I can only applaud this move, for reasons almost too numerous to mention. First is a snippet from the same article: “The Plain Dealer of Cleveland recently discovered that anonymous comments on its site, disparaging a local lawyer, were made using the e-mail address of a judge who was presiding over some of that lawyer’s cases.” There have been numerous cases of people criticizing competitive businesses hiding behind the false cloak of anonymity that the Internet so often provides. Case in point: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey “wrote anonymous online attacks against a smaller rival and questioned why anyone would buy its stock, before Whole Foods announced an offer to buy the other company this year” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19718742/ ). So there’s that troubling ethics question.
But there is another reason that goes even deeper. Being allowed to post anonymously online further coarsens what public discourse is left in our social and political lives. Anonymity brings out the worst in people; it allows them to spew vitriol, hatred, racism, prejudice and plain lies without fear of being ostracized or facing any kind legal consequence (think libel and slander). When added to the fact that we can insulate ourselves online, receiving only that information and that news which agrees with our own personal opinions, we – as a society – are in trouble. We end up with citizens who are uninformed or ill-informed; who see no reason to consider an opposing viewpoint; and who feel free to contribute to the anger, hatred and lies already out there.
Kudos to the news outlets starting to address this problem.
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