Remember the debate about whether or not anonymous commenters were good or evil? Well, let’s take it up a notch. The Cleveland Plain Dealer — who amusingly just recently told its reporters they needed to engage more in the comments on their stories — had a persistent commenter, who was a bit vocal, and at times mean. After she posted a comment questioning the mental state of a relative of a reporter, the newspaper decided to look into who was behind the comments, and realized that it is a high profile local judge, who has actually been in the news a lot lately. The judge’s daughter tried to claim credit for the posts, but apparently there’s some evidence that suggests the judge made many, if not all, of the comments (it was her email address, and apparently it’s clear that many of the comments came from her work computer). Some of the comments even came on cases she was involved in. Of course, it’s also worth noting that she had threatened a reporter from the Plain Dealer with jailtime if he didn’t reveal his source for a story (and, yes, this is why we need a strong journalism shield law), so the Plain Dealer may be seen as having an axe to grind.
Still this raises a bunch of questions that lots of sites struggle with. We’ve often wondered about it ourselves, as there are times when it’s obvious who a commenter is — and even here on Techdirt we’ve had high level execs pseudononymously comment (while doing little to hide their real identity) — even at times about issues they were involved in. And, to some extent, those situations seem newsworthy — though not everyone would agree. Along those lines, we’ve sometimes pointed out that two commenters may be the same person, though never revealing who they actually are in real life. But, again, does that reach an ethical standard? Of course, a few months ago, there were similar concerns when the online editor at StlToday.com called the boss of a commenter, leading the commenter to resign. But that was purely vindictive, and of no journalistic significance.
It’s easy to just say that no publication should ever reveal such info — but if it has journalistic value, and the commenter has done little to hide their actual identity, it certainly reaches a gray area. I can see the arguments on both sides of this issue. In the end, I don’t think it’s a good idea to “out” commenters’ true identities, but if there is journalistic value in the information, rather than just doing it out of spite or anger, I don’t think it’s as clear cut as some are making it out to be.
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