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March 07, 2007
Washington Post: Harsh Words Die Hard on the Web
Forums, comments present challenges for newspapers, individuals
New services, such as ReputationDefender.com, are springing up online with the mission to find and eliminate false (or sometimes true) character-damaging information online for people. This type of information can appear on message boards and forums and sometimes is posted by people who wish to harm others’ reputation.
The Washington Post reported today about half of hiring officials in the U.S. use the Web to examine job applications, and about one-third of those searches “yielded content used to deny a job,” according to a Ponemon Institute survey. The Ponemon Institute is a group specializing in privacy and security management.
The article strikes a chord with some newspapers that have had challenges in moderating their forums and story commenting features. An October 2006 article in USA Today highlighted some of the legal challenges involving bloggers and comments on their blogs, noting “more than 50 lawsuits stemming from postings on blogs and website message boards have been filed across the nation.” The Media Law Resource Center keeps track of lawsuits against bloggers, and has a list of more than 70 lawsuits on the MLRC Web site.
In general, newspapers with online forums and article-commenting features have disclaimers in their terms of service or policies that the newspaper is not responsible for any comments or material posted by third parties (i.e., site visitors), but the newspapers also reserve the right to monitor, edit, or remove posted content. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 also “provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who publish information provided by others….” (See more on the Communications Decency Act on Wikipedia.)
For example, WashingtonPost.com’s policy states, in part, “Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.” (Emphasis theirs.)
What methods have you found work for your forums and comments? MediaShift's Mark Glaser will have a column on this and more later this month -- and he's looking for contributions. Head over there for more information.
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