Courant Responds to Hate Speech Concerns
Posted on Monday, June 30 2008 by Heather Brandon
In response to Mayor Eddie Perez (pictured) and others’ concerns about anonymous commentary online following Hartford Courant articles in forums hosted by Topix.net, including a June 20 rally staged on the Courant’s front steps, publisher Steve Carver stated in an article in yesterday’s paper that steps are being taken to implement a “new action plan” in addition to “existing controls.”
In a press release today (see below), Mayor Perez stated that the new plan is “a very positive step,” adding, “I am very glad the Courant has finally begun to address the community’s concerns.”
Carver wrote in his article that the following four measures will be taken immediately:
The Courant and Topix will assign more staff to delete inappropriate posts;
Topix will set up a system to automatically e-mail the Courant’s Web staff when a comment is flagged for abuse more than once;
We will hold calls weekly with Topix to monitor progress and discuss areas that need more work;
We will have the ability to review all of a user’s posts at one time.
Mayor Perez also said in his statement that he will invite Carver to meet with community leaders to explain the above measures the newspaper has taken, as well as to “discuss how the Courant can work with the community going forward to prevent Courant.com from becoming a platform for hate speech.”
In a separate release on Thursday last week, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Sarah Barr, expressed disappointment at the apparent lack of response from the Courant on this matter, noting that Perez and others had called for the paper to hire a community monitor, among other steps. “It is clear that those who want to divide the community continue to feel comfortable on the Courant’s Web site,” Barr said.
Commenting after a related post on this subject at the Hartford-based blog Undercurrents, reader Gannon questioned the value of having readers register: “Has anyone ever read the Danbury News-Times online? They require registration for blog comments. And their comments are consistently homophobic, racist, anti-immigrant, you name it. Registering provides an extra level of accountability and dialogue, perhaps, but it doesn’t make people more politically correct.” Peter G correctly replied, “If you go to their comments pages all you are required to do is enter your ‘name’—which can be anything under the sun.”
MAYOR CALLS NEW COURANT WEBSITE CONTROLS “POSITIVE STEP”
(June 30, 2008) Hartford Mayor Eddie A. Perez applauds Sunday’s announcement by Hartford Courant [ublisher Steve Carver that the Courant will be implementing new controls on its reader forums to prevent the spread of racist comments and hate speech on the Courant.com website. Mr. Carver announced those controls yesterday in a commentary published in the Sunday Courant. He outlined how the Courant would devote more staff time and resources to monitoring and deleting racist hate speech from the website.
On June 16, Mayor Perez and a number of city officials sent letters to Mr. Carver and Sam Zell, the CEO of the Courant’s parent company Tribune, asking them to take immediate steps to address the offensive comments aimed at minorities that were becoming prevalent in Courant.com online forums. On June 20, representatives from numerous civil rights groups including the NAACP, Love Makes a Family, the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission and the African American Affairs Commission, joined elected officials at a rally outside the Courant’s Broad Street headquarters to demand common sense reforms and controls on the website to prevent the publication of hate speech on the site.
Mayor Perez says, “Sunday’s announcement by Steve Carver and the Hartford Courant is a very positive step. The Courant has admitted in public that it has a problem with racist comments and hate speech being posted on its website and is now committed to taking steps to fix the problem. The reforms are long overdue, but I am glad the Courant has finally begun to address the community’s concerns.”
“The challenges for the Courant going forward is to guarantee that appropriate resources are devoted to monitoring the site and that the steps taken are effective. Additionally, the Courant should keep the community apprised of its progress and solicit feedback on how it can improve its controls on the site,” Mayor Perez added.
Mayor Perez will invite Mr. Carver to a meeting with community leaders to explain the steps the Courant has taken to improve controls on its website and to discuss how the Courant can work with the community going forward to prevent Courant.com from becoming a platform for hate speech.
“I applaud the numerous elected officials and community leaders for speaking out against the hateful comments on the Courant website and I look forward to joining with them to help the Courant build on the positive steps it has taken to reform the Courant.com website,” the Mayor stated.
COURANT SILENT ON COMMUNITY’S CALL FOR WEBSITE REFORMS; WHITE POWER WEBSITES VOICE SUPPORT FOR COURANT
(June 26, 2008) The Tribune Company and the Hartford Courant have refused to take action on community requests to take responsible reforms to its website Courant.com. This lack of action comes six days after community leaders gathered on the steps of the Hartford Courant voicing their concern about needed action to prevent racist comments and hate speech from being posted.
A letter was sent on June 20 to Courant publisher Stephen Carver. It was signed by several community leaders including Scot X. Esdaile of the CT NAACP, State Rep. Kelvin Roldan, Fernando Betancourt, Executive Director of the CT Latino & Puerto Rican Affairs Commission, State Rep. Ken Green, State Sen. John Fonfara, Glenn A. Cassis, Executive Director of the African-American Affairs Commission, Anne Stanback, Executive Director Love Makes a Family, Democratic Registrar of Voters Shirley Surgeon, Sabrina Flintroy of Single Mothers on the Move and City Council members rJo Winch, Veronica Airey-Wilson, Pedro Segarra, Luis Cotto, and Larry Deutsch. The community asked the Courant to apply a number of best practices to its website to prevent racist and hate speech from dominating the paper’s on-line forum. The Courant was specifically asked to:
1. Publicly take responsibility for the racist and hateful comments it has published on Courant.com
2. Require those who post comments to register first
3. Hire a community monitor to guarantee Courant.com does not become a regular venue for hate speech
4. Retain a citizen advisory group to monitor and advise the Courant on how to reduce hate speech
In a related development, a number of racist and anti-Semitic websites have prominently highlighted the Hartford Courant’s position against adopting controls on its website and have asked readers to e-mail Mayor Perez to express their displeasure at this request for website reform at the Courant. Among the sites highlighting the Courant position are newsnet14.com, “a resource for people of European descent around the world” and whitereferenceblogspot.com, a
website covering “issues of interest to the white nationalist community.”
“It is disappointing that the Courant and Tribune Company have not responded in some substantial way to the reasonable requests of the community to implement reforms to prevent racist and hate speech from dominating the reader forums at the Courant.com. It is clear that those who want to divide the community continue to feel comfortable on the Courant’s website.
The Mayor looks forward to the Courant adopting reforms that address the community’s concerns,” said Sarah Barr, spokeswoman for the Mayor.
Tish Grier http://spap-oop.blogspot.com
July 1st, 2008 at 8:51 amIMO, Sara Barr’s a little bit out of line here. I don’t think she fully understands that the Courant’s management probably can’t just jump in and make changes according to the demands of outside groups–no matter how right those demands might be. And, apparently, the Courant’s finally got some help from the middlemen in all this, Topix–and that may be part of the slow response. I wonder if the response would have, or could have been quicker if the boards were hosted by the Courant? That would have required hiring staff that knows about online communities–a cost the Courant probably could not afford (and probably wouldn’t have been budgeted by Tribune.) Glad to see, though, that they will be hiring more staff. Just hope that the staff has proper training, not just thrown on the boards and told “just do it.” That’s not going to help the situation.