This post follows on from my commentary about how Andrew Bolt has framed his current ‘dilemma’ about comment moderation.
Andrew Bolt’s explanation of his current ‘dilemma’ is that the inappropriate comments are a product of his site’s promotion of free speech and open debate. I disagree; aside from the obvious failure of moderation practices, my view is that Andrew Bolt has managed his site in a way that allows arguments based on stereotypes, divisiveness and personal attacks to thrive. In that context, objectionable comments of the sort raised in recent days are hardly surprising.
Any web site (or at the very least, any web site on politics and social issues) that allows reader comments is going to face decisions about what is appropriate. And any web site that moderates comments before publication is likely to make some mistakes – as Pure Poison and Crikey have in the past, and as Andrew Bolt has too. When those things happen, the best you can do is address the objectionable comment by removing or editing it and offering apologies to those affected, and then attempting to improve moderation practices so the problem doesn’t happen again.
But Andrew Bolt seems to think that those are the only ways a site author can affect commentary – that there is a direct trade-off between freedom of speech and the risk of objectionable content. I disagree with that view – the site author sets the tone of debate through their own content, and can shape the tone of the debate by engaging with the site’s commenters, reinforcing good commentary and disagreeing with – and, where necessary, reining in – comments that are heading in an inappropriate direction. In short, even setting aside any questions of moderation the site authors can influence the culture of commentary on their blog.
And this is where Bolt fails. His own approach to commentary shows contempt for reasonable debate – and comments deriding the character, personality and even the appearance of people and groups who disagree with conservative positions are published but not denounced as being below the preferred level of debate. Contrary to claims of valuing open debate and disagreement, the publication of respectful disagreement at his site can be patchy – as we and our commenters have documented on this site and its predecessors. The topics and line of debate in his posts commonly focus on defining outgroups – “What is it with the Left and …”, Aboriginal enough or not Aboriginal enough?, Muslims and the problems they bring into this country, etc.
What sort of readers does Andrew expect to attract with that approach? What sort of comments does he think they’ll be inclined to make? And if he doesn’t indicate that he sees limits to what is acceptable debate, why is he surprised when he gets such unacceptable comments? Perhaps asking some of those questions might save him some of the thornier questions about censorship and free speech.
UPDATE: Scott has a piece in today’s Crikey email that expands on a lot of the issues I’ve mentioned here.
21 Comments
Very well put, TZ – my experience commenting at the site is consistent with it.
Clearly, Andrew’s moderation policy is most focussed on protecting himself from the abuse of others and he allows (in my opinion and experience) much latitude in the abuse allowed to be directed at commenters. As there are by far more commenters backing his viewpoint, by nature of the site, the abuse is far more prevalent against those putting a contrary view.
The only solution is to have a zero-tolerance of off-topic posts and/or posts that contain personal attacks on anyone. I suspect that the *real* dilemma is the considerable reduction in comments that would result. i.e. there’s an apparent conflict of interest in that aspect.
Much of Bolt’s postings are not concerned with what is wrong with his opponents’ arguments, but rather what is wrong with his opponents. This is quite personal too. There are any number of names that he can mention on his blog and get a wonderfully Pavlovian response from his fans. This, of course, has the effect of generating an array of knee-jerk responses to any questioning of Bolt’s arguments. An interesting example is his treatment of Waleed Aly who, through selective quoting and clear distortion, Bolt has managed to convince the Boltoids is on a par with Sheik Hillali.
We’ve all laughed/shaken our heads/whatever at his constant “What is it with the left and…?” lines, but if you look at his blog, his obsessions are really just a mirror image of issues the left is concerned with. AGW is the obvious example now, previously refugees was a popular topic. Most of his arguments aren’t positive, ie how conservative policies will make us better off, but rather negative, about how the left will destroy us.
The obvious explanation for this is that he is not a conservative in any real sense of the word, but rather a right wing ideologue mostly concerned with protecting the cherished beliefs of the right by denying any facts or arguments that go against them.
Bolt yesterday quoted from an article printed in the Australian Reach out to the angry white men, noting Julia Gillard’s “more sophisticated and accurate analysis of the Pauline Hanson phenomenon”. He left out this bit though (BTW the article is originally from the US):
“Many who now feel rage do have legitimate reasons for it, even if neither Obama nor big government is the real culprit. September’s unemployment numbers told the story in broad terms: unemployment was 10.3per cent among men 20 and over and 7.8 per cent among women.
“Middle-income men, especially those who are not college graduates, have borne the brunt of economic change bred by both globalisation and technological transformation. Even before the recession, the decline in the number of well-paying jobs in manufacturing hit the incomes of this group hard. The trouble in the construction industry since the downturn began has compounded the problem.”
The right’s genius is to channel people’s legitimate anger into hatred for ‘them’, the people who are allegedly to blame for everything that is wrong. Of course, these days you can’t blame blacks or Jews. You can sort of blame foreigners, if you’re careful. You can blame Muslims (they’re not a race, you know, so it’s not racist). You can certainly blame illegal immigrants, even if you don’t know exactly who they are. And you can, of course, blame teh left.
This is all just the same old identity politics. Culture warriors on the right such as Bolt occasionally just cut out the middle man/woman/identifiable group and go straight to blaming society’s ills on anyone not on their side of the political fence. Which is all how you get the extraordinary argument being run by some US conservatives that to defend liberty only conservatives should be allowed to govern.
There’s a reason the first version of this site was dedicated to Bolt’s blog.
Take this post from lunchtime today: “Check the map. Why must Australia take in these people?”
I’m going to respond with a PP post when I’ve got the figures, but the central thesis of Andy’s post (and map) – the question “why are they coming here (when they could go there)?” is utterly absurd. It assumes those 255 Sri Lankans trying to come here somehow represent the majority of those fleeing that country, as if Australia were the only destination for refugees. It’s total garbage, but his readers lap it up.
Well said Tobias.
Bolt also utilises some of that tortured logic he famously applies to representing AGW graphs:
i don’t think this follows at all. People are more likely to be forgiving of (as andy says) the 4 or 5 out of 300 comments that are offensive if they can see a genuine and consistent history of moderating out the hate posts. As it stands now, Bolt can state all he likes that he makes this effort, but anyone can scroll through his reader comments and see that clearly isn’t the case.
As I see it he has several clear choices:
- lift his game by improving the environment of the blog, removing, commenting to disassociate himself from, and editing hate comments.
- sack the current bunch of moderators who clearly don’t apply the moderation rules consistenly, and employ new ones who recognise offensive material when they see it.
- turn off the comments facility.
And to aboriginals, muslims, the Left I’d also add women: it seems that women commenters with dissenting views from the sheep get very nasty responses from other readers.
I applaud Bolt for opening up the conversation on reader comments and I hope it will lead to a lot more discussion, and some solutions.
But I see more than a little irony in this post. I once pointed out on this blog the disgusting comments I found on a Huffington post story on the death of a Conservative writer. There was little condemnation of those comments, instead the commenters here attacked ME for mentioning it.
As an aside to Confessions, I find it most disconcerting to find the “Left” is worthy of a cap, but “aboriginals” and “muslims” appear not to be. Your point about those groups might be taken seriously with some respect attached.
Andrew Bolt is reaping what he has sown and has the temerity to complain that his hands stink of shit!
Boys and Girls, we’re witnessing the death of Movement Conservatism in the Australian Media!
Finally, we might see some true Conservative intellectuals take up the reigns and provide us with a well reasoned and valid alternative view.
It’ll make a pleasant change from trying to reason with Rednecks and cultural chauvinists.
Cheers
“But I see more than a little irony in this post. I once pointed out on this blog the disgusting comments I found on a Huffington post story on the death of a Conservative writer. There was little condemnation of those comments, instead the commenters here attacked ME for mentioning it.”
The Huffington post is not part of the Australian media and is well beyond our brief. That was pointed out to you at the time.
Tobias
The worrying thing about Andrew’s column today is that he can’t see how he affects the sort of comments published on his site. Todays column is a case in point, look at the calibre of the comments published so far.
The practice of “Dog Whistling” is well know and understood, it’s all about how you frame the words, sometimes Andrew just reproduces something from another publication and leaves it to his acolytes to comment. If you are going to do that then you have to accept the consequences when one of your commenters goes too far and either moderate properly or live with it.
Why is Andrew devoting so much effort to this matter? In the past he would have simply shrugged it off or gone for the jugular.
Pedro
Did you make similar comments when Australian Right wing blogs wrote about the death of Harold Pinter? Or when Catherine Deveny was being attacked?
I’m well aware of that, Jeremy. But in case you hadn’t noticed, the internet transcends borders. Bolt’s blog, as well as this one, attracts comments from outside Australia, and there is a problem dealing with comments on blogs across the entire sphere.
Like I said, if Bolt’s column exposes these problems and opens up discussion on how to deal with the legalities, GOOD!
Although I’ve been an internet junkie for many years I’ve been reluctant to post very much because of the poor quality of so much of the commentary. It’s amazing what somebody will say to someone when they don’t have to face them across a table and look at them while they’re talking. Secondly, few people seem to realize that moderation and gentle under-statement can carry an argument in a way that name-calling and nasty sarcasm can’t. Having said this, I confess to experiencing the temptation to spout off and get angry. It’s just very obvious to me that this behavior is counter-productive and not in the interest of any point I would be trying to make.
“Why is Andrew devoting so much effort to this matter? In the past he would have simply shrugged it off or gone for the jugular.”
Maybe Chairman Rupert is looking at shuffling the deck chairs and Andy is looking like ‘a protests too much’ one (or at best a single digit) trick pony.
“I’m well aware of that, Jeremy. But in case you hadn’t noticed, the internet transcends borders.”
Gee golly gosh Pedro, you’re a font of insight and wisdom.
If only Al Gore was aware of that when he invented the Interwebs!
Andrew Bolt’s “column exposes these problems and opens up discussion” … a top shelf oxymoron.
I think the big so-called ‘MSM’ sites all suffer to a degree from offensive comments. Bolt is just slightly worse because he encourages outrage and groupthink, and is very liberal in his interpretation of ‘free speech’—the man just has no concept of ‘you cannot shout fire in a theatre’, at least when it’s his respectable Silent Majority types screaming about non-existent flames.
But there is a an inherent BS factor with any Newscorp blog comments thread.
I don’t think Tim Dunlop ever tamed the anti-social element in his comments sections, and he most certainly never encouraged cockfuckery.
I have been trying to figure out what Bolt gains by allowing such ignorant and bigoted comments:
-Hits which translate to advertising $
-Political clout
-Media “mover and shaker”
-Large number of hits also translate into keeping his job and elevating him in the workplace society
-Large numbers of comments
-Freedom of speech (?)
I think Andrew inadvertantly gave the answer to the comments problem himself when he was blogging about Kyle Sandilands recently. According to Andrew to be effective in taking someone off the air you must target the advertisers…
“if Bolt’s column exposes these problems and opens up discussion”
He doesn’t open discussion though does he, he or his mods’ (of whom, he is responsible) moderation I believe is completely biased. But hey, I guess you just wouldn’t understand since you’re convinced that Asylum Seekers are illegal!, regardless of the FACT that they are not!
I should spray you all with pig’s blood.
“I have been trying to figure out what Bolt gains by allowing such ignorant and bigoted comments:”
Might I suggest that you don’t really have to figure too hard to find the answer:
Bums on seats.
Funny that since the Hungry Beast Bolt has been on 9, 10 and ABC. So much for the alienated voice in the wilderness.
And as an aside does he have a wardrobe full of taup pants, blue shirts and navy sports jackets?