Discretion

Discretion: the quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid causing offense or revealing private information.

Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

I really appreciate being able to stay caught up on the news, current events and emergencies through  social media pages and postings.  I believe that news providers are providing a very valuable service to our community; however I am concerned about giving reader's the ability to comment on such stories.

The primary objective in releasing news onto social media is usually to target an audience that has a higher online presence than perhaps say those who would pick up a newspaper. 

When you pick up a newspaper or magazine, you read an article and if it impacts you, perhaps you clip it and send it to a friend or co-worker. There isn’t the ability to share your comments publically or provide judgments to those involved. The only ways that really allows for a response would be a letter to the editor, or sharing the article directly.

Through the development of social media and the “liking,” “sharing,” and comment ability, there has been a shift in the presenting of news. Now, when a story is released, each reader has the ability to provide their input, comments, judgments, assumptions and criticism for all to see. The problem with this is includes but is not limited to the following things:

•  Very rarely is a commenter directly involved
• Often details are not fully disclosed and the existence of social media sharing alters that, sometimes inadvertently (such as releasing names of victims or people involved)
• Privacy for family members, friends or others impacted is limited by lack of discretion by commenters
• Commenters are free to share their judgments, call names, and walk the line of slandering those involved
• The reputations of those involved (primarily in tragic stories such as child abuse, rape or other criminal acts) are often destroyed before legal action is taken and innocence or guilt is determined.

Is there an easy solution to this problem? I believe there is. While they can’t control what an individual chooses to “share” and provide comments on for their personal page, they are able to disable comments when they share stories that could contain delicate information.  

Disabling comments would allow for the news story to be shared but would limit the reader to strictly reading.  Any insights they then felt the need to share would occur on their private page rather than on the news provider's page.  It eliminates the question of the integrity of the news provider this way. News providers are removing the forum for discussion that more times than not becomes a lynching session.

I do not feel that disabling comments violates freedom of speech, nor would it negatively impact the story shared. I do believe that it would restore the integrity to the story, those involved, and the author by allowing what is shared to simply be enough. I strongly urge news providers to consider the idea of disabling comments for stories of a more delicate nature in the future. Perhaps a base line could be established to determine what stories fall under that umbrella to remove the ability for readers to question their decision. 

If disabling comments is not an option, are there ways to edit, pay closer attention to and monitor conversations occurring. A news platform is not the place to air someone's dirty laundry for all to see and open things up for stone throwing.  I do think that upholding integrity in the news reported includes providing an umbrella of protection, however small it may be, to those written about and this would help provide that.