another call for major media not to provide a platform for trolls

Freedom of speech means that you can’t face judicial punishment for what you say. It doesn’t mean you won’t become a social outcast for saying certain things. Nor should it mean that major media are required to provide a platform for vicious inanity.

I was just reading the CNN account of the Pakistan plane crash in which 121 people were killed. Most of the comments were the usual offensive Muslim-bashing at exactly the wrong time: virgins in paradise and blah blah blah.

I was looking around for how to report a couple of those comments for removal, and found that CNN’s policy is essentially a “we wash our hands of what people say here” dodge. There’s no easy way to flag inappropriate remarks.

In short, any piece of racist filth (or pseudo-racist troublemaker) who shows up on the site is allowed to say whatever they want (which is fine) but on the backs of a media empire with millions of readers (which is not required by democracy at all).

Editors exist for a reason. Democracy means that everyone has the right to speak freely without facing judicial punishment, but doesn’t mean that everyone deserves equal access to international audiences of millions who happened to be there to read the news. I’m really not sure why this problem hasn’t been solved yet. Practically all of these major media comment boards are dominated by idiotic and offensive posts. Just one editor to pick out selected useful posts would be enough, just as with the old “Letters to the Editor” sections of newspapers.