There is something of a triumphalist tone in Toronto Star public editor Kathy English's column today that anonymous web comments will no longer be printed on the Star's letters page.
I've edited the Letters page at another newspaper and I'm a strong believer in the connection between a newspaper's credibility and the journalistic tradition of fully identifying letter writers. As the free-for-all culture of anonymity that has somehow become the norm online shows us, people can, and do, say anything, when they don't have to take responsibility for what is published in their name.
The letters of those willing to publicly identify themselves tended to be more considered than the comments of those who opine under a pseudonym. No discerning letters editor would ever select for publication some of the comments published recently on the Letters page in Web Forum. For example, this from "gonzo," who weighed in on the U.S. government's bailout plan: "If you think the gov't is going to make a profit off this i would like to smoke some of your weed, man."
Long before the Internet empowered anyone and everyone to muse anonymously with their opinions on anything and everything, newspapers were inviting readers to have their say on the Letters page. But the Letters pages of serious newspapers have always held themselves to a high standard of discourse. The Star verifies the identities of its letter writers and edits letters for accuracy, taste, length, grammar and spelling.
"What is troubling me is that on the same page that has such high standards for the publishing of a letter, the Star allows anyone who bothers to post on its Web Forum to sign their comments any old way at all," David Meyer, of Elora, Ont., wrote in an August email to me. "Placing it on the letters page gives it a legitimacy that it simply does not have, coming from anonymous sources.
"And, for all we, the readers, know, the comments could have been posted by Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Mike Harris, or Osama bin Laden."
Seems there was a mini-rebellion over this issue:
In a letter to the editor published Sept. 29, Toronto reader Robert Fripp wrote this: "Why has the Star cut the Letters page in favour of Web Forum, where correspondents lack the courage to attach their own names? This double standard debases the whole page."
That letter provoked a newsroom petition signed by more than 100 journalists who agreed with the letter writer. Early this month, Star Editor-in-Chief Fred Kuntz, who had initially defended the Web Forum as a means of creating synergy between the newspaper and its website, said he decided to end the feature after "hearing out both sides of the debate, and agreeing with those against."
English closed with this:
Publishing unverified, unedited, near-anonymous Web content in the newspaper was not consistent with that goal and diminished the credibility of the Letters page and the newspaper itself.
I went looking for anything English may have written on the use of anonymous sources in news stories, but I came up empty. :)