The ethics of anonymous commenting challenged

I get a lot of anonymous comments. Some of these anonymous comments are from employees of the Journal Star (I can tell from the IP addresses they use). I can only prefume that sometimes these comments are left be the very reporters whose work I sometimes criticize.

Jeff Jarvis, a leading blogger who focuses on the conflict between the new media and the old, makes a good argument that this behavior this not only unethical, it’s a sign of the self-defeating attitudes that are pervasive in the mainstream media.

This reveals a more fundamental issue in the relationship of mainstream news to blogs and interaction: Journalists have lost the ability to interact as people. Sometimes it’s a matter of alleged journalistic prissiness, a misguided attempt to maintain objectivity or whatever we call it now. Sometimes it’s a matter of corporate policy, rules that try to keep reporters from speaking except when edited. And sometimes it’s a matter of personal weirdness, an inability to face people directly. Another symptom of the disease — which I complain about here — is reporters sending emails to bloggers and demanding that their comments be off-the-record. Reporters, mind you, should be the last people on earth asking to be off the record.

Here in the small pond of Peoria, I can only assume that the press is much more accessible than in New York City of Washington, D.C. And the Journal Star’s Web site lists phone numbers and emaill addresses for its staff. Kudos to the JS for that.

But I still think more can and should be done to create greater intereaction between the local media and the people it covers. Staff blogs and allowing for public commenting on their sites would be start. And Jarvis is right — transparency is the future of journalism. The public wants the media to put its name on what it produces and reveal the potential biases, and let them decide whether to believe what they are reading and hearing.

And I wouldn’t mind seeing reporters being allowed to comment under theri own name on this site, either.

For my part, I’m going to contunie to allow people to post anonymously. I think it adds to the flavor of this blog. And I have no intention of outing these people who think that I don’t who they are.