College paper editor details sexual assault

The comments are indeed, ugh.

I applaud the woman's bravery, hopes she presses charges, and moreso hopes she goes after the casual sex culture this nation has built up as such a fucking virtue. It's not a virtue, women are often put in positions like this, and the yay! teen sex! portrayals found on TV and in movies directly contributes to what happens out there.

There is a whole generation of men who have been brought up shows like the The Real World, Gossip Girl, Dawson's Creek and the like - where sex is easily set up and enjoyed. When young men believe women are walking vessels in heat - and they're shown those images - constantly - some responsibility has to be put back on the purveyors of these stereotypes and images.

Watch this clip: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1578903&vid=202609

Now...realize that, two hours later, he asks her to sleep in his bed for the night.

This is what's on TV.

It should concern you a lot more than any comment on a news story.

 

that's alright. i believe it went to the supreme court but i couldn't find the case i was thinking of. maybe it simply was the supreme court in the state i lived in before coming back to the PNW.

here's a decision from the california supreme court:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/21/1339257&from=rss

 

Right, I understand the courts consider web sites "neutral conduit" and blogs that republish or link from other sources are protected against libel. Web sites can't be sued, but if an individual posts libelous material on a blog, that individual is open to liability.
There are no cases, as far as I can tell, in which a newspaper web site is held to a different standard than the newspaper print product.

 

wow, bread. weren't we just discussing the comments left on newspaper web sites?

 

Uh, yeah, and my point was that newspapers should be held liable for reader comments as well as the content in the actual newspaper. I was curious if that point had ever been taken to court.

 

"The California Supreme Court has ruled that websites which publish libelous text written by third parties cannot be sued for libel, reports CNN."

 

But that case was in reference to a web site ... not a newspaper that also maintains a web site! Two different things.
A site like deadspin is protected from being sued for libel, but if the NYT ran the same content in its reader comment section, a court could decide it should be held to the same standard as the print content. From everything I've read, including an interview with the NYT legal counsel, it's only a matter of time.

 

for the love of christ.

 

That's obviously going to change. I mean, if newsprint ceases to be a major medium, does the legal concept of libel die with it? The courts obviously are going to have to start holding Web sites to a higher standard on that.

 

The Plain Dealer section was amazing. There's a lot there, but I suggest taking the time to read about that woman's journey.

And to bring it back to the business aspect, they ran a 16-page section with not one ad. How often will we see that again?

It's very well done.

 

From my company's lawyers: We can reject and approve comments, but we can't edit them, as then we take ownership of said comment. Most papers in our company don't moderate comments, which is the preferred practice. They encourage post first, report later, because then every comment was treated equally.

At this time, we moderate before comments go live because we only open up one or two stories for discussion a day, which I prefer. Political topics are the worst, but other ones have value -- stories dealing with traffic, development, consumer-related topics and the like generate some interesting ideas for reporters. At the same time, with only one or two discussions to follow, we can moderate closely.

That might be changing in the coming months, and I'm not looking forward to it. I think it's a much better idea to default stories to no discussion and choose which ones to open up. There's no value whatsoever in opening up a rape story for discussion, and even ones that could generate positive/valuable feedback likely won't. (e.g., a sad story about a war widow followed immediately by "I would so hit that.")