Colorado: No press passes for sites that allow anonymous comments

Denver Post makes you register, that doesn't matter much. Even with anonymous comments, you can still see the IP address of the commenter.

 

I am with this.

It may be a good thing (I don't agree), but letting the source dictate rules about how to run your newspaper is never a good thing.

 

Kudos to CU. Anonymous commenting should be discouraged by any conceivable means.

 

Including telling a business how to run itself, and withholding coverage if it doesn't?

Thanks for helping my crystalize my opinion on this at least. I know how I stand now.

 

Teams/schools have a finite amount of space in press boxes and along press row. This is a good way to keep out the riffraff that should never have left mom's basement to begin with.

 

Once again, this has nothing to do with newspapers. They're banning sites with no print or broadcast component that allow anonymous comments. They are not telling any newspaper, TV or radio station how to run their business. They're merely stating their guidelines as to who they give media credentials and press box seats to, which is their right. It seems like a perfectly reasonable line to draw in an effort to limit press credentials to organizations that practice some form of responsible journalism. If you want to go to a game and blog under some psuedonym, toss out unsubstantiated rumors and have anonymous commenters making snarky remarks, you can still do it, you just have to buy a ticket like anybody else.

 

It seems like a perfectly reasonable line to draw in an effort to restrict discourse and encourage the site owner to only say and allow sugar-coated things.

I don't know why a school or team can't just judge a site by its merits. Why would an anonymous guy who tosses out unsubstantiated rumors be considered at all to be granted access? "You're a douche who doesn't care much for facts" would be reason enough.

This seems like the start of a slippery slope to me.

 

CU was taken to court over press boxy access by some clown with a website several years ago (CU won the case btw) so I would imagine they feel a need to be very specific about who they will and will not grant credentials to.

I don't see a slippery slope here. They are perfectly within their right to lay down specific criteria for granting credentials to their events.

 

The slippery slope begins when you introduce subjective criteria for determining who gets access.

As for "telling a business how to run itself," I don't think that completely applies here. The success of a business is reliant upon multiple factors. What if I started a business doing interviews with J.D. Salinger? If you start a business on a failed premise, your business will fail.

 

I don't perceive this as a slope at all.

I doubt Colorado has any interest in eventually not giving credentials to newspapers. It's trying to keep out the illegitimates, but it can't do that fairly without creating an objective policy. Otherwise, one illegitimate doesn't get in and whines that another one did. This just removes the human element from the decision.

Good call.

 

Here's a deal - news organizations either allow anonymous comments or ditch using unnamed sources for their news articles. It seems highly hypocritical for news orgs than run leaked information that requires readers to "trust them" for the veracity of the info and then not give the same trust to the readers.