Plain Dealer: Why we turned off comments on Tamir Rice news stories

[HughBeaumont]

Likely because inviting 1,000 more creative ways to say "I hate (insert racial slur here)s" kinda gets old after a while.

And, unironically, the comments ARE turned on for this article, in case you wanted to see just how many Klansmen and AB members exist here in Northeast Ohio.

So why, a lot of you have asked, have we chosen to turn off all comments on stories about Tamir Rice?

The simple answer is that we don't fancy our website as a place of hate, and the Tamir Rice story has been a magnet for haters.

We tried to maintain the conversation. The Tamir Rice case offers lessons for Greater Cleveland, and hashing out those lessons in an online community forum could be a healthy exercise. A lot of people firmly believe the police broke the law when they shot Tamir, but others feel just as strongly that the shooting was justified. Passions are strong, and because our comments section could provide a place for venting, we allowed comments on Tamir stories for months. We enlisted a small army on our staff to monitor the comments and delete any that violated our standards.

The trouble was that we couldn't keep up. Just about every piece we published about Tamir immediately became a cesspool of hateful, inflammatory or hostile comments. Rather than discuss the facts of the case, many commenters debased the conversation with racist invective. Or they made absurd statements about the clothing and appearance of people involved in the story. Or they attacked each other for having contrasting viewpoints. In many cases, well over half of the comments on Tamir stories broke our rules and had to be deleted.

We ultimately decided that the comments sections of Tamir stories, overrun as they were by wickedness, were not contributing to the needed conversation. In early October, we reluctantly and finally decided to close down the comments on any news story about Tamir.

Or, they persisted with the ridiculous narrative that Tamir pulled his pellet gun on the drive-by shooters with badges (even though the footage clearly proves he didn't).

Either way, a 12 year old is dead and his murderer was a drive-by shooter who happened to be wearing a badge.

[marble falls]

1. The terrorists have won.

[BeanMusical]

2. Great post, HughBeaumont.

[Fuddnik]

3. Not just the Tamir Rice shooting.

As a former Clevelander, I check in on the Plain Dealer at least once a day to check how the old home town is doing.

EVERY comments section is overflowing with the same bunch of ignorant, racist, fascist, dumber than fuck, tea-baggers.

It ain't the way I remember Cleveland.

[HughBeaumont]

8. The fascist part is what scares me the most.

It's almost like they generally fall over themselves to avoid boss/CEO/corporate/Republican blame for America's problems. It's like they identify more with their oppressors than they do with the oppressed.

[bullwinkle428]

4. K&R. Ever notice how much time and effort right-wingers put into declaring

how absolutely NOT RACIST they are?

[Ed Suspicious]

5. While showing exactly the opposite.

[HughBeaumont]

7. OH yes.

And they always make these declarations on progressive message boards and FB pages. For some reason.

[tclambert]

9. It's like when someone says, "No offense, but . . ." and then says something really offensive.

"Hey, I'm not a racist, but let me tell you all the things wrong with black people, Latinos, and the Chinese." (Does that sound like Donald Trump to anyone else?)

[PatrickforO]

12. Yeah, that great American Cliven Bundy.

He did that.

[nxylas]

11. Often followed by "Those People are the real racists"

"Man, those goddamn n****rs bring race into *everything*".

[HughBeaumont]

18. Logically challenged, these people remain . . . .

Of course, there's a great explanation, according to them . . .

"Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white" is a straw man phrase used by white nationalists, white separatists, white supremacists and their ilk. Individuals who make this claim allege that the real bigots are actually the people who claim to be anti-racists, as they have a secret anti-white agenda. This phrase can be found copied and pasted in any comments section of a YouTube video or other web page discussing racial matters.

People who make this argument often cite anti-white comments made by certain alleged anti-racists; amongst their favourite targets (in an example of nutpicking) are the former crank Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev and his colleagues at Race Traitor. This obscure journal (whose correspondents denied the existence of white anti-racists, a denial with which Ignatiev, who is white, fully agreed[2]) called for the concept of a white race to be abolished and printed statements which, when taken out of context, appear to be calling for the literal extermination of white people ("The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race&quot . As an aside, it is worth noting that this unorthodox point of view is not confined to the left: John Lovejoy, an ethnic nationalist from England, objects strongly to being called "white" and argues that there are "a good many objective reasons why the White terminology must not be allowed."[3]

The argument that "anti-racist is a code word for anti-white" falls to pieces when one considers the existence of individuals and groups who identify themselves as anti-racist and yet have opposed anti-white racism for decades. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, has a whole section on its site dedicated to documenting black racists.[4] If it is true that "anti-racist is a code word for anti-white," then the SPLC must not be an anti-racist organisation.

[MisterP]

19. actually, no, but that's because I can read their code! XD

[randome]

6. IOW, it was like DU during a Presidential campaign.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]

[yuiyoshida]

10. Racists don't hide it any more and feel safe on the internet

Hell, Even Rush Limbaugh feels safe saying this kinda crap:

[Number23]

20. Exactly. It's not just Tamir Rice stories. It's most stories about minorities

but stories about black people and Middle Easterners really draw the racists the fastest.

It doesn't matter how innocent the victim or depraved the murderer. If the victim is black, every story about it online will IMMEDIATELY be flooded with racist crap that basically says "s/he got what was coming to them."

[allan01]

13. good for the plains dealer

Last edited Tue Dec 1, 2015, 12:06 PM - Edit history (2)

and now with trump, they are comeing out into the open. the plains dealer took back its website from the india david india oscar tango sierra, along with the alpha hotels.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. This is a trend with newspaper websites.

My local Daily Blab had to do the same with it's website because of the hate mongers who showed up every day looking for news stories they saw as begging their input. I'm hardly naive, but some of the comments left me with mouth agape in shock that those were my community neighbors, or indeed people who walked the same streets with decent people.

First they tried ending anonymous entries, but even that failed to end the vileness of comments.

[First Speaker]

15. I like the fact that they used the word "wickedness"...

...it's an old-fashioned word for these 21st century days--but utterly appropriate. Sheer, racist garbage, egged on by the Right. My mother and grandmother--both old-fashioned Yankee ladies--knew wickedness when they saw it, and wouldn't have hesitated to ue the word...

[d_legendary1]

16. Dehumanizing a child

for the sake of bigotry. Sick.

[HughBeaumont]

17. They don't care.

To Northeast Ohio's hate cult, it's all about being better than someone else. It's what they've been taught since they could turn on a TV.

These are the most un-Christian people on the face of the Earth.

[rbrnmw]

21. DAMN THE RACISTS

That child was murdered by a THUG with a badge and a gun .