Friend of Media Nation Rory O’Connor will appear on “Greater Boston” this evening to talk with Emily Rooney about the 30th-anniversary edition of his book “Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology from the Manhattan Project to Fukushima.”
As you can tell from the title, the book has been revised and updated. Co-written by O’Connor, Stephen Hilgartner and Richard C. Bell, it’s being published as an e-book by Sierra Club Books. You can find out more here.
The program begins at 7 p.m. on WGBH-TV (Channel 2).
It should be interesting to see how this plays out. Last night, in a Fourth District congressional debate on “Greater Boston” (WGBH-TV, Channel 2), host Emily Rooney asked Republican candidate Sean Bielat about Social Security. Bielat happily dove in, responding that not only does he want to see the program partially privatized, but that he could support raising the retirement age as high as 72.
See for yourself — if you don’t want to watch the entire debate, scroll ahead to 20:30.
Have we reached the final days for anonymous news-site commenters? Probably not — that’s more hope than reality. But there’s no doubt the tide is shifting away from the anonymous and pseudonymous insults, libel and hate speech that comprise the majority of comments at news sites.
This past Sunday, the Boston Globe Magazine posted a feature by Neil Swidey on the anonymous commenters who waste electrons on the Globe’s website, Boston.com. Except that Swidey didn’t quite succeed. The truly anonymous whackos with whom he hoped to connect refused to crawl out from under their rocks. Instead, he ended up with a highly entertaining profile of two men who didn’t mind revealing their identities and to a female Red Sox fan who all but identified herself. Swidey writes of his quest to interview the worst of the worst:
[H]ere are the people I didn’t hear back from: the screamers, troublemakers, and trolls (Internet slang for people behind inflammatory posts). Not a single one. The loudest, most aggressive voices grew mum when asked to explain themselves, to engage in an actual discussion. The trolls appear to prize their anonymity more than anyone else.
The story is accompanied by a video starring the two men. Also, last night Swidey talked about the story with “Greater Boston” host Emily Rooney on WGBH-TV (Channel 2). I couldn’t find a direct link, but you’ll find it easily enough if you click here or on the image above.
For much of the year, the news business has been growing increasingly uneasy over anonymous comments. Swidey himself discusses some of the problems — legal challenges that could force news organizations to help potential libel plaintiffs expose commenters they want to sue, and the bizarre situation at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which outed a judge who had apparently been commenting on her own cases under a pseudonym. (For what it’s worth, Media Nation started requiring real names earlier this year.)
As Rooney points out in her interview with Swidey, just yesterday the Buffalo News announced that it would soon banish anonymous comments. And American Journalism Review editor Rem Rieder has called for an end to anonymity, pointing out that the same newspapers that allow them customarily ban anonymous letters to the editor and do not allow unnamed sources to level personal attacks. Rieder writes:
Comments sections are often packed with profanity and vicious personal attacks. The opportunity to launch brutal assaults from the safety of a computer without attaching a name does wonders for the bravery levels of the angry.
One alternative, which I’ve mentioned before, is to use Facebook as a commenting system. Nearly everyone on Facebook uses his or her real name, usually accompanied by a photo. The Globe itself is among newspapers that posts links to some of its stories on Facebook, where you will find a far more civil conversation than what’s on Boston.com.
Anonymous commenting is an idea whose time has come and gone. Whatever hopes early Internet visionaries had that anonymity could be compatible with community have long since proven to be wrong. I hope Swidey’s story serves as an inadvertent spur to the Globe — and to other news organizations — to end this failed experiment.
My friend and former (and future!) colleague Adam Reilly is leaving the Boston Phoenix to become an associate producer for “Greater Boston,” at WGBH-TV (Channels 2 and 44).
Adam has ably handled the media beat since 2006, writing the “Don’t Quote Me” column and the media blog. Before that, he’d served as the paper’s political columnist.
Since the late 1980s, just three people have covered the media for the Phoenix — Mark Jurkowitz, now associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington; yours truly; Mark again; and then Adam. For a press critic, it’s one of just a handful of jobs in the country where you really get a chance to make a difference. No doubt a long line of applicants will form outside the Phoenix’s door.
Good luck and best wishes to Adam, a transplant from Minnesota who’s managed the difficult trick of establishing himself as a true Bostonian.
I’ll be a guest on “Radio Boston,” on WBUR (90.9 FM), this Friday at 1 p.m. to talk about the future of the newspaper business. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 1 p.m., and will be available online as well.
This is pretty amusing. Boston Globe columnist Steve Bailey reports that WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) talk-show host Jay Severin is pouting because he didn’t get an invitation to the recent “Greater Boston” 10th-anniversary party at the new WGBH-TV (Channel 2) headquarters.
The upshot: “Greater Boston” host Emily Rooney has been disinvited from her regular Friday chit-chats with Severin. Hey, ‘TKK listeners’ loss is Rooney’s gain. The foul-mouthed Severin is the most self-referential of talk-show hosts, so I’m guessing he’ll spend most of the afternoon whining about this. We’ll see.
Disclosure: I’m a regular paid panelist on the “Greater Boston” Friday “Beat the Press” edition.
