Comments on: When the lack of comments damages your news brand

By: The Worst of Perth

The Worst of Perth — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:48:45 +0000

A reference to Speak Your Branes seems appropriate here.

http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/

By: paulbradshaw

paulbradshaw — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:07:37 +0000

At the senior level, they want more comments. How that plays out comes down to strategy and training. It’s a culture shift.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:56:25 +0000

What this actually shows is the shocking weakness of the BBC’s news operations. There is precious little reporting, and a lot of repackaging news releases and PR articles. When you do catch them doing this [as in this case] they get exceptionally defensive: given that, do you really think they’re going to want more comments?

By: John Sutton

John Sutton — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:24:22 +0000

I think Tom Morris has hit the nail on the head here. The kind of populist “Have your say” commenting system has no value at all in holding editors to account for their actions. For the editor to come back with comments attempting to discredit the original blog poster (Anne Marie Cunningham) is disingenuous, to say the least. He made no attempt to address her actual criticisms. Anne Marie did not suggest at all that plagiarism as acceptable. What she suggested was that without the methodology and questionnaire backing up the research, the piece was worthless because it was impossible to assess the evidence presented.

On the point that allowing/not allowing comment might damage your brand I’m less sure about. The one thing above all else that will damage any brand is attempting to rubbish (and silence) criticism, as people can see that for what it is: bullying. And nobody likes a bully.

By: anne marie cunningham

anne marie cunningham — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:19:58 +0000

It would have been interesting to see what kind of comments this arose from this story. But I would be happier if the story had not appeared in the first place. My feeling is that the report it was based on was very weak and did not justify the coverage it received.

In any case here is my blog response to this: http://wishfulthinkinginmedicaleducation.blogspot.com/2009/09/bbc-responds.html

By: paulbradshaw

paulbradshaw — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:22:22 +0000

You’re right. I said “Having and *watching* comments” – meaning not necessarily having them on your site but engaging with them wherever they are.

That said, even having comments could provide more context than letting the story sit alone. The quality of those comments depends on how they’re managed, which is a separate blog post entirely, but it’s safe to say how you engage with those is a key part of that. Having seen the inside of The Guardian’s community management operation I’d say they do this very well.

By: Tom Morris

Tom Morris — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:58:26 +0000

You haven’t established your conclusion here. It’s not lack of comments that is the problem – rather, it’s lack of engagement. You can have engagement without comments, and you can have comments without engagement. The BBC does have a comments system on it’s news site – Have Your Say. And it’s a total waste of time, and filled with the sort of people who you find on street corners proclaiming the end of the world. Rather, what BBC News need is to have someone who will take responsibility for factual inaccuracies and other editorial problems (and I’d say that the example you’ve given is a perfect example of a glaring editorial problem – I mean, the problems that Anna-Marie Cunningham brings up are significant problems with the study that anyone who has read a few scientific papers should be able to spot a mile off – no references, dodgy methodology etc. This isn’t about “worldview” as the BBC guy said, this is about basic competence – the academic equivalent of knowing whether a source you are interviewing for a story is a flaky drunken rent-a-quote or someone who actually knows what’s going on).

Adding comments doesn’t change much. In fact, it makes most news sites less interesting for me: I couldn’t give a monkeys what Ray from Bradford or whoever thinks about some story unless he has some evidence or reasoning that shows that the story is wrong somehow. The Guardian would lose no value at all if they turned Comment is Free off. Same for BBC and HYS. All they do is make pages take longer to load.

For the commercial news sites, comments just mean page views. What’s more important is making sure that when there is a factual error, the feedback loops of the blogosphere and other Internet sources, as well as e-mail and so on, are monitored and responded to appropriately. In most cases, that means ignoring them – except for when they point out some fallacious reasoning or evidence that contradicts the story, and then listen to them and don’t just dismiss them as being driven by their “worldview”.

The same benefits you think a comments area gets would also be served by having a banner at the bottom that says “Have we made a mistake? E-mail news.mistakes@bbc.co.uk and we’ll fix it!” Only it would have the advantage of not being filled with idiots. There’s a whole Internet for people to put their stupidity – it doesn’t need to go on the news websites themselves.

By: anne marie cunningham

anne marie cunningham — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:39:18 +0000

Oh, dearie me. Your response from Gary was considerably longer than mine which read:
“Hi Anne Marie
Thank you for your thoughts.

The author of the article did have the whole report in front of her and interviewed one of the authors. I do not agree that our headline is “sensationalist”.

best wishes
GE”

From his comments to you it sounds like he completely missed the point of the blog.

In any case, through the use of google side-wiki I have been able to comment on the BBC article. http://bit.ly/Z8Mfw

When I get some time I have to write more about this.

Anne Marie

By: Michael Pyshnov

Michael Pyshnov — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:29:36 +0000

Please, check this story: http://www.universitytorontofraud.com and check the London-based Committeee on Publication Ethics – http://www.universitytorontofraud.com/committee.htm This won’t be ‘He Said-She Said’, it is all documents.

By: paul canning

paul canning — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:23:42 +0000

This is happening with gay news. The Pink Paper stopped printing and went online only but because their online offering is so bad and you have to sign in to comment it attracts none. pinknews.co.uk by contrast gets lots and – I notice – a huge number of RTs showing its better known in social media.