BBC and the Have Your Say forums
October 28, 2005 – 4:59 pmaha! in case you hadn’t been reading this blog when i posted a comment about the Have Your Say forums on the BBC website - it was about the comment moderation and how one couldn’t tell what was really happening re: the editorship involved there, and the need for some transparency.
Looks like they’ve taken this on board ( aha! again - who knows why? Perhaps there have been lots of angry complaints?) - the most recent forum on what we all think about the Iran hoo-ha has a little picture on the top-right corner of the page ( swiped below:)
and they go into some explanation-
“We are keen to encourage lively and informed debate but at the same time think that some of our Have Your Say topics will always require a closer level of editorial oversight. That is why we have introduced the following two types of moderation for our discussions..”
“fully moderated” they say is -
“This is also known as pre-moderation. Every comment submitted to a fully moderated discussion has to be checked by a BBC moderator before it is published on the site. We try to publish as many comments as we can but unfortunately, due to the volume of comments we receive every day, we cannot guarantee that all comments submitted will be published.”
7 Responses to “BBC and the Have Your Say forums”
Its actually not really ‘have your say’ forum to me on that ‘BBC have your say’ forum column but or perhaps ‘say it like what we (BBCs) like to say’, or in another words be like us first then only you can leave any message. (In order to get published)
By Cimurai on Oct 30, 2005
well its certainly not the same as being able to see the range of opinion e.g. on the Guardian blogs. And you cant really say what you think as most likely they won’t publish it! i do think that they tend publish a lot of ‘controversial’ statements and then a few ‘moderate’ voices - just so it doesn’t appear that all the BBC readers are fascists or sth!
then again, someone did post a comment on the Guardian blog saying something along the lines of ‘ i hope this doesn’t reflect Guardian readership in general’!! which was pretty funny.
By sonia on Oct 31, 2005
Don’t know what your faith is, ..anyway happy divali and eid.
By Cimurai on Oct 31, 2005
Last time where when I did visits of ‘blogs type e-media forums’ known as ‘Abuzz’ at New York Times and LA Times. Few good things about it is/was that other than we can give/drops commentaries, it is we our self that could creates with our own start/topics . People also able to rates not only on commentaries but also to topics created, either its good or bad or excellent, and there also a rating on ‘member blog’ made by readers and commentators.
And every single entries we involved inter-linked to each other that so its easy for us and other members to re visits or reviews members status, topics created, commentaries been made and overall rating, etc.
Its all goes fine and well until a ‘major anti G. W. Bush crackdown’ done by moderator/s due to much entries that gone mad attacking on him (Bush), Republicans an American foreign policies where most of entries deleted and many ‘blogers’ memberships were cancelled.
Don’t know what has happened next but when I re-visited the site its no longer exist.
Its all was between year 1999 to 2003
By Cimurai on Oct 31, 2005
yeah that doesn’t surprise me. Post 9-11 when i was living in LA and going to grad school, no one could say anything, (not even in ‘academic’ debate) the nationalistic spirit was so strong and people were really sensitive. and living there you could see why it was like that and how it affected everyone through social pressure and conformity - even people who would normally be able to convey independent opinions felt overpowered by the ’social’ regulation and hence it resulted in ’self’ censorship.
and what with the state of mainstream media in the US - the way it was and the way it still is, its not surprising the resultant attitudes people have. that’s why independent media is so important. Yeah for IndyMedia! It counteracts the grip the big nasty corporates and stodgy institutions currently have - certainly on broadcast media - and other forms of media.
By sonia on Nov 1, 2005
why is there no have your say column for Charles taylor? Is this to stop the comparison of the trials of saddam and Taylor? why try taylor in the hague and saddam in iraq are the crimes different or this is a propaganda of bush and blair? Or is it because there will be too much of what us and uk were giving saddam would come to light? I think if saddam was being tried in the hague most of the killings in iraq would have stopped.
By john benjamin on Apr 3, 2006
good questions. obviously the ‘powers that be’ in iraq ( heh heh guess who that could have been) made the decision to try him there. If it had been up for discussion the international community no doubt may have had some different ideas.
By sonia on Apr 3, 2006