After a successful testing period, CBC News decided to maintain the suspension of comments under posts on its Facebook pages in order to combat hateful comments and personal attacks on its journalists and their work.
The news service editor of the English-speaking public broadcaster, Brodie Fenlon, made the announcement in a supporting post published on Monday. “In the future, comments sections will remain closed on our Facebook pages, with a few exceptions. We will open the comments for appeals to all, to ask specific questions of the audience […] and on a few pages that have small, but healthy communities of commentators. But otherwise, they will remain closed, ”he wrote.
CBC News announced in June that it was experimenting with banning all comments on some of its Facebook pages for a period of four weeks. One way to measure the effectiveness of this strategy to limit toxic comments while evaluating its impact on media traffic as well as on the work and morale of employees.
At the time, Brodie Fenlon had told how this toxic climate on Facebook had repercussions on the mental health of reporters and required a huge work of moderation. The English-speaking media had even reached the point of self-censorship on the social network by limiting the publication of certain journalistic productions that could lead to its share of hateful comments.
Marginal repercussions
A few months later, it is clear that the experience “turned out to be positive”, maintains the editor-in-chief. “We are now posting more varied stories than ever on Facebook. We are no longer moderating a space with little control. The impact on our web traffic has been marginal. And the well-being of our staff has improved, according to an internal survey we conducted during the experiment, ”he writes.
He adds that this decision is not intended to reduce “real criticism” of the journalistic work of the public broadcaster. “Rather, it is about trying to put an end, in the online spaces over which we have some control at least, to the vile abuse, personal harassment and misinformation that is so damaging to public debate. “
Critics are always “welcome,” says Brodie Fenlon, but through the comments section under articles published on the CBC News site or through the ombudsman complaint process. In addition, he recalls that viewers are always free to express themselves on their own Facebook or Twitter pages.
As for the French-speaking counterpart, Radio-Canada, we claim to have “followed closely” the experiment of CBC News without feeling the need to imitate it for the moment. “What we see is that our volume is still ten times less than CBC. […] The toxicity on social media may also be a little different. I did not do an exhaustive study and I am not saying that there is no toxicity on social networks in French, but the fact remains that in our case, it has not reached the level toxicity as it was at CBC, ”said in an interview the director general of information, Luce Julien.
Rather, the preferred approach is to occasionally close comments when the situation calls for it. She gives the example of the Decryptors page, on which comments were closed after the team – which tracks disinformation – was the target of insults and threats at the start of the pandemic.
Last June, the management of Radio-Canada had also rejected the recommendation of former ombudsman Guy Gendron, who suggested outright to draw a line on the comments section of the website of the news service. “More often than not, this section offers a few people – usually always the same – an opportunity to confront each other, like in a boxing ring, rehashing the same obsessions, prejudices and half-truths. We rarely witness an enlightening exchange, but rather quarrels between insiders which have the effect of leveling the debate down, ”he wrote in his last annual report.