NORWALK, Conn. – Facts are the natural enemy of partisanship.
Facts don’t lie, although partisans often lie about facts. They make them up. In fact, they yell them from the rooftops until they become, in the minds of other partisans and those previously undecided on an issue, the truth.
One of my earliest examples of becoming aware of this was during the 1988 presidential election: the infamous, racist Willie Horton ad, blaming Dukakis for creating a prisoner furlough program that allowed Horton, a convicted murderer, to have weekend furloughs. Horton escaped and, a year later, committed a brutal assault and battery and rape in Maryland.
The program was, in fact, created by Dukakis’s Republican predecessor, Frank Sargent. A similar furlough program was created by California governor Pat Brown, a Democrat, and continued by his successor, Ronald Reagan, who, according to an Associated Press report in 1988, touted the program and ended it under pressure after two furloughed inmates were charged with murder. And then there was the federal prison furlough system under the Reagan-Bush administration.
Once again, never let facts stand in the way of a brutal partisan attack, be it personal or professional.
Which brings us back to Norwalk, and 2013.
In 10 days, NancyOnNorwalk.com will mark its one-year anniversary. During that one year, we have seen the site grow from a couple dozen unique visitors a day to as many as 1,000 (we did have 3,155 unique visitors one day, when we broke the Brawl at City Hall story, which drew statewide and national attention).
Also during that year, we have seen some of the best and worst Norwalk has to offer in terms of online behavior. We tout our readership for its intelligence and high level of discourse compared with other news sites. We have tried to moderate comments, first gently, then more attentively, and, more recently, with a heavier hand. Still, there persists a tendency, especially as election day nears, for folks hiding behind, as one commenter so aptly put it months ago, “the cloak of anonymity,” to smear, insult, distort and just make things up as if they were fact.
Commenters do this to each other, and to us. The most highly and viciously partisan commenters attack us frequently to try to discredit the site. This is not a Norwalk phenomenon.
It is interesting – to us, at least – to note that there are people in Norwalk who believe we should end the policy of allowing anonymous comments. Those people include, not surprisingly, Mayor Richard Moccia, who railed against the policy before NoN was conceived, casting aspersions on the integrity of a news site that would allow anonymous comments; mayoral candidate Harry Rilling; and sometimes contributor Bill Dunne, a noted communications professional and conservative active in local politics. There are many others who decry the policy as well, and some brave souls who use their real names despite the policy.
We even disagree in-house. I have come to side with the mayor, Rilling and Dunne; Nancy and our son, Eric, who have votes equal to mine, disagree. The reasons? Using one’s real name has a chilling effect on some people who fear retribution from others in the community and from people in power. There is also the potential for prospective or current employers to find posts offensive. Another reason to be against insisting on real names? There are people who, under the shroud of secrecy, return to the site several times a day to post comments, jacking up site traffic numbers that encourage advertisers.
Before you accuse us of being dishonest about traffic based on that, consider this: Come to the site, click on a story and read the whole thing. Hit your “back” button and pick the next story. So that is one click per story. Go to The Hour and see how many times you have to click to find the story and to read it from beginning to end. Go to The Daily Voice and click on a story, then just try using your “back” button to return to the home page. These sites, like many others, are designed to make you click several times to enhance their page view numbers.
But I digress.
While we are not, at this time, going to insist on real names to comment, we are going to take a heavy hand to moderating comments. Frankly, we are tired of opinions being stated as facts. We are tired of people who ascribe motives to others based on nothing but partisan or personal bias. We are tired of the name-calling. And, frankly, we are tired of having to defend ourselves from partisan attacks by people who haven’t a clue as to who we are or what we think.
We will not respond to any more charges of bias. No amount of facts will change a partisan’s mind. We will not allow gratuitous accusations impugning our motives or integrity. Want to say the site shows a bias and cite examples? You are entitled. Want to say we support all Democrats and liberals and we are working to get them elected? Dead wrong, and that won’t make it onto the site. Want to call us out on facts? Please do. We want to be accurate.
To that end, if the “facts” in a comment are suspect, we will, if we have time, fact check them. If you have a link, please include it. If we are short on time, or cannot confirm the statement, or find it is inaccurate, the comment will be disallowed.
Lest we encourage animal rights groups to descend upon us, we will no longer allow commenters to beat dead horses. Make your point and move on. In the interest of maintaining sanity of the majority of our readers, we will decide when enough is enough and stop allowing repetitious comments.
We want to elevate the discourse to something more than playground sniping and bullying and name-calling. We want to stop the incessant carping about the same thing with no new information. We don’t want to be like other sites that cater to the lowest common denominator. We do not believe the vast majority of our readers come anywhere near that category.
We welcome all political persuasions, all points of view. But keep it civil, keep it on the issues, and keep it based in reality.
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