Does the Indo censor it's comment section?

1st dalkey dalkey

I am a regular reader of the newspapers on-line and will post comment at times in relation to some articles.
I have noticed that in relation to the Indo, many of my comments are deleted soon after posting. I have never been abusive or such so it cannot be that.
I do on occasion have anti establishment notions and it is mainly these that I have found are deleted.
Given it's history and who owns it, I never expected the Indo to be anything other then establishment, but traditionally newspapers facilitated other views without censor. Is this now gone?

sonny.knowles

The comments sections of The Irish Independent are full of anti water charge, anti 'austerity', anti government, pro sinn fein, pro aaa nonsense. Regardless of the story bring commented on.

1st dalkey dalkey

That would suggest that you do not believe the comment section is censored. This morning I attempted to post this;

"A conundrum for Mr Adams, but also for the rest of the political establishment.

If the IRA does indeed still exist and control the actions of these criminals and the arms, then the 'Peace Process' is over and we are on a dangerous precipice.

If the IRA does not exist, then these ex-provos are just common criminals and the problem lies in inadequate policing.

I suspect that the IRA was never as tightly controlled as some would have us believe. I suspect that the Peace Process had differing levels of commitment within that organisation. I suspect that even a very committed move out of war and into politics was always going to leave some of it's members behind. How can an ex leadership deal with ex members?

Perhaps more to the point, especially with an election imminent. How come Messrs Kealy, O'Hanlon, Dudley Edwards and O'Brien are all penning anti SF articles in the same issue of the Indo. Have they ever in the past been so much on the same page? Makes you wonder even more then the Adams conundrum."

It was deleted. Why?

Dodge

Yes it is heavily censored or edited. Can't tell you why but comments I've made on sporting articles haven't been published

I know RTE is the same so I assume all media outlets do similar

1st dalkey dalkey

I have never noticed it to the same extent on any other news sites.
RTE only allows comment on it's sports page which I sometimes use. It only refuses comment when the number get big and deletes them all after a few days.
Other sites only delete if the comment is slanderous or abusive, or, in one case, if the comment gets too many thumbs down.
The Indo appears to be more selective on what kind of opinion is allowed.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

qweerty

The people that are in charge of moderating are at the very bottom rung of the journalistic ladder. I wouldn't interpret your comment being rejected as part of some conspiracy to censor.

jack presley

Anything even slightly critical of the content of the article won't be published. And point out inaccuracies and it definitely won't make it.

coylemj

Some of the UK newspapers like the Daily Mail allow every fruitcake, racist, anarchist and malcontent to post comments with no censoring/moderating. That probably means that nobody in the paper (least of all the person who wrote the article) bothers to read the comments. What you end up with is a ghetto where a bunch of losers hurl abuse at one another.

Why the OP bothers to post comments to a website which censors him is beyond me.

IRE60

jack presley wrote: »

Anything even slightly critical of the content of the article won't be published. And point out inaccuracies and it definitely won't make it.

There was the story on Saturday about liveline reuniting two sisters - the yarn online had a pic captioned "dublin in the 70's" with a pic of grafton st. I pointed out that their picture showed the Shopping cente, opened in 1988!
Comment not published but pic and caption changed!

I would think more of them if they acknowledged the input - even if they had to eat pie. Although, as pointed out here some publications leave every comment up which is ridiculous.
Was someone not appointed as comments editor last year (from here or another forum?)

KoolKid

It blocks a lot of comments that question an article.
Take this article for example:

I'm in the security industry over 20 years and questioned the logic of the comments below, as technically it makes no sense.
"When it comes to more sophisticated alarm systems, burglary teams are taking the chance that the alarm is monitored through the phone line and simply remotely copying the (internet) address of the transmission system and jamming the alarm," said Mr Toal.

The comments were blocked with the following message

Comments that are judged to be defamatory, abusive or in bad taste are not acceptable and contributors who consistently fall below certain criteria will be permanently blacklisted. Comments must be concise and to the point. The moderator will not enter into debate with individual contributors and the moderator’s decision is final.