Tuesday, June 2, 2009

KC Star -- a former Planned Parenthood award recipient -- shuts down comments section after publishing controversial abortion editorial

After publishing an editorial calling for federal protection of abortion clinics, the comments section at the Star's web site heated up and the Star responded by shutting it down. At least that's how it appears as I write this. Readers who try posting a comment get a message like the one below.

It shouldn't be hard for the Star to explain to readers what they are doing. (I know: I shut down the comments section on this blog one time -- during a spam attack... I explained the reason to readers so they knew what was going on.) The Star gives the impression they are censoring.

And given the fact that The Star was given a "Maggie" Award from Planned Parenthood in 2006, the Star's decision to shut down comments looks suspicious. What's up, Star?

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14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gary Pruitt is a tool!

Anonymous said...

They use an outside service for commenting (Pluck). Plus they recently went through some server problems and made some changes.

Did you try commenting on another story? Usually when they turn off commenting, you won't even see the comment section.

John Altevogt said...

Everything else was working. The blogs were working, Pluck was working fine. This had to be deliberate. Don't know if they shut off commentary from the start, or if they pulled the plug and dumped everyone's response. There were no comments below the editorial and typically this story has generated 6-8 pages of comments.

John Altevogt said...

Just checked again and all commenting is now down under the stories. Didn't check the blogs. That did not seem to be the case last night.

What's interesting is that if it was a major feature of their website has been off the hook for at least 9 hours and still hasn't been fixed.

Maybe the same people who are in charge of building maintenance are also in charge of fixing the web site.

Anonymous said...

The Star shuts down comments that run contrary to their desired outcome on a regular basis. They did this even before the new comment section was installed.

When they do it, they just remove all comments from a given story.

Anonymous said...

7:59, that is a ridiculous statement, and anyone who follows comments regularly knows it is ridiculous.

John Altevogt said...

Actually, it's not ridiculous. One strategy is to run an early version of a story to take all of the heat and then once everyone has vented their spleen they up date the story slightly and dump the old one. If you look really hard, the other one is still to be found, but not easily.

Anonymous said...

12:34 PM They do it all the time and they have done it for a couple of years. The really good stories that they know will catch hell, they simply don't allow comments at all.

John Altevogt said...

1:50's statement about not allowing comments on some stories is also correct. Often AP and stories cut and paste from other papers receive this treatment.

Anonymous said...

LOL, I can't believe they would attempt to tell people they don't spike the comments after the Rhonda Lokeman story.

Fortunately they couldn't put a lid on James Hart.

Anonymous said...

///Fortunately they couldn't put a lid on James Hart.///

This comment proves how ridiculous this whole argument is. Couldn't put a lid on James Hart? He's an employee. They could edit him, reassign him, or fire him.

Anonymous said...

The only thing it proves is that they censor comments on their news and not the crime blog.

Anonymous said...

////The only thing it proves is that they censor comments on their news and not the crime blog.///


Proving exactly what? And so what?

John Altevogt said...

There are certain folks down there who are perceived as being the future of the paper. A couple of the sports columnists (Whitlock being one) and Hart's blog, which is very popular on virtually every demographic and quite well run.

While Hart is not completely non-ideological, he is completely fair in his dealings with people on his blog and the stories he presents. His blog is almost universally respected by liberals and conservatives alike, one of the few at The Star.