End the appalling abuse of rights and the sullying of public debate online, writes Eusebius McKaiser.
Johannesburg - Modern technology has been fantastically disruptive. Take the world of blogs, social media and online comment sections. A consequence of the ease with which one can access these platforms is that public debate has been democratised.
That has reduced the power of the gatekeeping editor of a newspaper or a magazine. We might not get into the letters pages, but the editor cannot stop us from spreading our views efficiently, and widely, online. That monopoly over whose views get published and disseminated is permanently shattered. And that is good.
But there is a challenge too. What must happen, however, if you are a media company, like Independent Media, and the online comment sections that you host have become a hotbed of racism, bigotry, sexism, and speech that is often, even when not illegal, of poor argumentative quality?
Do you simply look away, fearing that if you did something about monitoring that content, you would be accused of censorship by your readers, advertisers and competitors?
Do you view such speech as inherently useful, a case of holding up a mirror to society? Are you perhaps even obliged to tolerate bigotry?
These questions have been explored by an independent advisory panel that examined online user-generated content, a panel set up by Independent Media, of which I was a member.
Here is what happened: An article written by teenager Kine Dineo Mokwena-Kessi titled “ Black in Cape Town? Brace yourself” was posted on the IOL webpage, and the comment section below it quickly filled with remarks that constituted a violation of her rights, including racist speech and insults of such a nature they can accurately be described as trampling on her right to dignity.
This, sadly, continued until a few days ago when, belatedly but mercifully, the online editorial team finally closed the comment section below the article.
It was this opinion piece that occasioned the investigative panel and considered the nature of online comment sections.
A few crucial insights were developed through research, discussion and debate between the panel members. It is necessary to read the full report on IOL, of course, but the bigger moves that are made in the report can be articulated as follows.
Firstly, the panel asserted, and justified, the general desirability of online comment sections in an open and democratic society.
There are many different kinds of democracies. Two models of democracy that partly describe our democracy here in South Africa are “deliberative” and “participatory” democracies.
Given our past, to which we never wish to return – at least not as a normative ideal – the constitution, and a media company like Independent Media, must be and is premised on the critical role that participation in public debate plays in bolstering the legitimacy of our social and political discourse.
But not just any participation will do. We also need to strive to promote the deliberation of ideas between individuals and communities, in addition to creating opportunities for those ideas to be posted somewhere.
In a very truncated way, that is what the ideal of a society of actively participating citizens in deliberation with one another is about. And online comment sections can be instrumentally useful in opening up debate, increasing the number and range of voices that speak and are heard, thereby enhancing the democratic benefits of our public discourse.
But how does one respond to the shredding of a writer’s right to dignity, or the right of someone posting a comment online but who is then met by the hatred of fellow online community members?
In the first instance, as one would do in constitutional rights analysis, it is important to recognise that competing rights exist here, that they must be protected and that a balancing act should then follow in which one weighs the competing rights.
Bluntly put, my right to dignity cannot willy-nilly be traded for unmonitored online dialogue, discussion and debate. Free speech rights are not inviolable.
The right to dignity, however, is inviolable. Free speech rights can and often are, even in liberal democracies, restricted, provided the restrictions tests in those societies, often developed in case law, are met. That is why hate speech is illegal, though this is not at odds with our constitutional ideals.
There is a commercial reality here too. No one has ever had a right to have their letter-to-the-editor published in newspapers. The newspaper is the property of the media owners, and they exercise discretion every day about what gets published.
This practice is not widely regarded as violating the free speech rights of those whose letters do not make it to print. So it is odd that even the mere thought of monitoring online comment sections make some of us feel like illiberal censors.
That is unjustified self-rebuking because none of us is legally, or socially, entitled to be given online space below articles.
It is the overall habits and attitudes displayed by owners across all of their media products collectively that should be the evidential basis for assessing whether or not a media house thwarts free speech rights, or whether it is simply monitoring the quality of what is allowed and doing so against reasonable and clear benchmarks grounded in our constitutional values.
For that reason, the balancing act that the advisory panel ended up with is quite sensible. The chief recommendation is that pre-publication moderation be done by appropriately trained senior staff, so as to eliminate both illegal and undesirable speech – such as really poor quality debate or insults that do not violate laws.
There are other models, too, so long as the outcome is that you do your bit as a media company to help strengthen the deliberative and participatory ideals of our democracy without enabling the preventable or continued violation of the rights of those who visit your site, or whose work you host.
The independent advisory panel was not asked to do a costing of pre-publication moderation. Our hope, however, is that companies might invest in this mechanism, given the competing aims of enabling debate yet also protecting everyone’s fundamental rights. But that was a feasibility question beyond the scope of our mandate.
If a media company is not willing, or cannot afford, to develop a monitoring mechanism of the sort just described, then the online comment sections should be closed down.
Or rather that is what the majority on the panel thought. I am in this majority group for the simple reason that I remain unconvinced that our modern technology requires us to shift the editorial principles that prevailed when hard copy was the only game in town.
If a newspaper, in its hard copy, will neither publish illegal speech nor really appallingly bad argument, then I see no reason why these principles must be chucked out the window in a time of online comment sections.
How can technology be such a decisive legal and social tiebreaker between what is acceptable in print and online?
Until I get a convincing response to this latter question, my current view, and that of the panel overall, is clear: Invest in effective pre-publication moderation or end the appalling abuse of rights and sullying of public debate online.
* Eusebius McKaiser is the best-selling author of A Bantu In My Bathroom and Could I Vote DA? A Voter’s Dilemma.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Sunday Independent