No Comments for Obama

So this morning's silliness has CBS disabling comments on news stories about Barack Obama.

From the story at the above link:

Mike Sims, director of news and operations for CBS News.com, explained the reason for the new policy in a story on the Web site's Public Eye section.

"We have our rules of engagement," Sims said Friday. "They prohibit personal attacks, especially racist attacks. Stories about Obama have been problematic, and we won't tolerate it."

Sims said the news group sometimes deletes questionable individual comments, but he said this wasn't working with Obama stories because of "the volume and the persistence" of the comments.

CBSNews.com didn't plan to disable comments for stories on the other presidential candidates, Sims said, adding that he hasn't ruled out allowing them again for Obama stories. "But at this point, it's not possible," Sims said.

OK, I have a few thoughts on this.

1. The implication here is that CBS just can't afford to keep up with commenters on their site. I find that utterly impossible to believe, given their resources, so it's clearly a lie. They did just release first quarter earnings a few das ago and their profits dropped 6%, but that left them with a dismal $214 million profit. Hmm. I know pressure to perform on the Street is intense, but I think if you're talking about monitoring the website comments being made about a Presidential candidate, you could and should be able to come up with a few bucks to pay some interns to filter and delete. My suggestion would be to skim some money off of the CSI franchise (preferably Miami). If it has to come from within the CBSNews budget, I think we could all lose 48 Hours Mystery and be none the worse for it.

2. Why are comments allowed on news stories anyway? It's news, it shouldn't invite opinion. If people want to take issue with the factual basis of a story, they should send a letter to the editor, just like in the good old days. If the editor wants to print the letter, so be it. But since none of the MSM even pretends to actually be about news anymore, I suppose that's asking too much.

3. Does disallowing comments take away "free speech?" NO! People seriously need to drop this whole righteous indignation whenever anyone says they can't spout their particularly idiotic, misspelled and poorly constructed thoughts. CBS is a privately owned concern and if they want to turn off comments, that's their right. I personally think that turning them off only for stories about Obama is an incredibly obtuse move and predict that they'll reverse course within days (if not hours), but it's a move that in no way hampers anyone's First Amendment rights. Try to say otherwise and I'll delete your comment, and that won't be me trampling on your rights to free speech either.

4. It seems to me that the logical next step here, if CBS is concerned about possibly negative repercussions to news stories about Obama, would be to simply stop reporting on his activities at all. Right? Clearly he's just causing trouble, enough so that CBS had to change their whole policy.

Interesting, isn't it?