Detroit Free Press Removing Comments from Articles

[Mega Hertz]

Oh, please. Please. They could report that the sky is blue and it would be a leftist conspiracy.

[sinklair]

TC: 100% agree. Keep opinions out of news stories. Limit it to just the opinion page. I don’t want reporters editorializing, and I don’t care what my I’ll-informed neighbor from either political spectrum has to say on any topic.

[km1125]

I found the comments section very useful and informative for countering the narratives promoted by leftist freep and Detroit news articles. Such as when they cherry pick one young person teaching at a school in west Michigan, and says “michigan needs to pay teachers more because this young lady can’t afford an apartment or house right out of college and must live under the realm of her parents”…. Well that could be true but school districts and the state need to work to a balanced budget.

Furthermore, the example person they picked was not valid because the example subject in the article was not even a certified teacher therefore the claims and points of the advocacy “journalism” falls flat on its face.

Just looking at the young reporters writing for the freep, one sees fresh grads right out of the indoctrination machines of current universities seeing and reporting the world, country, and state from an extreme leftist point of view pretending to be “just the facts” reporters.

Many many leftist advocacy “journalist” articles exist in the freep, Detroit news and others (Newsweek has some leftist and some from the right), and the comments section are an amazing way to fact check and counterbalance the premises pushed by the reporter, look up the histories of people interviewed in the article, and let the reader make their own conclusions.

And what I am saying can perfectly apply to overly leaning right wing columns.

One might say the comments section made the “reporters” look bad. Closing the comments section makes it look like the freep cannot handle technology. Well over half of the moderating work can be handled thru AI

This is so true. If you could TRUST that the "journalist" actually researched the topic from an unbiased perspective and presented the facts of the story, then we really wouldn't need to have the option for citizens to step up and correct their narrative and point out all the flaws in their "research" and their presentation.

[MWmetalhead]

Some of the Sports columnists are the worst with regard to authoring heavily biased articles.

[TC Talks]

Some of the Sports columnists are the worst with regard to authoring heavily biased articles.

You understand that a columnist's job is to write persuasive pieces? They are part of the editorial staff, and not the news desk.

[MWmetalhead]

You are correct. I actually meant to say the Sports beat writers, not columnists. My mistake.

[sinklair]

Most readers aren’t writing to “correct” a misstatement written by a reporter. Readers are pushing their narrative, they are essentially one-sided opinion advocates. They are pushing their favorite candidate/team/issue. They aren’t (usually) dealing with facts. They aren’t seeking out both sides and presenting a balanced analysis.

Do journalists sometimes get it wrong? Absolutely, and there needs to be a better mechanism to make sure multiple, diverse opinions are featured in their reporting. But I don’t know that handing over the keys to the newspaper to the loudest, most uninformed readers is the way to achieve balance and completeness.