UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Dennis Coday | Jan. 7, 2014 NCR Today
I am preparing a longer response to reactions I have received since NCR suspended the commenting feature of our website yesterday. I have a newspaper to get to the printer before I can do that, so for now, let me offer this for your reflection. It addresses well the quandary we face.
First, let me correct two things that some people are misreporting:
1) We have suspended the comments, not closed them down completely. I wrote yesterday: “NCR editors will explore options that will allow commenting to return in a way that respects our writers, the subjects of our stories, and our readers.” Yes, I did write the suspension is “indefinite,” because we don’t know how long the evaluation will take.
2) We are not reacting to “irreverent comments.” The words I used to describe the comments were “malicious,” “abusive” and “vile.” An NCR contributor called me and asked me to read some of the comments over the phone to him, and I declined. That’s how vile they were.
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