(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) MediaNews Group, also known as Digital First Media, which owns many local newspapers, has turned off its comments sections on its news stories.
The leadership of the company stated that its reason for removing content was to cancel voices the publication deemed unfit for the public square.
“Open comments can be difficult to moderate, and the discussion can sometimes be overwhelmed by spam, vicious political feuding, or even worse, hate speech,” said MediaNews Group Executive Editor Frank Pine, according to Axios.
Pine said that removing the capacity of his readership to comment on news stories was for the sake of “our democracy.”
“We take our Fourth Estate responsibility to facilitate public discourse very seriously and we believe increasing polarization is not good for our democracy,” he said, assuming the authority to control partisan feelings in America.
“In that respect, this decision is in line with our previous move away from national political endorsements,” he rationalized, referring to the company’s 2022 announcement.
The company announced its decision via editorials in their papers, as reported by The New York Times.
“Unfortunately, as the public discourse has become increasingly acrimonious, common ground has become a no man’s land between the clashing forces of the culture wars,” the editorials read, asserting that its readers get confused between opinion articles and news stories.
The company is also under financial pressure and has had to lay off staff that would otherwise moderate comments, which could be contributing to the removal of comments, according to Axios.
MediaNews Group owns hundreds of weekly newspapers and many daily newspapers. Some of the biggest names owned by the company are The Denver Post, The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune and The Boston Herald.
The company is owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, which is the second largest distributor of newspapers in the country, second only to the company that owns and operates USA Today.
