The Moderation Topic

Closing the comment function 

Dear users, due to the high number of comments on meta.tagesschau.de, the news can not be commented at the moment. We ask for your understanding. 

Sincerely, 

The Moderation

I always enjoy reading the comments section of Channel One (German public TV, ARD).  You can tell when some comments have hit their stories, and the moderator is over-burdened in stopping or removing criticism.

What the bosses will generally say via the network is that they do care about what the public says or thinks of their news format and commentary.  The thing is....virtually every single comment has to be reviewed, and 'stamped' in some way as being OK for pubic review.  Harsh and critical words?  Oh my....that will be reviewed to such extent....that it probably will never make it beyond the review stage.

Generally, a story over some lost pony, or a bike race, or some big meeting of German and Swiss diplomats....won't ever get the 'closing the comment function' label.  If on the immigration business, demonstrations at a Merkel political event, or cost-of-living situations....that draws a ton of commentary and some of it is simply not a pleasant experience for these moderators.

I often wonder....how moderators are employed at ARD.  My guess is that they have one single person per shift, and there's probably no more than six of these individuals total.  They have a difficult mission....read through a six to twenty line comment by some German, and try to figure out if the harsh nature should be allowed to stand, or if they should drop the comment.  If you got two or three in a row like this?  Well....it's probably best to shut down the whole comments section for that story and hope that the folks don't mind.

All of this brings me to this odd perception of German criticism.  If you were in a pub, and some news item ran, and at the end....if you hit mute and asked the dozen Germans to comment....just how harsh would they 'dump' upon the journalists?  It might be an interesting experiment.  Course, I doubt if the network would care to allow this as a public event.