Washington Post Blog Turns Off Comments

Posted on January 19, 2006

The Washington Post has temporarily turned off comments on its main weblog after receiving tons of critical comments and emails. The firestorm of complaints began when Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell incorrectly wrote in her Sunday column that crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties when in fact Abramoff only gave money directly to Republicans. She corrects her comments here in a recent post.

The Post claims that they received hundreds of emails containing profanity and name-calling and had to turn off comments because they could not keep up with them all.

But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being. It's a shame that it's come to this. Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about.

The blog is still active and it appears that only the comments have been turned off. An AP story suggesting that the blog has been shuttered does not appear to be accurate.