Irish Times website no longer allowing comments

'Maybe because they generally dislike official censorship and find it hard to apply any such concept to the digital media.'

It's so easy to create your own blog/web site though. Why do you need the IT to host your opinions?

I don't think the so called "new media environment" has such a rosy future.

Integrity in reporting and commentating will always win out in the end.

Reading anonymous posters "bruising egos" has a very limited shelf life for anyone who really wants to be informed.

People who disagree with you are not necessarily blind to the issue.

You think the comments section on newspaper articles constitutes feedback to the newspaper? Have you ever read a comments section?

I suspect (based on no evidence whatsoever) that the comments suggested that many of the IT’s readers were a lot less ‘liberal’ than the IT’s view of itself and it didn’t really like that. In particular, Monday morning under Una Mullally’s latest masterpiece was always a bloodbath

Priest and people faced one direction from time immemorial until some academic priests who never had a parish in their entire lives changed everything in the mid to late 60s. The parishioners who wanted their accustomed devotions were simpletons to be scorned. More and more stopped going, rest is history. Perhaps similarly journalist wokists already regard ordinary people as hatethinking plebs. Reply with a polite disagreement with an Irish Independent or Times tweet, and see how your Twitter account remains unsuspended (hint: not long). An upper class leftwinger (like Fintan O'Toole the stout working class hero from Crumlin whose sneer can be almost felt in every article) has by default a contempt for ordinary people and most rural people.

I always felt they used Breda O'Brian and Una Mullaly so much to act as stablisers for a notion of neutrality, but in reality their constant publishing of Michael McDowell is probably closer to the mindset of the south county Dublin landlord set that see the Irish Times as theirs.

The gender wars lurch in the IT after the Aisling Murphy murder alienated me in the same way british tabloids repulse with their racism. At least by the comments section in those initial days I knew i wasn't alone in feeling vilified and i noted they they changed a few headlines to be less gender warfare, but the damage was done.

In the past columnists were usually much older with a distinguished journalism career already behind them. Or maybe they had been a judge and were now retired.

But anyway the IT is a "liberal activist" newspaper, as Geraldine Kennedy made explicit in an editoral, so having Mullally in place must be considered the best way to advance the specific political agenda that the IT advocates for.

Yes, that's why they have a weekly column from the Iona "Institute" and regular opinion pieces from bishops.

The Irish Times is officially a "liberal activist" newspaper according to its own self-description.

Geraldine Kennedy announced this in an editorial.

They obviously do not see regular and occasional pieces from conservative Catholics as undercutting the official position of the paper, which is liberal activism.

Do “Liberals” care about freedom nowadays? Of course, they care about their own freedom (who doesn’t?) and support all sorts of “rights” but the IT has shut down a channel for free expression without explanation.

So much for the old liberal motto  I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It

No explanation, just a vague asssurance that they will eventually do something which they haven’t yet done.

I haven’t speculated on their reasoning.

The great thing about Boards is that it’s open to all but no one is forced to read it.Would that others with more power followed its example. Next time the IT extols virtues like “openness” or “inclusion” or even “freedom”, put a little asterisk there.

I wouldn’t object if they had a “subscriber only” comment policy, though I am seriously questioning my own subscription.

2 posts in 5 years. You've been awfully quiet for a free-speech advocate!

I'm sorry, but is this a joke?

Kennedy, despite anything she might have written, was a PD and as rightwing as they come, and she turned the IT into a platform for the neocons. Neither liberal under her watch (except in the economic sense) nor activist (unless you mean active in supporting Bush II and his wars). And while it may have got rid of the worst US neocon commentators, it certainly has changed its stance in any meaningful way since Kennedy made a PD soapbox of it.

Geraldine Kennedy has been retired since 2011 and there have been two subsequent editors at the IT, I fail to see the relevance

Seems a major step back, as far as trends go. Internet is now all about interactions, clicks, activity. Everyone is trying to encourage users to stay, subscribe, become part of the community.

Killing said activity, reducing the website and all interaction to view is the opposite of that. I look forward to IT pushing how they're the remaining beacon of truth free from censorship, pay us and be silent you bigot.

That (website owners held liable for comments) is the way it's always been in Ireland - remember the clash between Boards and MCD?

Basically if you have deeper pockets than the other guy you can threaten and bully and get anything unflattering to you or your business taken down regardless of its truth.

It can be difficult for ordinary readers to separate the good journalists from the useless. The good journalists tend to rely upon expert opinion. The useless journalists, the Phil Space and Polly Filla types that are all too common in the Irish media, decide that they are, without any basis in reality, experts. This happened a lot in the DotCom bubble era. Much the same thing happened with the Property Bubble. There was a contest during the DotCom era where people would create the most factually and technologically inaccurate press release and see which technology journalists would run it. It didn't last long when it was established that most technology journalists in the non-specialist media were completely clueless about Technology or the business of Technology and were just the padding between adverts. That does get back to the important point of about publications that people seem to ignore.

Publications are in business. They have to make money to survive. The high-minded stuff about being "the paper of record", setting the agenda or informing the public is rubbish. They are simply trying to make money. The comments sections on articles with low levels of traffic may not make enough money through advertising revenue and as such they would have been run at a loss for the publications. The way that the articles by some columnists rarely get any comments shows how irrelevent they are and this highlights bad management decisions. That can be valuable commercial information for competing publications. The New York Times has around 9 million digital subscribers and has a large print readership. Irish publications are not on the same scale in terms of readership or subscribers. Irish publications are also losing their ability to influence political discussions as many of them have switched to Social Media and the traditional, self-appointed role of newspapers and journalists as gatekeepers no longer exists.

Regards...jmcc