Anonymity

A recent Red Electric post has drawn comment from an anonymous writer who takes strong exception to my comments about CEOs who are paid many, many times what their workers are.

You can read his (and my) remarks yourself.

I screen all comments to the Red Electric — not that there are that many to screen, alas. I set a very low bar for letting comment through to this page. If you have a point to make and can make it relatively respectfully and articulately, you’re posted.

But I do pause at anonymous submissions, regardless of quality and comity. Unless there is some obvious reason for a comment to remain anonymous (like you might lose your job or cause someone’s demise, including your own), I can see no reason for anonymity.

I believe that ideas should be traceable to their source. Knowing the authors' identities gives added weight to content because named sources publicly take responsibility for their words and their consequences.

As I read “anonymous’” call for the freedom to make as much money as one wants, apparently without regard to consequences born by others, I thought of the signers of the Declaration of Independence who also wrote of freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

Talk about consequences!

When they signed their names to the Declaration, they immediately made themselves criminals in the eyes of the King. They knew that they had, in essence, placed bounties on their heads.

Yet had no names been affixed to the Declaration of Independence it would have had little or no effect. Imagine “We hold these truths to be self-evident” without knowing who “we” were.

It’s relatively easy to put words on page or screen. If you claim those words as your own, you imply a commitment to live by them and a responsibility for their veracity and consequence. Only in exceptional instances should writers be permitted to shirk either.

On anonymity

Over the last couple of days, I’ve engaged in a long and tendentious exchange with an anonymous commenter to a Red Electric post about Obama’s Philadelphia speech last week.

“Anonymous” has chosen to address me as “Rick” repeatedly. There’s an implied familiarity, which I am unable to reciprocate because I have no idea who is writing.

Frankly, I find it annoying (being an annoyance may be the writer’s intention) and disingenuous to have an anonymous writer address me personally. Imagine getting a phone call from someone who doesn’t give you his or her name but who addresses you by yours.

Of course, anonymity has its uses, but I see them as being applicable only rarely to comments to a blog like this one.

To me, anonymity reflects an unwillingness for writers to take personal responsibility for their words. Such writers can’t be held to account for what they write, and so they can, and sometimes do, write anything. There is no way to know whether they believe what they write. (Having said that, I have no reason to believe that my current anonymous correspondent is insincere in his or her beliefs.)

On the other hand, you could argue that as long as the comments are opinion, and not statements of fact, there’s no real harm done. The words should be judged on their face value — never mind who wrote them.

By the way, I have sometimes referred to incidents and comments without naming the people involved because the names themselves aren't relevant.

So when else is anonymity justified?

In journalism, we try to avoid anonymous sources. The only time anonymity can be justified is when the use of a name might endanger the source or cost him or her a job. By the way, courts, by forcing journalists to reveal names of anonymous sources, undermine the ability of journalists to gather information from anonymous sources. If a journalist can’t ensure anonymity in the courtroom, sources dry up.

Of course, journalists also must satisfy themselves that the information given to them by anonymous sources is true. They often do so by finding corroborating, independent sources.

The other time anonymity is justified is when someone does a good deed or has a clever idea but doesn’t seek credit or publicity for it.

All of which has led me to think about how to treat anonymous comments to this site. Recently as “the site administrator,” I have been deleting pseudonymous comments that simply are links that turn out to be to commercial sites.

Now, to encourage correspondents to put their names on their words, I’m seriously considering deleting anonymous comments that don’t meet the above journalistic parameters.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on this matter.

Please do not respond anonymously!