UPDATE: Making Fun Of Someone’s Name Is OK?
HERES AN UPDATE on an item we posted yesterday taking KRTV and their Online News Director Dave Sherman to task for what some of their readers/viewers consider to be an unexplainable and contradictory censorship/delete/block policy on the stations Facebook page.
We used a screenshot from that Facebook page to illustrate the point. You can read our post and see the screenshot here.
Two commenters on our own Facebook page took us to task for “attacking” Sherman and KRTV. We welcome criticism and “attacks” on our content but we wondered then and wonder now why the critics of our KRTV/Sherman post didn’t seem even a little concerned that KRTV allowed the insulting, derogatory, homophobic comments to remain on the page even after 6 hours.
“…but we wondered then and wonder now why the critics of our KRTV/Sherman post didn’t seem even a little concerned that KRTV allowed the insulting, derogatory, homophobic comments to remain on the page even after 6 hours.”
So we went back and looked again – and lo and behold, two of the three slurs are STILL THERE after more than 30 hours. Here’s the screenshot taken about 6:50 PM, Thursday:
“Judge fagg lmfao!”
“What a fagg !”
This is why we find KRTV’s policy so strange; these slurs are allowed to remain even though they clearly contradict KRTV’s own policy which we’ve included below (emphasis added).
“KRTV Facebook Comment Guidelines (Sept. 14, 2017)
•Comments that contain vulgar, profane, hateful, or abusive language or images; personal attacks against other commenters, or offensive terms that discriminate against specific ethnic, national, racial, or sexual groups.
•Derogatory comments about a person’s appearance or name.
•Comments that point out spelling/grammar errors of other commenters
•Comments that are clearly off-topic or spam
•Comments that make unsupported legal accusations or encourage illegal activity, or which contain deliberate falsehoods or misinformation.
•Comments that implicate family members in crimes that they are not charged with.
•”Drive-by” or sarcastic comments that are designed primarily to elicit negative responses or start a comment fight (sometimes known as trolling).
•Comments that link to non-MTN news sites”
Oddly enough, these guidelines which were apparently copied and posted yesterday by a commenter on the KRTV FB page, appear to have been taken down from the link they list for guidelines. As of 8:00 PM Thursday we got the following message when clicking the link: http://www.krtv.com/story/34511953/krtv-facebook-page-commenting-guidelines
“Our Apologies
The page you requested is currently unavailable. Pages on this site are constantly being revised, updated, and occasionally removed. You may have followed an outdated link or have outdated pages in your browser cache.
Please use your browser’s BACK button to return to the previous page.
We apologize for any inconvenience.”
By not deleting the offensive comments, is Online News Editor Sherman just being stubborn to prove point or does he consider homophobic, derogatory slurs mocking someone’s name to be appropriate content for KRTV’s FB page?
Well, actually, those of us who lived in Billings for many years lost all humorous associations with the Fagg name years ago. We are accustomed to it. To us, it’s no big deal. It’s only people from other areas of the state that still get a reaction to it. My wife was friends with one of the Fagg kids. It’s kinda like the old Lenny Bruce skits. Say it enough it’s no big deal. I find it interesting that some folks don’t recognize an old Montana name. They’ve been there a long time. Good people.
For the younger crowd who never knew Lenny. The suppression of a word gives it its power. One of our greatest comedians, Lenny Bruce.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t4jWxo8X8zs