CBC indigenous staff read real comments from CBCNews.ca
Comments on indigenous stories have been temporarily closed. This might help you understand why
This week CBC News has temporarily closed comments on indigenous stories.
It was not an easy decision to make. It took a lot of deliberation, including extensive discussion among managers and indigenous staff members.
As Brodie Fenlon, our acting director of digital news, said, "We don't want violations of our guidelines by a small minority of our commenters to derail our good work or alienate our audience."
Now CBC management has tasked a group of indigenous and non-indigenous staff members to develop guidelines and suggestions for reopening comments in the future.
In the meantime, we wanted to share with the public the kinds of comments that have been posted on our news websites, so you — our audience — can have a better understanding of the "uncivil dialogue" taking place in the comments section of our news stories.
Inspired by Jimmy Kimmel's "Mean Tweets," CBC Aboriginal decided to make its own version: CBC indigenous staff read real comments from CBCNews.ca.
It may be a bit difficult to hear these words. They are just a very small sampling of some of the comments that have been made on stories covering the indigenous community.
But we thought it was important to further understanding of why CBC News has closed comments for now.