Failure to moderate Facebook comments about car wreck sees paper censured by Press Council
A local newspaper breached Press Council standards by refusing to delete derogatory Facebook comments about a fatal car smash, but not in publishing pictures of the scene on social media within 30 minutes of the crash.
The APC found Victorian local paper The Moorabool News failed to delete comments on its Facebook page under a post about the October 9 smash, following which the driver of the car died, which included: “20 year old kid…deserves what he got not the poor old tree”; “thankfully the idiot travelling at 150km per hour is not on our roads tonight”; and “he did it deliberately”.
In its ruling the APC noted that the paper had deleted some but not all the negative comments “but not those that the driver’s family understandably found to be very offensive”.
The APC really is a running joke given that it just found a newspaper guilty of not censoring comments it didn’t make.
Duncan, Moorabool News is legally responsible for all comments contributed by members of the public to Moorabool News Facebook posts.
What were the consequences of this breach ruling?
Agree Andy. And it’s not just derogatory comments either. I’ve seen countless times Facebook users making defamatory comments about individuals going undeleted on newspaper sites. It’s time newspapers clean up their act and remove those posts. Washing your hands of the issue and claiming it’s others, not us, is not good enough.