A report by Jonathan Hoffman [pdf] looks at the problem of anti-Semitic comment on the Guardian's Comment is Free. I have not had a chance to read the report properly yet, and my posting a link should not be taken as expressing a judgement about it one way or the other. I want to make an observation about just one limited aspect that is covered early on in the report (see paragraphs 17-21 at pp. 4-5).
Comments on the posts at Comment is Free are not generally pre-moderated, but only read after going up, and then deleted at some point later on if there is felt to be a problem with them. Unless things have changed since the time when I (occasionally) blogged there, this policy contrasts with the way the posts of the CiF bloggers themselves are handled. At that time (and I understand that this has not changed) putting up a blog post at Comment is Free couldn't be done directly by the blogger whose post it was, but had to go through those administering the site. When I asked why this was, I was told that it was for legal reasons: in order that each post could be checked to see it didn't run afoul of the law.
I can understand that pre-moderating all comments would be a much bigger job than is pre-moderating the posts that generate them. Nonetheless, bigger is bigger; it is not out of the question. If there is anti-Semitic or other racist comment, to say nothing of abusive comment of an entirely non-racist kind, going up at Comment is Free, this job one might have thought to be a necessary undertaking. That it isn't seen as one suggests that the Guardian is more relaxed, at any rate, about racist and other abusive comment on its site than it is about running into legal difficulty (if, in fact, it would run into legal difficulty: for, after all, the CiF posts could, like the comments, be moderated once they were up and quickly taken down or amended if they looked dodgy).
