Friday, January 18, 2008

BostonNOW Story on Language Used on BC Sports Fans Websites

The free daily, BostonNOW, has picked up the story, first reported here on the Brighton Centered Blog, of anti-Semitic and misogynistic comments posted on two online discussion boards devoted to Boston College athletics.

The BostonNOW story includes statements from Jack Dunn, Director of Public Affairs at BC, and Bobby Burton, editor-in-chief of one of the websites (rivals.com):
BC spokesman Jack Dunn said disciplinary actions will be taken against the posters if they are current members of the university's community. BC police is handling the investigation, he said, but would involve Boston police if necessary.

Rivals editor-in-chief said his company does the best it can to stay on top of the postings.

"We monitor and moderate the message boards and try to eliminate any items that violate the terms of service," Bobby Burton said.

He said he has not yet heard from any University officials about the matter.

"From a Rivals perspective, if there is anti-Semitic jargon, it would be grounds for dismissal from the site and it should be deleted," Burton said.

"Anything threatening, frankly."
The story does not, however, quote any official from scout.com, which is where the most inflammatory content was posted -- and where the BC discussion boards, Eagle Insider, have now been converted from free to paid subscriber-only status, along with a pledge to clean up the content.  The Eagle Insider board administrator stated yesterday that reporters had been "badgering" the scout.com Vice President.

2 comments:

Andrea Martin said...

Well, it certainly is sad its gotten to this point. obviously the rhetoric got turned up way too high. those comments were over the top and unnecessary, although I think many were taken out of context.

Also, comments on the BC Neighbors forum about traveling squads of Brighton residents that would search out parties and attempt to zoom in and take pictures of kids inside homes having parties probably didn't help things too much either. There's certainly blame on both sides.

I think this is beyond repair

Michael Pahre said...

Another death threat has been directed this morning at a Brighton community activist. This behavior is absolutely idiotic.

While I understand that many people would like continued comment back-and-forth here on general town-gown relations or BC master plan details, threats of violence have no place in the discourse.

So I am locking down comments on this blog post.

I hope the gentle readers of this blog will understand the necessity of this action based on the increasingly vitriolic comments that continue to be posted here and elsewhere.