In hindsight, several people on our Facebook page who made this suggestion were right: I should have stopped allowing comments on our stories about the death of a McComb police officer and another man.
So many of them were mean and insensitive, given that two people had just died. The circumstances of what happened remain in question, and as of Monday morning, law enforcement has not provided further details.
That didn’t prevent a ton of online speculation. I was late to the game in terms of managing our Facebook page, and did not check the comments on the two stories until Wednesday afternoon, about 20 hours after we posted the first story.
I spent at least an hour clicking the “hide” button on comments that were out of bounds. I’ve been back twice more since then to hide more recent comments. By Friday, weary of the task, I was tempted just to delete the stories but figured it’s still my job to report the news.
Then, someone in the office joyfully informed me that the “hide” function only prevented me from seeing the questionable comments. Not anyone else. So I had to start over.
Which means as I write this, all the out-of-bounds commentary has been on our page for several days. This was not my finest moment.
There have been stories in the past where the comments got out of hand. One that compares to this week’s was in August 2022, when a state trooper stopped a driver on Schmidt Road west of McComb. The trooper had to wrestle the driver into his cruiser as the driver’s brother recorded the confrontation.
The trooper was white and the driver was black, which set off the predictable racial arguments on our Facebook page. I was visiting my son in Houston, Texas at the time and spent much of that Saturday afternoon blocking posts on the story.
Last week's experience affirms what has been evident for some time: Social media outlets like Facebook, where unrestricted commentary is encouraged and in many ways legally protected, has turned too many of us into belligerent people who will type anything that comes to our mind without thinking. Doesn’t matter if what’s written is hurtful, insulting or even inaccurate — the venom is spewing out.
Just so you know, I’m still a First Amendment freedom of speech guy. I never object to someone whose opinion on a subject is different from mine, even if they are rude in telling me so. I try to get different viewpoints on the Opinion page, and our reporters try to get both sides of a story.
But the First Amendment does have limits. There are libel and slander laws, and the reason all this crazy commentary happens online is because the platforms like Facebook aren’t held accountable under the law for what their customers say on the site.
One day, and I thought it would have arrived already, reason will return. Congress will apply free-speech laws equally to everyone. Until that happens, this will not be the last time that crude commentary appears on our Facebook page.
Besides, there are plenty of other places to vent besides our Facebook pages. I’ve seen what a few individuals wrote on their own pages, criticizing what they see as a cover-up of what happened and making accusations that, for now, have not been confirmed.
Regarding Wednesday’s shooting, some of the comments about the two men who died were puzzling.
For the police officer, no one in authority has confirmed why he was at the house east of McComb. If it was for the wrong reason, then so be it, and we’ll report it. But I doubt any information will be released until after his funeral next weekend.
As for the gunman, there were several comments on our stories along the “he was a great guy” line. But he killed a police officer, wounded a woman and then killed himself. That’s hard to overlook.
Anyway, I regret not taking action more quickly to delete some of the comments on our page. The lesson has been learned, and I will act more quickly the next time a local eventgets attention like this one did.
Once in a while, the best thing to do is reject all comments and let people take their anger elsewhere.
