Rick Scott, the velvet rope and my guy
An interesting question of freedom

Inflaming the masses, deleting comments, and responsibility

Crowley Political Report editor Brian E. Crowley was interviewed about social media and its impact on political discourse.

Below is the print web story as well as the broadcast story. 

 

 

By Mollie Reynolds, WPTV NewsChannel 5

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - For good or for bad, anybody and everybody with internet access has a venue to express his or her opinions.

"Everybody's online. Everybody has their own sliver of audience and things spread rapidly," said Brian Crowley of Crowley Political Report.

On his blog, Crowley reports on Florida politics as well as national politics. Although he gives people a platform to speak their mind, he knows that he has a responsibility. "Our policy is that if comments are over the top or too strong we don't allow them, we delete them."

Crowley thinks our political leaders need to help control the dialogue on these social media sites as well. "They listen to their leaders and react. Whether it's Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, they listen to these often harsh dialogues and then they react to those things, often more intensely than the politicians making the comments."

With a website graphic that placed gun sight logos on a map of targeted congressional districts, it didn't take long for Sarah Palin to get pulled into this weekend's tragedy.

"I think it's terribly unfair to say Sarah Palin has anything to do with this shooting. But I will lump Sarah Palin and people on the right and left together with people who raise these inflammatory issues in inflammatory ways. That feeds into the social media and there are people out there who blog and put things on Facebook and Twitter and that don't see the context of those things," Crowley said.

 

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