Newspapers always publish their readers’ letters with the writer’s name and address appended there for everyone to read (Or at least they do secure in the knowledge that those vital facts have been supplied).
Newspaper websites are rather different, though. Here you may find the odd contributed comment deleted by the anonymous hand of the moderator, but mostly the vitriol flows free. There is “uncivil behaviour” by the bucketload; screens heaving with what Reuters calls “repetition, [issues of] taste, legal risk or political bias”.
No longer on Reuters.com, however, where new rules now rule out all of the above. Perhaps not much longer on major sites in the United States, either, where the swing against anonymity grows stronger by the month — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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