{"id":101230,"date":"2015-10-15T11:29:01","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T09:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=101230"},"modified":"2015-10-15T11:29:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T09:29:01","slug":"iol-closes-comments-on-its-online-articles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/101230\/iol-closes-comments-on-its-online-articles\/","title":{"rendered":"IOL closes comments on its online articles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Independent Online (IOL) says it will be closing comments on its online articles with immediate effect.<\/p>\n<p>It follows a similar announcement by News24 editor-in-chief Andrew Trench last month.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"byline\">Adrian Ephraim, IOL managing editor\u00a0<\/span>said in a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/news\/dear-reader-we-re-closing-comments-1.1930349?utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_source=dlvr.it#.Vh9vVGtGTwI\" target=\"_blank\"> letter<\/a> on the group&#8217;s website on Thursday (15 October) that instances of abuse in the comments section have become untenable.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear IOL reader, we need to talk \u2026<\/p>\n<p>I thought you should be the first to know that Independent Online (IOL) will be closing comments on its online articles with immediate effect.<\/p>\n<p>It is a difficult but necessary decision to make and we arrived at it after careful consideration of all the factors at play.<\/p>\n<p>The freedom of expression guaranteed by our Constitution was never meant to override the personal freedoms and human rights of our fellow citizens.<\/p>\n<p>Let me be clear that commenting on an article is not a right, but a courtesy afforded to you by IOL as a reader.<\/p>\n<p>If you are prone to being racist or sexist in your thinking, by all means express yourself on other platforms that may find such behaviour acceptable, but not on IOL.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"byline\">Ephraim said that losing online comments is a crucial decision that could not be taken lightly, &#8220;but today we take the leap and put the interests of our loyal readers first&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>IOL said it will publish the public&#8217;s opinion where it believes it is conducive to healthy debate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;From now on we will only tolerate meaningful contributions that take place with dignity, respect and clarity of though,&#8221; the editor said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on South Africa&#8217;s media<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/97739\/news24-is-shutting-down-its-comments-section\/\"><strong>News24 is shutting down its comments section<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Independent Online (IOL) says it will be closing comments on its online articles with immediate effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":100172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5554],"tags":[26,3426,3428],"class_list":["post-101230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-headline","tag-iol","tag-news24"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101230"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101236,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101230\/revisions\/101236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}