Video: O’Reilly apologizes to Hot Air, sort of

Yes, he concedes, the quote last night should have been specifically attributed to a commenter, not to the site itself — but that’s what we get for letting stuff like that be posted, now isn’t it? Do a better job of moderating comments and we won’t have this problem. He’s been making this argument for years, usually when ripping on Kos, without any apparent sense of what kind of comment load blogs with big traffic deal with. Between Ed’s and my 20-25 posts plus the 40 or so Headline items, Hot Air must get, let’s say, 2,700 comments a day. To put that in perspective, if I worked 15 hours a day doing nothing but moderating them, in order to read and rule on each one I’d have to work at a clip of three comments per minute without taking a single break. That is to say, we’d need not one but two full-time moderators to do the job right, the cost of which would bankrupt nearly any blog given the realities of online ad revenue, especially in a recession. Add to that the endless headaches involved in deciding whether a given comment’s over the line and the inevitable haphazard, arbitrary standards we’d end up imposing on readers and it’s simply not worth it. Frequently we’ll get tips alerting us to really nasty stuff, like racist cracks or death threats, which we promptly clean up, but by and large, if other readers are willing to let a comment pass without mention — stupid and/or distasteful though they may find it — we’re willing too. There’s just too much else to do.

InstaGlenn has some wise words about this subject, which you should digest after watching. Oh, and if you’re wondering what was going on over at the Fox Nation website tonight while O’R was busy lecturing us on the Factor, feast your eyes.

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