Within the greater Maine community, the Bangor Daily News offers a purposeful platform for the exchange of viewpoints, where its subscribers can offer their personal comments, insights, and suggestions with respect to published editorials, letters, and opinions contained within each daily edition. In an ideal world, this rather valuable community resource should facilitate a much-needed reciprocity of ideas, allowing its readers the opportunity to interact with writers of published articles.
However, given the precarious nature of our current political environment, is such a hypothetical exchange of opinions even possible? Apparently not on the Bangor Daily News platform. Why? A valued interchange of ideas is always and directly predicated upon honesty: the ability to “know” the identity of the individual or individuals with whom you are conducting a dialogue. In the BDN’s current forum system, the author of each published entity is known. On the other hand, each subscriber, who is “offering” their opinion in the online comment section can be anonymous, employing a moniker to hide their identity. Is this fair? No.
If a subscriber wishes to put forth their personal comments, why hide in the shadows? Does concealing their real identity allow unbridled anger, hatred, or insecurities to be unleashed more readily, without having to be publicly responsible for their rhetoric? Apparently so, but is it not pointless? Why must writers tolerate abuse by anonymous subscribers for simply expressing their honest views in an open and direct fashion? Why should honesty only be a one-way option? So, subscribers — be transparent!
John M. Mishler
Harpswell
