Charlie Crystle was walking his dog near Hand Middle School recently when he ran into a couple of students outside the school.
When he asked them how they were doing academically, Crystle recalled, one of the boys replied, "We're Puerto Ricans. We get all 'F's."
To Crystle, a School District of Lancaster board member, that exchange was a perfect example of how negative stereotypes can affect students.
And in Crystle's mind, many of those stereotypes are spread freely — and anonymously — on TalkBack, the online forum sponsored by Lancaster Newspapers Inc.
Crystle criticized the newspaper company, which publishes the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era and the Sunday News, at the school board's meeting last Thursday, claiming it allows people to anonymously post demeaning and racist comments about Hispanics, blacks and other minorities on its website, lancasteronline.com.
"It's frankly upsetting because this undermines everything we're trying to accomplish in this community, and the editors of the paper should be ashamed," he said.
"They have standards, they own that online property, and they can enforce those standards, but they've chosen not to."
Crystle said he does not know if TalkBack comments had any bearing on the Hand students' comments the other day, but "it really affects the psyche of the students when they see that crap."
He is urging the newspaper to better screen the content of the comments on its website or require that posters identify themselves by name.
While other SDL board members said they support Crystle's views, the board has not taken a formal position on the issue.
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Bob Magel, Lancaster Newspapers marketing director, said TalkBack is, by design, controlled largely by community members, not the newspaper.
"The editors don't control it, and to some extent Lancaster Newspapers does not directly control it," he said. "It's a platform for people in the county to speak.
"It's really no different than setting up a soapbox for people on the street to make comments."
Magel said the newspaper removes objectionable or blatantly false comments if someone complains about them, but it does not routinely screen TalkBack postings.
To participate in the forum, users must register by providing the newspaper with valid e-mail and home addresses, Magel said, but that personal information is kept confidential.
Users may post comments on the site under whatever user name they choose. Most pick a name that keeps them anonymous, although some, like Crystle, use their own names.
That "cloak of online anonymity," Crystle said, gives "cowards who would never say these racist, bigoted things in public … the power to damage the community — which they never would have in the offline community."
TalkBack users must agree to adhere to rules that bar the posting of "any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy or otherwise violative of any law."
Magel said most users respect the rules. For those who don't, other users can click a "report" button on an offending post and register a complaint.
Lancaster Newspapers might get several complaints about posts on any given day, depending on what events have transpired in the community or what stories posters are commenting on, said Karl Kittler, webmaster for lancasteronline.com.
If a post is libelous or verifiably false, it's removed. Some comments have been so volatile, Magel said, that entire threads of posts on a particular topic are removed.
Neither Kittler nor Magel could say how often a posting is removed, but Kittler said it's "rather uncommon."
Crystle claims those safeguards are inadequate, and said racially motivated stereotyping is commonplace on TalkBack.
To prove his point, last week he sent the newspaper about a dozen threads of comments on stories that have appeared in the past year.
The posts contained "the 'N' word," referred to Hispanics as "Ricans," called minorities lazy and challenged other posters "to name one area of Lancaster where blacks and Puerto Ricans live that doesn't have a high crime rate."
Comments like these "that day after day are full of hate" are routinely posted in response to stories involving the arrests of suspects who are black or Hispanic, Crystle said.
Such comments also appear when unflattering articles about district schools appear on the website, Crystle said.
While only a few of the hundreds of comments posted on TalkBack may be negative, he said, hundreds or thousands of Internet users may read them.
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Requiring that posters be identified by name would likely cut down on some of that nastiness, Crystle said.
But Magel said it also would likely cut down on the number of people participating in the TalkBack forum.
Anonymity reduces the fear that users will face physical retaliation for their comments and makes them more inclined to speak their mind, he said.
"I guess if you're standing on that soapbox on the street making a comment, someone can throw a tomato at you," Magel said.
"But (on TalkBack), the worst that will happen is someone saying, 'I disagree with you, and here's why.' "
Magel acknowledged anonymity also can embolden people to say outrageous or offensive things they otherwise wouldn't say.
But if the newspaper were to pick and choose what appears on TalkBack, he said, it would become liable for the site's content.
"We become the editor and then we, ourselves, are liable for the comments that are made," Magel said. "It's definitely a liability issue."
He said Lancaster Newspapers is "seriously looking at" upgrading its system so that posters could rate their fellow commentators.
Comments that other posters find objectionable would be pulled, and the offending poster could lose his/her privileges.
But for now, Magel said, no changes are planned for TalkBack, which has been in existence since 2000 and has 982 registered users.
"The people who are on TalkBack really love it," he said. "They do like to read what other people are saying."
Crystle said he wants to work with the newspaper and the online community to try to weed out the offensive comments that appear online.
"I think it will take a little bit of leadership from Lancaster Newspapers and the online community to police itself," he said.
"It's very hard to change a bigot, but we can certainly prevent them from spreading their filth. It's not acceptable in America, I'm happy to say."