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From the editor:
Since Carolina Public Press launched, last March, we’ve encouraged and promoted opportunities for discussion here at carolinapublicpress.org, on our Facebook page, and in our Twitter feed.
There’s lots to talk about: the increase in poverty across Western North Carolina, funding cuts to a heating assistance program, a Buncombe County judge’s wife being sentenced to prison for embezzlement.
More and more readers are submitting comments full of observation and opinion and questions, which we moderate and approve, per our editorial policy and terms of use.
But more and more of you are submitting comments using aliases, obviously made-up names and fake e-mail addresses.
Those comments will not be approved and posted. That’s too bad, because some of you have a lot of interesting things to say.
Among the reasons for our not approving these comments is the fact that we ask each of our reporters and photographers to put his or her name behind his or her reporting. We ask the same of our sources. We have not, yet, credited an anonymous source for a fact we can not independently verify. We certainly get tips and comments and news from people who wish to remain anonymous. We respect that. But before we publish a story from those tips, we work to make sure that information is accurate and can be attributed. Or, we don’t publish it.
So, we ask the same from those of you who wish to post comments and join in the discussion.
Will we never, ever publish an anonymous comment or source an anonymous person? Never say never. But the cases in which we will do so are rare, and we will do so with explanation both in our stories and in our comments.
If you’d like to make a comment, but feel there is a justifiable, reasoned explanation for why you must remain anonymous, let me know.
Thank you, and, as always, keep talking, reading, viewing and listening. Send us your ideas, feedback, news and comments.
Just let us know who you are.
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