Remove Blogging Capabilities from Kansas City Star Breaking News Section

The breaking news section of the Star online is a great resource tool to readers who are actually interested in things going on around them. Unfortunately, it is a place for conversations about hate, race, and political status. I understand the freedom of speech and the fact that a reader is not required to read the blog, but the comments are visible at the bottom of each article.

Some of the comments that are listed after these articles are heartbreaking to the people involved. I guess I would like someone to imagine what it would be like to read horrible things that have been written about your son or daughter who just passed away. I know personally of an article that was posted regarding a death of a young man and the things posted about him were heartbreaking to his friends, family, and acquaintances. The breaking news section has become a place for people who have way too much time on their hands, to make assumptions, and quite frankly, make the mourning process harder on the families involved after reading things like that. Of course you would want to go through that blog if your family member had just passed to read comments of condolences and memories. Unfortunately, in this most recent article, we got to read about how there would be one less body at McDonalds. This comment was written by someone who didn't even know that individuals. Now I ask you, why is this allowed to happen?

I know that I am just a little person in the world of readers of the Kansas City Star, but I read comments daily about people being so frustrated with the racial slurs and hate written in these blogs. My only wonder is if there is somewhere else you could put these blogs so that people who are not reading the article for the blogs can see the article without the nasty comments displaying at the bottom of that article. I believe that Kansas City Star would build a better reputation with the true readers of your paper if they didn't have to see the immaturity and hate.

I hope that you may take what I have written to heart and sign this petition in support of the removal of the ability to see or write in response to articles in the breaking news section.

Thanks for your consideration.