Auntie Charo's Soapbox

Here's what Marianas Variety had to say about the reason we can no longer read the thoughts and opinions of some good posts on K57's message board: "By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

Sorensen Pacific Broadcasting on Tuesday shut down the Newstalk K57 message board, citing “concerns over liability exposure caused by statements made in message posts and topic threads.”
The K57 message board has served as Guam residents’ online forum for discussion and debates on political issues and other current events but some registered users have turned it into a venue for political attacks.
“It’s a politically charged message board with some members probably having a political background,” said Ray Gibson, host of the morning Breakfast Show.
In a letter to the editor published in Variety’s March 14 issue, Dededo resident Billy Lee complained about a March 9 entry, which he said was loaded with racial slurs.
Lee was referring to a posted comment suggesting that donations to any Filipino organizations “will result in the money being scammed, stolen, ripped off.”
“As a news talk station we obviously support the rights of residents to express themselves. But some members took advantage of the anonymity the Internet provides to say some reckless things,” Gibson said.
“We decided that we did not want to be associated in any way with those statements and the people who made them. Any benefits we derived from the message board were simply not worth endangering our reputation as responsible members of the media,” he added.
Gibson said the network’s decision to discontinue the chat room “was based on a series of discussions to evaluate the message board.”
“While we considered it useful in terms of gauging the relative popularity of our islands many topics, we simply weren’t satisfied that it was worth the constant moderation, editing and scrutiny it required to keep it up to our standards of acceptability,” Gibson said. "

I remember the days when Charo had an open forum. I had to be up most of the time just to read what was being said about others so that I could delete the posts. I finally decided that there wasn't enough valium to keep the angst away and decided that there were more haters than there were good thoughts and so with a sad heart, decided to close the page. I see that K57 decided to do likewise. Now where will we go for our rumor fix?

Isn't it funny (as in odd) that it was news worthy enough to make it a story on M. Variety? I really like that paper....more and more, there's more local news in that paper than the one that's printed here.

Anyway K57, it was fun while it lasted........I shall miss the page but I won't miss the haters and their sarcastic/cynical posts. It's too bad that they don't realize there's help for their mental condition and some pretty decent drugs for their attitude.