The frum websites should be the same alternative the frum newspapers are to the secular press. Never has there been a frum newspaper whose editor is anonymous, many also have a rabbinical board as well. The websites that deliver news to the frum Torah community seem to have a different set of rules. The editors are all anonymous, none of them have any public rabbinic board taking responsibility for the content. Even those who claim to have a Rabbi it is not a mainstream rav accepted by the readership of that particular blog or website.
Unlike the print media, its a wild west with these frum websites. they post whatever they want articles that would never print in any of the frum papers. They seem trusting with yeshivish and yiddish sounding names and call themselves the voice of Torah Jewry and the yeshiva or heimish oilam but much of the content is far from what the yeshivish chasidish and Torah community would want to see. People trust these sites to filter the shmutz and bad hashkafos instead they sneak in articles of Lashon Hora and hashkafos that are foreign to the intended audience. It appears there are two sets of rules one for the print media and one for online.
These sites are popular and to the secular world they look at these sites as officially representative of Orthodox Jews which is a scary thought.
Its obvious that the more hits to the site ups its ranking which translates in more money from advertisements but that does not justify posting anything of interest.
Maybe after all these years its time to question the need for these frum news sites.
Everything you write is 100% correct. But you want to know what the worst part of these sites are? The comments. The public comment on them turn them into a sewer of the worst kind of l"h, rechilus and ms"r.
ReplyDeleteToday they had an article criticising a beis din for refusing to issue a get because it was rosh chodesh, even though the woman was an aguna and the husband had finally agreed to give her a get and there ws a concern that he may change his mind.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/302775/recalcitrant-husband-agrees-to-give-a-get-beis-din-not-on-rosh-chodesh.html#comment-876087
I published this following comment (but I doubt they will publish it)
"I guess you have every right despite being a layman, to be puzzled about the psak of a beis din. What you most certainly do NOT have, is the right to question their decision in public, especially without giving them the right to explain themselves.
Your publicising this is 700% unadulterated loshon horah.
Forgive me for saying this but shame on you. And there was I thinking this was a “Yeshiva” website."
What I find amazing is the constant drumbeat of criticism on this blog - itself an anonymous blog with no rabbinic backing - of other blogs on grounds of being anonymous with no rabbinic backing.
ReplyDeleteThe proffered excuse - that the blog supposedly doesn't make the same claims as the other blogs - is beyond weak.
IMO this is an amazing lack of self-awareness, and a fulfillment of Chazal's words that "ein adam roeh nigei atzmo" and "kol haposel bemumo posel".
Well said, well said.
DeleteHowever, the Hamodia writer bloger here is well aware of what he is doing.
As a frum consumer it is your responsibility to determine what you find acceptable for yourself and your family. Don't outsource that responsibility to the editor of a website or the publisher of a newspaper. Personally, I have stopped receiving most of the free "frum" circulars distributed in Lakewood because I feel that the obscene consumerism subtlety promoted by the pages and pages of glossy advertisements is not in sync with the values that I try to instill in myself and my children.
ReplyDelete