I can't keep my mouth shut about this any longer.

One of the biggest changes in the news industry today is the ability for the media and the public to talk to each other - immediately. All the time. About pretty much anything.

In print, on the radio, on television, through e-mail, websites, Twitter: the media can talk to you, and you can talk right back.

Much of that is positive (although I wonder, sometimes, whether anybody puts in a full day's work anymore). But a recent letter from one of our readers highlights a growing problem: website comments that are hateful, libelous, derogatory, malicious, racist.... and anonymous.

Let tragedy strike - a teenager dies in a traffic accident, another is shot by a neighbor, a high-school student goes missing, a man is shot outside a tavern - and reader-comment sections fill up with anger and hate: toward victims, toward the accused, toward police, toward other readers posting comments.

This doesn't have to happen. The Democrat and Chronicle and several local television stations have made a conscious decision to let this stuff get posted. Particularly offensive comments are sometimes taken down if other readers complain. But these websites reek with insults.

The local media aren't alone. Many newspapers and television stations have bought into this anything-goes, let-readers-be-the-moderators approach to online comments. Among their arguments: It encourages public discussion, public participation in the democratic process. And it's new media. This is what the public expects in the internet age.

The reader comments you find on these websites would never make it into print or onto the air, of course. For one thing, some of them would result in a libel suit. (Courts have ruled that internet site providers - including the owners of media websites - are protected from libel suits involving content posted by third parties.)

For another, the local media have higher standards for what they put in print or on the air - in the work of their own reporters and,in the case of the D&C,in what it publishes in its letters section.

It's interesting that the daily newspaper that crusades against rap music and the coarsening of culture seems to have little problem letting readers spew out racial slurs and hate-filled attacks. (I wonder whether any of the local media would permit readers to post pornographic photographs on their websites.)

The alternative is to have somebody at the newspaper or TV station moderate the public postings: read them all and approve or delete them. That, in fact, is what we do at this newspaper. The disadvantage is the loss of immediacy. Our readers' comments don't go online until we put them there, and we don't monitor them all night. We think the quality of the comments we get outweighs that problem.

Best I can tell, we're in the minority in this. And there are arguments to be made in favor of a public-comment free-for-all. In a recent washingtonpost.com opinion piece, Doug Feaver, a former Post editor, argued in favor of unmoderated comments. They "provide a forum for readers to complain about what they see as unfairness or inaccuracy in an article," he said. They let readers talk to each other.

Well, yes, of course. But readers can do that without insulting people.

Overwhelmingly, the worst online comments are posted anonymously, and Feaver also defended the anonymity. His justification: People are more likely to say what they think if they don't have to give their names. We need to know that "the dark forces are out there," he wrote.

We do need to be reminded that racism and hatred exist. But if that's the justification, then the D&C, for example, should publish those kinds of comments in its print edition.

What the local media are really saying, though, is that they accept no responsibility for disseminating the trash. And that, I think, is quite a statement to the community.