A Citizen analysis found that more than 300 comments on facebook.com/pmharper have been purged over the past few months.
Many were sanitized because they contain foul language or posted links to other sites. But more than 100 comments erased from view were simply criticism of Harper and his government.
Numerous comments on Harper’s Facebook message calling on Canadians to donate to East Africa drought relief were spiked.
“We don’t have starving people like they do … Have a heart people you don’t like seeing starving people in canada get up and do something about it yourself instead of complaining about it ...” said one comment, since sent to the recycle bin.
“You World leaders and all of the governments in this World are doing nothing for the People, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh,” said another.
And finally: “Stop sending our money to these people!”
Many comments related to abortion were also erased, such as, “What about the violence that is happening on our own soil P. Harper ... What about the violence that is occurring to unborn and now even the new born children of this country ...”
Dozens of commenters posted links to the website wewantthedebate.ca, which calls on Harper to reopen the discussion about abortion he has said he has no intention of revisiting. These comments were purged, apparently because the page administrators block those that contain addresses of other sites.
Over the summer, Harper’s page flagged his cameo appearance on a television show called Murdoch Mysteries. A woman in Edmonton commented, “Should have had Jack Layton play the part of the Prime Minister.” Her message was also erased.
Someone who runs a pro-Palestine Facebook page posted on the same thread, “No im busy watching muslim children die in wars you supported mr harper. Sorry to busy for your side show antics at the harper circus.”
Several comments about Harper marking Korean War Veterans Day were also spiked, including:
When Harper’s page announced Canada’s condemnation of an assault by Syrian security forces against protesters, a commenter wrote, “this is very hypocritical imho. as his omnibus bill is a violation of human rights, and to not recognise that cannabis is a medicine. and hasnt killed anyone in human history. but he wants patients like me, to either die or go to jail. It was also deleted.
Still, many other critical comments remain on the page.
To track the deletion of comments, the Citizen used a custom computer program that checked all the comments on Harper’s Facebook page every 30 minutes and compared them to the previous comments list. Although the comments were deleted from Facebook, they were retained in the Citizen’s database.
Harper has two Facebook pages with nearly identical content. The more heavily trafficked, with more than 66,000 “Likes” from other Facebook members, is run by the Conservative party. The Prime Minister’s Office is responsible for the other, less-visited version.
Conservative party spokesman Fred DeLorey said the comments on the Harper page are mostly courteous, respectful, factual and on topic. However, there are times when they are not, so they are removed.
The Prime Minister’s Office says Harper’s Facebook page is used to let Canadians know about government initiatives and share some lighter, personal moments.
Comments are always encouraged and welcomed, as long as they are courteous and respectful, press secretary Sara MacIntyre said in an email. Messages with links to other websites are removed, as well as those that are inaccurate, offensive or have abusive language.
McIntyre says it’s possible that some of the posts were deleted voluntarily by the people who wrote them.
The online magazine Slate last year ran a similar experiment with the Facebook page of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and found that about 10 per cent of comments were deleted, many because they were critical.
Origin
Source: Ottawa Citizen
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