A statement from KSL management on social media discourse

Editorial note: the following is a statement from Tanya Vea, Senior Vice President of News and General Manager of KSL TV, KSL Radio and KSL Sports. 

At KSL, our job is to inform the public on issues that are newsworthy and relevant to our viewers and listeners. In addition to informing, our mission as trusted voices is also to build up, connect, and celebrate the people we serve.

Those people are you. A wide-ranging, diverse community who make up our audiences. Your voice matters to us. Your stories are our stories. As local journalists (broadcasters), who also live here, we take our commitment to make our collective community a better, more informed place seriously.

Recently, we’ve grown concerned with the tone of the conversation happening on our social media channels. While we understand and respect that difficult issues often require difficult conversations, too often the comments are veering away from just disagreement to disrespectful, and crossing the line into attacks on fellow commenters.

We believe in free speech, our business depends on it. And with that right comes responsibility.

We want to hear what you think and we want to engage with you. Our request is that when you are commenting on our pages you treat others with respect, even if you disagree with them. No harassment, name-calling, or hate speech. Any content that violates our standards will be removed from our pages.

We want our sites to be a welcoming place for discussion from a wide variety of viewpoints. Thank you for helping us in this effort.

The following will not be tolerated on our platforms:

• Hate speech
  • defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation”.
• Personal attacks
• Name calling
• Harassment
• Foul language
• Unsubstantiated information
  • not supported or proven by evidence.
• Fake accounts
• Spam

Got questions, comments, or concerns? You can reach KSL by email at news@ksl.com, call the station at 801-575-5555, or write us via snail mail at 55 North 300 West Salt Lake City UT 84101-3502.