The Washington Post was forced to shut down comments on one of its blogs yesterday as readers responded angrily to a statement made by ombudsman Deborah Howell that Jack Abramoff, who is at the centre of a Washington scandal for having bribed a significant number of politicans in order to 'buy influence', payed off Democrats as well as Republicans.

Morningstar reports that Jim Brady, Executive Editor at wasingtonpost.com, confirmed that "there were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's staff could not 'keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff,' and so the Post shut down comments on the blog."

The following statement was made on the Washington Post blog regarding the closure of the comments feature: "At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues … We knew a lot of that discussion would be critical in nature … But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being."

Significantly, The Washington Post has state that the closure of the comments feature on its blog is 'indefinite'.

Source: Morningstar, Washington Post (through the IFRA newsletter)