NEW YORK—While inviting its readers to “make [their] voice heard,” the website of a major national news outlet recently described the rampant onslaught of racial slurs that appears below each of its articles as a “discussion,” sources confirmed Wednesday. “Join the discussion by sounding off in our comments section,” read a box of text on the homepage, referring to a part of the site in which people engage in racist invective while typing out long, barely coherent screeds on everything from voter ID laws to the anniversary of the March on Washington to President Obama’s ancestry. “Let us know what you think.” Reports indicated that the news website also refers to its legions of race-baiting, homophobic commenters as its “community.”

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