Frightened? Probably not.
Tired of having to monitor the comments. Probably so.
Create a Wordpress account. Watch how quickly the spam bots find it and start posting:
1: Ads for online medicines.
2: Porn
3: Paid political spammers/trolls - usually ultra liberal
4: etc. etc. etc.
More media will probably follow their path.
they do not like the content of the comments. too many people are waking up.