Bob Steele and
Bill Mitchell Contributing:
Mallary Jean TenoreAs if the ins and outs of Web publishing weren't challenging enough, news organizations are facing growing questions about whether, how and when to
unpublish. Specifically, are there times when the best solution is to wipe something off a site completely?
The long-term accessibility of electronic archives is changing the landscape and raising the stakes of journalism that is no longer simply here today and gone tomorrow.
The Google Effect
Widespread use of search engines means that reports distributed via print, online, radio and TV will live on for decades and decades. In the case of material that was incorrect, misleading or unfairly damaging in other ways, it's likely that the harm will also continue for years to come.
New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt called Poynter to discuss the issue last week before addressing it in his
Sunday column: "A business strategy of
The New York Times to get its articles to pop up
first in Internet searches is creating a perplexing problem:
long-buried information about people that is wrong, outdated or
incomplete is getting unwelcome new life."
Hoyt reported that
Times editors have been receiving an increasing number of requests from
people who are complaining "they are being embarrassed, are worried
about losing or not getting jobs, or may be losing customers because of
the sudden prominence of old news articles that contain errors or were
never followed up." Hoyt estimated that such complaints are coming into
the
Times at a rate of about one a
day.
There have always been folks with beefs about how they have been
treated in news stories. But generally the journalistic record of a
problematic story was stored in what we quaintly called the
"morgue." And not many folks -- other than reporters checking facts for
an anniversary story, an obit or other routine coverage -- ever delved into these old stories. Certainly the
public didn't have much access to them.
Now, with the evolution of
digital archives at most news organizations, old news content can be
just a few clicks away. Google
and other search engines render such content even more accessible. A mixture of complex algorithms and
entrepreneurial strategies by information providers can prioritize what
stories about someone pop up most quickly when that person's name is
searched.
As Hoyt reports in his Public Editor column,
some folks who are unhappy about an archived story ask the
Times to yank old stories from its archives to minimize the harm caused by what is perceived (at least by the person seeking the removal) as an erroneous, unfair or incomplete story.
We've also received such requests at
Poynter Online. In some cases, it has to do with a comment the individual
posted to one of our articles or a series of blog threads. In some
cases, the request deals with the content of an article or column
written by someone else.
Hoyt writes that
Times editors take these requests seriously but have found solutions elusive.
He quotes Greg Brock, the paper's senior editor in charge of corrections, as saying: "It totally stumps me."
A Possible Approach
We know how he feels. In an effort to address the problem as systematically as possible, we've drafted an addition to
the FAQ attached to our
publishing guidelines.
Q: Under what circumstances do you remove content from Poynter Online?A: We've have a couple of easy calls in this area and a lot of harder ones. The easy ones include feedback comments that violate our
terms of service, which we remove as soon as we discover them. If we learn that an article (or a portion of one) is seriously flawed shortly after publishing it, we may decide to remove it rather than repair or correct it. That's happened rarely in the history of Poynter Online, though, and is usually accompanied by an explanation for readers who may have encountered the original before it disappeared.
The tougher decisions come in the form of requests from people who say online searches of their names are producing links to a Poynter article or feedback comment that, at least in their view, is causing them undue harm.
Sometimes they say the original article is incorrect, sometimes they contend thatsubsequent events have rendered the original article outdated and misleading. Sometimes they say a feedback comment they posted several years ago, perhaps while they were still in school, seems less eloquent (or worse) than it did when they clicked the submit button way back when -- and that it no longer represents what they believe today.
The people we hear from about such issues usually have a simple and direct request: "Remove it now!" Our response is usually more complicated.
One reason we're reluctant to remove articles or comments entirely (as opposed to simply correcting errors) is the potential erosion of a body of work that others have read and, in some cases, referred to in their own feedback comments posted to the site.
Just as journalistic purpose is a good place to start with any decision about what to publish, so, too, is it important when deciding what to
unpublish (or adjust in some other way). We also try to assess potential harm to various stakeholders -- the subject of the coverage, others who may have been involved in the incident or controversy, readers, etc. We also need to address the often challenging realities of publishing on the Web, including:
- Publishing in an electronic environment that can be accessed by anyone, virtually in perpetuity, is quite different from broadcasting a story once or publishing it on newsprint that eventually disintegrates.
- Limited resources (staff and otherwise) sometimes makes it impossible for us to resolve disputes involving a topic we addressed some months or years ago.
- Poynter Online is not a court of law. Seeking justice for all stakeholders is a publishing standard to which we aspire but acknowledge we can't always meet.
If the original article can now be clearly shown to be inaccurate, one option is publishing a correction, attaching it to the article in the online database and including a prominent CORRECTION APPENDED alert, usually at the beginning of the article. If the facts remain in dispute, another option is inviting the aggrieved stakeholder to attach his or her own comment to the original article, following the feedback guidelines and refraining, for example, from making unsubstantiated claims about others.
In making these calls, we'll do our best to apply the principles embedded in Poynter's "
10 Good Questions to Ask to Make Good Ethical Decisions" to the particulars of removal requests.
Some specific questions might include:
- Exactly what is this person asking us to do? Remove an entire article? A portion of an article? Change some element of the information in the article?
- Why is this person making this request?
- How can I verify the identity of the person making the request?
- What was the original journalistic purpose for the article/column/comment/etc.?
- What journalistic purpose does this information serve in its current archival form?
- What journalistic purpose is there if the information is deleted or changed?
- Are there issues of accuracy, fairness and completeness in the original material? If so, how can we verify the claim made by the person who wants the change?
- Who are the stakeholders in this decision, and what consequences might they face if we remove, retain or alter the material in question?
- What alternatives should we consider? They might include: Retain the content as is, delete all of it or part of it, re-report the story, provide the person questioning the content the opportunity to respond with his/her own comments appended to the original content.
- How will we explain and justify the decision we are making?
- How will we provide transparency into what we've done and why?
Existing alternatives don't always solve the problem, of course.
Given the unprecedented circumstances generated by the still relatively
recent phenomenon of Web publishing, it's hardly surprising that we
find ourselves in need of new publishing conventions to address them.
Some organizations are making stabs at that. Wikipedia, the online
encyclopedia afflicted with its own set of controversies involving
false allegations (see this
discussion of false entries posted about John Siegenthaler), now enables the flagging of articles as inadequate in various ways (
see an example here.) Nowpublic.com, a citizen journalism site,
enables editors to flag content as "smells fishy," among other things.
All
that said, sometimes the best alternative is as simple as the caller or
e-mailer suggests: removing the original material. But it's usually
among the last alternatives we consider as opposed to the first. We
welcome your suggestions.
Looking at today's paper, what is missing from front page...
