European law enshrines the right to forget. The First Amendment guarantees that the right to be forgotten in America is voluntary. Although the rules are different, all the right-to be forgotten newspapers allow people named in archived stories the opportunity to petition the publication for their names to be removed from the articles. If the editors find the story for you, it will be hidden from Google search results. It might also be updated to include exonerating information or your name could be completely erased from the text.Right-to-be forgotten initiatives are not necessarily memory holes. All requests are not approved by editors. Editors don't approve all requests. Most newspapers only accept misdemeanor stories older than five years or felonies older than ten years. This movement's best feature is that archived stories are considered live documents. Corrections and revisions can be made for accuracy. Too many crime reporters have stored their flawed stories in their own memory holes for too long. It didn't matter that much when only a few newspaper archives could be found on microfilm. As more publications place their archives online, the cost to search the back pages for dirt and dust has dropped to zero. Google has made the past visible and exposed the weaknesses of old copy by making it so easily accessible. This movement encourages editors to take responsibility for the mistakes they made in old stories and should be welcomed by the press.Can we justifiably rewrite newspaper archives to correct inaccurate stories? People who want to keep their past under wraps can exercise their right to forget. It can also cause problems for job seekers, potential business partners, daters, and other people who need to know the long-term reputation of someone. A century ago, a journalism handbook stated that crime coverage was not solely about satiating prurient interests. It informs the public about criminal activity, which makes the community safer. It lets them know how the police are doing their job in maintaining peace. It helps in the deterrence and punishment of crime. These justifications aside, it is possible to serve justice by removing the names misdemeanants from old news articles. Why limit excision to names of petitioners who are rightfully forgotten? Why not delete every misdemeanant in five-year-old stories and make it proactive?It is not a perfect solution to deleting names from old stories. If I need to find out if a negative story about you has been changed by Cleveland.com, I can still locate the original version in the super-amber at the Internet Archives Wayback Machine. This machine only preserves stories. All these right-to-be forgotten measures only add to the difficulty of finding embarrassing stories about you. They won't erase your past.If newspapers had not made their archives public to Google, mass searches would not have been possible. People would need to search for individual names in each newspaper if newspapers had withheld their archives. This seems to be the case with Bangor Daily News. If you submit a petition to the Daily News regarding an embarrassing story, and it approves your request it will not delete your name from its archives. It will not prevent Google search from viewing it. You can submit your query directly to the newspaper search box if you are determined to locate a story that has been removed by Googles crawler.Although this is an alternative to deleting names it is not ideal. The Google search removes a story, making it more difficult for victims, victims, and alleged victims to be tracked. This reduces their ability to compete with others. You can break the Google hold on your reputation by creating useful content about yourself that will push an old story about you misdemeanor offense up to the second page of Google searches. This can be done by you or a professional. This is the best way to safeguard your reputation.The right-to-be forgotten movement has a charming charm. The most popular topic in the media, after weather, has been crime news. The crime blotter was a popular topic back when newspapers were large and newsrooms full. The newsroom staff was cut after the collapse of newspapers in the late '80s. This meant that fewer journalists reported from the police blotter. Column inches were also reduced for crime coverage, which led to a decrease in the number of crimes reported. According to an academic study, national arrest rates have fallen for almost every category of misdemeanor offense over the past 20 years. The fact that violent crime is also falling has further reduced the likelihood of your name appearing in a crime story. It is ironic that the request to forget about old stories comes at a moment when economics conspire to rid newspapers of crime stories.We are grateful to the right-to-be forgotten proponents for highlighting how journalists publish news about arrests, but how poor they are recording innocence or dropping charges. The solution to this journalistic lapse is not to erase suspect names from old stories or hide them from Google. The exoneration of a suspect or the dismissal of charges should also be newsworthy if it is reported in a newspaper. Newspapers don't have to update old stories to reflect a suspect's changing status. Newspapers would be more accurate and useful if they regularly updated their archives. Editors could attach a tickler for arrest stories reminding them to update the cases until they are resolved.We can't afford to hide or blur stories about confessed and convicted people just because it is past time. The press can be criticized for not covering crime in the past. This is most evident with the exploitative mugshot galleries that many newspapers have posted on the internet and have since closed. Journalists have the right to question police reports of crime. These accounts can be very misleading. A newspaper can't be blamed if a story about crime is true and fair. Even if it is years later. First, the newspaper's responsibility to its readers is paramount. We shouldn't be so eager to ring the bell of history.******See the NiemanLab and Erik Wemple of The Washington Post for competing claims to the right not to be forgotten. Email [email protected] to exercise your right to be remembered My email notifications are pro-erasure. My Twitter feed cannot spell misdemeanor. It is currently in jail waiting for trial for all the crimes it has committed.
