An international trend in favor of the “right to be forgotten” is leading newspapers to rethink their policies on taking down published news articles.
The Southeast Missourian in Cape Girardeau, Mo., has announced a new policy in which daily crime reports and staff-written stories about misdemeanors will be “delisted” from search engines after six years. While removed from search engines, all stories will remain in the archives on semissourian.com.
The newspaper’s new policy went into effect July 25. Previously, its policy was that “we don’t take anything down.” Now, crime reports will be delisted automatically, while staff-written stories will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Plain-Dealer to form committee
In Ohio, The (Cleveland) Plain-Dealer announced last week it was expanding its right-to-be-forgotten experiment.
The newspaper began fielding requests in July from people asking their identities be removed from cleveland.com. So far, the Plain-Dealer has removed five names from stories.
Their initial policy was limited to crimes that did not involve violence, sex crimes or public corruption, and in which the records had been sealed by a judge.
Now, they’re expanding by forming a committee that will consider requests that fall outside of those guidelines, such as people peripheral to a crime story but never charged or those involved with embarrassing stories that were not based in the courts. It’s an idea they got from The (New Jersey) Star-Ledger, where fewer than half the requests are granted.
Wisconsin Policy Forum research
A similar discussion also took place last week in Madison during a panel hosted by the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The panel discussed whether Wisconsin courts should allow for the expungement of more criminal records. Currently, it is the only state that requires judges to determine eligibility when a person is sentenced, instead of upon release. It’s also one of the few states in which only those under 25 are eligible for expungement.
“I always say without expungement every sentence is a life sentence,” said Shanyeill McCloud, founder of Clean Slate Wisconsin.
Like the newspapers’ policies, much of the panel discussion focused on how past crimes can have adverse effects on future housing and job opportunities.
» Read more on The Southeast Missourian policy
» More on cleveland.com’s experiment
» Read story on Wisconsin Policy Forum panel
