Sam Levin, The Guardian; US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a ‘clean slate’
"Civil rights advocates across the US have long fought to free people from their criminal records, with campaigns to expunge old cases and keep people’s past arrests private when they apply for jobs and housing.
The efforts are critical, as more than 70 million Americans have prior convictions or arrests – roughly one in three adults. But the policies haven’t addressed one of the most damaging ways past run-ins with police can derail people’s lives: old media coverage.
Some newsrooms are working to fill that gap.
A handful of local newspapers across the US have in recent years launched programs to review their archives and consider requests to remove names or delete old stories to protect the privacy of subjects involved in minor crimes.
“In the old days, you put a story in the newspaper and it quickly, if not immediately, receded into memory,” said Chris Quinn, editor of Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer newspaper. “But because of our [search engine] power, anything we write now about somebody is always front and center.”
Quinn pioneered a “right-to-be-forgotten” experiment in 2018, motivated by the many inquiries he would receive from subjects describing the harms of past crime coverage and pleading for deletion. “People would say: ‘Your story is wrecking my life. I made a mistake, but … I’ve changed my life.’”
It was long considered taboo in media to retract or alter old stories, particularly when there are no concerns about accuracy. But Quinn said he felt an ethical obligation to rethink those norms. “I couldn’t take it any more … I just got tired of telling people no and standing on tradition instead of being thoughtful.”"
