journalism-practices-need-change-digital-media

journalism-practices-need-change-digital-media

In the days of print, archives of past news articles were only accessible via microfiche or an expensive subscription to an online archive service like Lexis-Nexus.
Now, when most articles are published and stored online, later to be indexed by Google, anyone's history in print is easily subject to search. An error or misreport attached to an individual's name can last much longer than the original week in print in a newspaper.
A former student at Seattle Pacific University has brought this issue into the public spotlight, requesting an archived article in the university newspaper about a dropped attempted sexual assault charge be removed. Standard journalism practice has long been to never issue a retraction unless the story is wrong, and due to the nature of print, issue it as a secondary article. The shift to online journalism, however, changes the playing field for both media outlets as well as those profiled in articles.Shakespear Feyissa was profiled in the Seattle Pacific University's student newspaper 10 years ago, when discussing alleged discrimination after he was suspended indefinitely from the school, even after charges of attempted sexual assault were dropped. Now, according to the Seattle Times, Feyissa wants the article removed from the student newspaper's Web archive, and the editors are refusing to budge. For Feyissa, who finds references to the article in top results on search engines for his name, the reports of a case that was dropped is a blight on his record resulting in women Googling and refusing to date him. As a lawyer, clients looking to hire him may balk at being represented by someone who was accused of attempted sexual assault.The Online Journalism Review from the Annenberg School for Communication is tackling this new issue in a article questioning whether or not editors should remove content online. The standard response of "we don't pull stories" was based on a print paradigm. The ease of internet searches digging up old content might demand a new way of retracting or updating articles -- especially when charges of a crime are usually big news but dropping those charges are not ranked as high.
One commenter on the Online Journalism Review piece noted that Japan already has policy in place for dealing with this issue; the regional daily that he works for pulls all crime-related articles after a year. Another commenter suggests going back and adding an addendum to any story where the charges were dropped or the accused was acquitted, but how realistic is this in the fast-moving online news space? It's easy to miss follow-ups to any story, especially if you aren't the original reporter.There is a generation coming up who may face the same situation as Feyrissa, either with things users wish they'd never posted or situations users found themselves in that they wish would disappear. Would it really be a violation of journalism ethics to pull stories after a period of time, since that would include those found guilty as well as those found not guilty? Is it acceptable to add an update to the article for those found not guilty or whose charges are dropped? Or should we rely on the relatively new industry of social media monitoring and SEO techniques to simply bury stories we find unacceptable?

From the inbox of Mr Rakesh Praveer, a senior journalist, based in Patna