By Kathy English - from the Toronto Star
In 2008, citing information released by Toronto Police, an online article in the Star reported that a Toronto man was charged with the sexual assault of a pre-teen girl.
Some 14 months later, all charges against the man were dropped.
Now, not surprisingly, the man wants the news of his arrest to disappear from the Internet. He is seeking to have the Star “unpublish” its 2008 story so that it does not appear in a Google search.
“I am an innocent man,” he told me in a recent email. “I should not have to endure the grief and humiliation of that article now that the charges were dropped.”
“Anytime I apply for a new job, an employer can look up my name and there’s that damn article. The mere accusation alone is enough to convince many that an innocent man is guilty.”
I understand why this man is seeking to have this article removed from the web. While “innocent until proven guilty” is the ideal of our justice system, the reality is that those charged too often feel the taint of unjust public judgment.
But, as I explained to this man, (who I am not identifying for obvious reasons) in line with theStar’s policy on unpublishing, we do not take down online reports of criminal charges even when the charges are dropped or those charged are acquitted. But we do update these original reports once we learn of the outcome of the charges.
The Star’s policy regarding unpublishing any of its content is rooted in the view that to erase the digital record of what has been published would diminish transparency and credibility with our readers.
At the heart of Canadian justice is the principle of the open court. The fact that police laid charges of sexual assault against this man is a matter of public record — it is what happened. Erasing news of those charges won’t alter that truth.
Reports of criminal charges that are eventually withdrawn are increasingly a significant source of unpublishing requests for news organizations across North America. As I discovered in researching unpublishing for an Associated Press Managing Editors Association Online Credibility Study, these cases highlight journalism’s challenge of balancing the public’s right to know against the potential harm to an individual.
In surveying more than 100 editors across North America, I found that few news organizations consider the withdrawal of charges a valid reason to remove the original reports of those charges from their websites and archives.
“It’s not our job to expunge a story saying someone was convicted of a crime simply because a court expunged the conviction,” one editor said. “We’ll publish a follow-up on the court disposition but we won’t take the story down that was accurate when it was written any more than we would rip it out of the print editions in our newspaper library.”
Still, news organizations do have some responsibility here. The Star has a policy that stipulates it must report the outcome of any criminal charges it has reported.
There had been no follow-up reporting on this man’s case when this came to my attention.
The newsroom has now verified that these charges were withdrawn. In line with the Star’s practice, a note has been appended to the top of the Star’s original online report to make it clear when this man’s name is searched through Google that the charges were dropped.
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