7 ms·

According to NPR's own standards, it is unethical to remove erroneous stories. > “We are guided by a newsroom policy that says it is inappropriate to remove co

by ColanR 9y ago

According to NPR's own standards, it is unethical to remove erroneous stories. > “We are guided by a newsroom policy that says it is inappropriate to remove content from our Website. If a report is inaccurate, we will correct it and state why it has been altered. If relevant new information emerges, we will update or do a follow-up story. > “But our content is a matter of public record and is part of our contract with our audience. To simply remove it from the archive diminishes transparency and trust and, in effect, erases history. This is not a practice engaged in by credible news organizations or in line with ethical journalism.” http://ethics.npr.org/memos-from-memmott/how-to-explain-why-we-wont-take-down-a-story/ http://ethics.npr.org/memos-from-memmott/how-to-explain-why-...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
justin66 9y ago
"Mark Memmott, NPR's standards and practices editor, would not comment on the retraction. But he told me he could not recall another retraction since he joined NPR in 2009. (We did turn up a 2002 story that was eventually taken out of distribution, following a previous Ombudsman's column.)" https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/npr-issues-rare-retraction https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/... Either this is a rare corner case in journalistic ethics that could be handled a few different ways or there's simply some disagreement in the profession (and among NPR staff) about how to deal with it. Regardless, the comments below characterizing NPR's retraction of a shoddy story as "Orwellian" are... entertaining, I guess? If only they'd save us from the tyranny of the state by relaxing their professional standards a bit.
- da_chicken 9y ago
  Exactly. Shoddy journalists would respond by doubling down. Attacking the people who question the original story, producing concurring stories and publishing them on sister sites, and then citing those stories in followup stories on your own site. Pushing the narrative and ignoring the truth at all costs.
  - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    Reminds me of Gawker. Sure don’t miss those clowns.
tantalor 9y ago
They didn't "simply remove it", they replaced it with 1,300 words explaining what the problems were with the story and why the story did not meet their standards, hence the retraction. The guidance you cite is a suggested response to third parties asking to remove embarrassing information from the Internet. It doesn't apply in this case; the story was retracted not because it was embarrassing, but because the reporting did not meet their standards of fairness.
- justin66 9y ago
  I clicked through to the AP's memo and I don't really get the impression that the guidance is limited in the way you suggest. http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apme.com/resource/resmgr/online_journalism_credibility/a_suggested_script.pdf http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apme.com/resource/resmgr/online...
- ColanR 9y ago
  Nope. It sure was responding to "third parties asking to remove embarrassing information", but the policy that NPR pointed to (and that I quoted) is more general than that. See what I quoted above.
  - tantalor 9y ago
    It's not that simple. According to the obmudsman, the story was basically incomplete, https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/npr-issues-rare-retraction https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/... it's one of the most basic things in our profession, that we gather responses from the people who are the subject of criticism the reporter... did not seek comment from the individual identified in the story NPR learned of the mistake via an email from someone who said he was representing the person NPR had identified as the "author." At this point you might expect a correction with the new information from the third party added to the original story, but that won't work here. In order to fix the problems, we would have essentially had to construct a different story," a process that he said would have been "intellectually dishonest. There comes a point that you can't fix a story appropriately By analogy, sometimes the best thing to do is roll back code instead of trying to fix it.
jessriedel 9y ago
Well, an (overly flexible) reading of that policy is that they won't simply delete a story from their website without a trace, but will allow themselves to replace the story with an retraction and explanation if the story is so flawed that it can't be fixed. (You'd have to make the dubious interpretation that "content" refers to the story as a whole unit, rather than the divisible text.) In fact, this is really the only interpretation consistent with the practices of NPR and many other new organization (e.g., NYTimes) of making repeated edits to stories without leaving the old versions online; instead they simply note that edits have been made, and summarize them. It would be weird if they could freely delete wrong statements from an article but not delete the entire text of an article if the entire text is unjustified. Of course, I agree with most HN readers that the most transparent, ethical, and self-consistent policy is to keep a complete edit history of the story available.
3steve 9y ago
Is removing content the same as disallowing it in a robots.txt? Because they have an interesting article [1] disallowed in their robots.txt that was added a while after it was published. [1]:www.npr.org/2013/03/21/174840895/sexual-violence-victims-say-military-justice-system-is-broken
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > Is removing content the same as disallowing it in a robots.txt? No. > Because they have an interesting article [1] disallowed in their robots.txt that was added a while after it was published. Oddly, it's a different seemingly benign story for me: Disallow: /sections/health-shots/2013/03/11/173816690/new-voices-for-the-voiceless-synthetic-speech-gets-an-upgrade IDK why they include a seemingly random story in their robots.txt. I don't think the intention is to hide the story, though.
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    I get the same link as you in there. I wonder if this is some honeypot technique for detecting misbehaving robots?
johnnyfived 9y ago
Thanks for posting those references. There are clearly at least a few different problems going on here in NPR and the general workflow of top-tier journalism today. If you can publish a story, you shouldn't just be able to retract it willy nilly. If you can retract anything you publish, then what's the point of having standards for publication in the first place?

by ColanR 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

justin66 9y ago

"Mark Memmott, NPR's standards and practices editor, would not comment on the retraction. But he told me he could not recall another retraction since he joined NPR in 2009. (We did turn up a 2002 story that was eventually taken out of distribution, following a previous Ombudsman's column.)" https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/npr-issues-rare-retraction https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/... Either this is a rare corner case in journalistic ethics that could be handled a few different ways or there's simply some disagreement in the profession (and among NPR staff) about how to deal with it. Regardless, the comments below characterizing NPR's retraction of a shoddy story as "Orwellian" are... entertaining, I guess? If only they'd save us from the tyranny of the state by relaxing their professional standards a bit.

da_chicken 9y ago
Exactly. Shoddy journalists would respond by doubling down. Attacking the people who question the original story, producing concurring stories and publishing them on sister sites, and then citing those stories in followup stories on your own site. Pushing the narrative and ignoring the truth at all costs.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  Reminds me of Gawker. Sure don’t miss those clowns.

tantalor 9y ago

They didn't "simply remove it", they replaced it with 1,300 words explaining what the problems were with the story and why the story did not meet their standards, hence the retraction. The guidance you cite is a suggested response to third parties asking to remove embarrassing information from the Internet. It doesn't apply in this case; the story was retracted not because it was embarrassing, but because the reporting did not meet their standards of fairness.

justin66 9y ago
I clicked through to the AP's memo and I don't really get the impression that the guidance is limited in the way you suggest. http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apme.com/resource/resmgr/online_journalism_credibility/a_suggested_script.pdf http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apme.com/resource/resmgr/online...
ColanR 9y ago
Nope. It sure was responding to "third parties asking to remove embarrassing information", but the policy that NPR pointed to (and that I quoted) is more general than that. See what I quoted above.
- tantalor 9y ago
  It's not that simple. According to the obmudsman, the story was basically incomplete, https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/npr-issues-rare-retraction https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/... it's one of the most basic things in our profession, that we gather responses from the people who are the subject of criticism the reporter... did not seek comment from the individual identified in the story NPR learned of the mistake via an email from someone who said he was representing the person NPR had identified as the "author." At this point you might expect a correction with the new information from the third party added to the original story, but that won't work here. In order to fix the problems, we would have essentially had to construct a different story," a process that he said would have been "intellectually dishonest. There comes a point that you can't fix a story appropriately By analogy, sometimes the best thing to do is roll back code instead of trying to fix it.

jessriedel 9y ago

Well, an (overly flexible) reading of that policy is that they won't simply delete a story from their website without a trace, but will allow themselves to replace the story with an retraction and explanation if the story is so flawed that it can't be fixed. (You'd have to make the dubious interpretation that "content" refers to the story as a whole unit, rather than the divisible text.) In fact, this is really the only interpretation consistent with the practices of NPR and many other new organization (e.g., NYTimes) of making repeated edits to stories without leaving the old versions online; instead they simply note that edits have been made, and summarize them. It would be weird if they could freely delete wrong statements from an article but not delete the entire text of an article if the entire text is unjustified. Of course, I agree with most HN readers that the most transparent, ethical, and self-consistent policy is to keep a complete edit history of the story available.

3steve 9y ago

Is removing content the same as disallowing it in a robots.txt? Because they have an interesting article [1] disallowed in their robots.txt that was added a while after it was published. [1]:www.npr.org/2013/03/21/174840895/sexual-violence-victims-say-military-justice-system-is-broken

throwawayjava 9y ago
> Is removing content the same as disallowing it in a robots.txt? No. > Because they have an interesting article [1] disallowed in their robots.txt that was added a while after it was published. Oddly, it's a different seemingly benign story for me: Disallow: /sections/health-shots/2013/03/11/173816690/new-voices-for-the-voiceless-synthetic-speech-gets-an-upgrade IDK why they include a seemingly random story in their robots.txt. I don't think the intention is to hide the story, though.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  I get the same link as you in there. I wonder if this is some honeypot technique for detecting misbehaving robots?

johnnyfived 9y ago

Thanks for posting those references. There are clearly at least a few different problems going on here in NPR and the general workflow of top-tier journalism today. If you can publish a story, you shouldn't just be able to retract it willy nilly. If you can retract anything you publish, then what's the point of having standards for publication in the first place?