8 ms·

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 standard

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 It doesn't apply in this case; the story was retracted not because it was embarrassing, but because the reporting did not meet their standards of fairness.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
    The fact that the story can't be repaired does not rebut the ColanR's claim that deleting it is inconsistent with NPR's stated policy. Furthermore, the best policy would be to retain a complete edit history of the story online, which is obviously possible even if the entire story is retracted. Given that the edit history would include a clear statement that NPR no longer endorses the claims made there, I can't see a reason for not making the edit history public other than reducing embarrassment of NPR. That said, NPR is far from the only major news organization that declines to keep the edit history public.
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      > The fact that the story can't be repaired does not rebut the ColanR's claim that deleting it is inconsistent with NPR's stated policy The point is very simple: removal != retraction. Removing without retraction is erasing history. Issuing a retraction is not erasing history. And obviously, in this context, "erasing history" means the thing it means in standard vernacular English. Not the thing it means in git terminology. > Furthermore, the best policy would be to retain a complete edit history of the story online... I can't see a reason for not making the edit history public other than reducing embarrassment of NPR. 1. How does showing the edit history reduce embarrassment to NPR? (e: Ironically, if reducing embarrassment were their goal, they would've found a way to keep the story as in-tact as possible. "Look, we weren't 100% wrong. We just had to change a few paragraphs". IMO a full retraction is far more embarrassing than trying to weasel out of it by keeping as much of the story in-tact as possible.) 2. Some real downsides to this approach are already debated down-thread.
      - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
        > "erasing history" means the thing it means in standard vernacular English I'm a native speaker of English and I'm not sure what that means.
      - jessriedel 9y ago
        > The point is very simple: removal != retraction. Exactly. NPR should retract the story -- that is, admit mistake and add a clear statement that they do not endorse it -- but they should not remove the text from the internet. The policy ColanR quotes says content should not be removed, and everyone agrees that content can be retracted. > Removing without retraction is erasing history. Issuing a retraction is not erasing history. But issuing a retraction and and removing the text is (an attempt to) erase history in standard vernacular English, i.e. make it difficult for others to figure out what happened in the past by hiding evidence. It's true that silently removing the story is even worse, because it erases the history of the article's existence rather than just erasing the history of the article's content. > 1. How does showing the edit history reduce embarrassment to NPR? You misunderstand my claim. Showing the edit history would increase embarrassment for NPR. > Ironically, if reducing embarrassment were their goal, they would've found a way to keep the story as in-tact as possible. This is not true if the error was so egregious that it couldn't be defended with a straight face. Given the constraint that the story must be retracted (i.e., un-endorsed), it is clearly more embarrassing for them to leave the retracted text online than to remove it from the website. > IMO a full retraction is far more embarrassing than trying to weasel out of it by keeping as much of the story in-tact as possible You misunderstand. None of us think they should weaseling out of it. I am comparing what they have done to the better procedure of (1) retracting the story (in the sense of declaring that it is flawed and not defensible) but (2) leaving the text of the story publicly available with a disclaimer. > 2. Some real downsides to this approach are already debated down-thread This thread has dozens and dozens of comments, many of which are flawed, and I'm not sure what you're referring to.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > the policy that NPR pointed to (and that I quoted) is more general than that I think the salient point is that there's a huge difference between a silent removal and a public retraction. The practices that NPR indicts in your original post obviously refer to the latter. Removing without retraction is certainly an attempt to "erase history". Publishing a public retraction and discussing it at length is not "erasing history". NPR's executives have even explained why, in this particular case, they chose to remove the article: Turpin said, "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." He said the decision was not made lightly; "we believe strongly we don't want to disappear material for any reason if we can possibly keep from taking it down." edit: Essentially it's the difference between a ghost edit and an "edit: I changed xyz in my post". Do you really believe that silently /dev/null'ing an article is equivalent to a public retraction?
- jmull 9y ago
  I don't think you can just say "nope" here. It's pretty dubious to take that quote completely out of context and apply it to a different context. Why should we accept your claim that the policy "is more general than that"? Just pointing back to the out-of-context quote does literally nothing to back that claim up. I'll just note, what they did passes the sniff test... if you forget about interpretations of their policies, how they handled the retraction looks strongly ethical to me. It seems likely you're simply misunderstanding their policies, doesn't it?
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    > If you forget about interpretations of their policies, how they handled the retraction looks strongly ethical to me. But don't you agree that it would increase transparency to leave the original text available on the website with a large disclaimer that the story was retracted and NPR no longer endorses the text?
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      Maybe, but transparency isn't the only important thing. People can ignore disclaimers, and continue to quote the article out if context. Many people wouldn't check the source, and some that did would skip past the disclaimers and find the quote was accurate.
      - jessriedel 9y ago
        We can prevent actual accidents by making sufficiently obvious disclaimers. The fact that some individuals can willfully ignore disclaimers seems like too weak (and too convenient) a reason to expunge stuff completely. Anyone who is willing to quote from a retracted article without mentioning the retraction can always just lie instead.
        boomboomsubban 9y ago
        People willfully ignoring context is what this entire sub-discussiom is about. Making that more difficult is beneficial, and I haven't seen your case for why more transparency would be beneficial. They've been clear on their actions, and they aren't making efforts to scrub the web clean of the past. What benefit is there to their continued hosting of something they've found to be wrong?
wpietri 9y ago
Yeah, I think there's a big difference between unpublishing and retracting. Simply making a story disappear is a common way of hiding a fuckup. (Also, sometimes a way of making a difficult person go away.) Retracting is admitting the mistake. I'd like this a little better if they had some way to access the old material in a fashion that made it clear it was withdrawn. But I think this is way better than just leaving the old story up in a form that might be harmful to people. I'm strongly influenced here by Wikipedia's "Biographies of Living Persons" standard, which is much stricter than that for articles on other topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin... For those curious, the Wayback link is here: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/598239092/the-man-who-spent-100k-to-remove-a-lie-from-google https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03... Edit: Actually, user Buge found the real archive link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180403204501/https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/04/03/598239092/the-man-who-spent-100k-to-remove-a-lie-from-google https://web.archive.org/web/20180403204501/https://www.npr.o...
- jessriedel 9y ago
  There are four options here 1. Leave the story unchanged 2. Publicly retract the story, but keep the text available with a disclaimer. 3. Publicly retract the story and "unpublish" it, i.e., remove the text from the website. 4. Silently unpublish the story. Everyone agrees that #1 and #4 are very bad. ColanR is claiming that #2 is better than #3, and in particular that #3 conflicts with existing NPR policy. We are inferring NPR policy from an informal blog post, not some official document, which was written in the context of third parties requesting that content be taken down. However, it is quoting an AP Editor policy that is not in that context. You can argue that NPR didn't intend to endorse this policy in the context when they were the ones who messed up, rather than it being a complaint involving a third party. But then it seems rather hypocritical.
  - dmacedo 9y ago
    I feel you are correct. But also wanted to add another option between 2 and 3 where I feel a more valuable editing could also be done. 2.1: Publicly retract the story, and edit the previous text (with visible or not removals/edits) along with a disclaimer, to improve the content and present a fairness assessment of it's text for new and previous readers. I've encountered this before, with both visible (highlighted or striked off content) or completely deleted parts with some "erroneous/unverified content deleted" kind of indication, and I really appreciated the transparency an understanding why something was reviewed. I feel that would be a valuable approach to these kinds of publications.
rahimnathwani 9y ago
When I load that page, I don't see 1300 words. I see only an editor's note of ~200 words. Are they A/B testing their retraction?
- gkoberger 9y ago
  No, likely a mistake. It's 200 words, but 1300 characters.
Rapzid 9y ago
They should replace it with a story about how people and entities manage to dupe reporters into pushing their agendas..

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
  The fact that the story can't be repaired does not rebut the ColanR's claim that deleting it is inconsistent with NPR's stated policy. Furthermore, the best policy would be to retain a complete edit history of the story online, which is obviously possible even if the entire story is retracted. Given that the edit history would include a clear statement that NPR no longer endorses the claims made there, I can't see a reason for not making the edit history public other than reducing embarrassment of NPR. That said, NPR is far from the only major news organization that declines to keep the edit history public.
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    > The fact that the story can't be repaired does not rebut the ColanR's claim that deleting it is inconsistent with NPR's stated policy The point is very simple: removal != retraction. Removing without retraction is erasing history. Issuing a retraction is not erasing history. And obviously, in this context, "erasing history" means the thing it means in standard vernacular English. Not the thing it means in git terminology. > Furthermore, the best policy would be to retain a complete edit history of the story online... I can't see a reason for not making the edit history public other than reducing embarrassment of NPR. 1. How does showing the edit history reduce embarrassment to NPR? (e: Ironically, if reducing embarrassment were their goal, they would've found a way to keep the story as in-tact as possible. "Look, we weren't 100% wrong. We just had to change a few paragraphs". IMO a full retraction is far more embarrassing than trying to weasel out of it by keeping as much of the story in-tact as possible.) 2. Some real downsides to this approach are already debated down-thread.
    - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
      > "erasing history" means the thing it means in standard vernacular English I'm a native speaker of English and I'm not sure what that means.
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      > The point is very simple: removal != retraction. Exactly. NPR should retract the story -- that is, admit mistake and add a clear statement that they do not endorse it -- but they should not remove the text from the internet. The policy ColanR quotes says content should not be removed, and everyone agrees that content can be retracted. > Removing without retraction is erasing history. Issuing a retraction is not erasing history. But issuing a retraction and and removing the text is (an attempt to) erase history in standard vernacular English, i.e. make it difficult for others to figure out what happened in the past by hiding evidence. It's true that silently removing the story is even worse, because it erases the history of the article's existence rather than just erasing the history of the article's content. > 1. How does showing the edit history reduce embarrassment to NPR? You misunderstand my claim. Showing the edit history would increase embarrassment for NPR. > Ironically, if reducing embarrassment were their goal, they would've found a way to keep the story as in-tact as possible. This is not true if the error was so egregious that it couldn't be defended with a straight face. Given the constraint that the story must be retracted (i.e., un-endorsed), it is clearly more embarrassing for them to leave the retracted text online than to remove it from the website. > IMO a full retraction is far more embarrassing than trying to weasel out of it by keeping as much of the story in-tact as possible You misunderstand. None of us think they should weaseling out of it. I am comparing what they have done to the better procedure of (1) retracting the story (in the sense of declaring that it is flawed and not defensible) but (2) leaving the text of the story publicly available with a disclaimer. > 2. Some real downsides to this approach are already debated down-thread This thread has dozens and dozens of comments, many of which are flawed, and I'm not sure what you're referring to.
throwawayjava 9y ago
> the policy that NPR pointed to (and that I quoted) is more general than that I think the salient point is that there's a huge difference between a silent removal and a public retraction. The practices that NPR indicts in your original post obviously refer to the latter. Removing without retraction is certainly an attempt to "erase history". Publishing a public retraction and discussing it at length is not "erasing history". NPR's executives have even explained why, in this particular case, they chose to remove the article: Turpin said, "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." He said the decision was not made lightly; "we believe strongly we don't want to disappear material for any reason if we can possibly keep from taking it down." edit: Essentially it's the difference between a ghost edit and an "edit: I changed xyz in my post". Do you really believe that silently /dev/null'ing an article is equivalent to a public retraction?
jmull 9y ago
I don't think you can just say "nope" here. It's pretty dubious to take that quote completely out of context and apply it to a different context. Why should we accept your claim that the policy "is more general than that"? Just pointing back to the out-of-context quote does literally nothing to back that claim up. I'll just note, what they did passes the sniff test... if you forget about interpretations of their policies, how they handled the retraction looks strongly ethical to me. It seems likely you're simply misunderstanding their policies, doesn't it?
- jessriedel 9y ago
  > If you forget about interpretations of their policies, how they handled the retraction looks strongly ethical to me. But don't you agree that it would increase transparency to leave the original text available on the website with a large disclaimer that the story was retracted and NPR no longer endorses the text?
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    Maybe, but transparency isn't the only important thing. People can ignore disclaimers, and continue to quote the article out if context. Many people wouldn't check the source, and some that did would skip past the disclaimers and find the quote was accurate.
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      We can prevent actual accidents by making sufficiently obvious disclaimers. The fact that some individuals can willfully ignore disclaimers seems like too weak (and too convenient) a reason to expunge stuff completely. Anyone who is willing to quote from a retracted article without mentioning the retraction can always just lie instead.
      - boomboomsubban 9y ago
        People willfully ignoring context is what this entire sub-discussiom is about. Making that more difficult is beneficial, and I haven't seen your case for why more transparency would be beneficial. They've been clear on their actions, and they aren't making efforts to scrub the web clean of the past. What benefit is there to their continued hosting of something they've found to be wrong?

wpietri 9y ago

Yeah, I think there's a big difference between unpublishing and retracting. Simply making a story disappear is a common way of hiding a fuckup. (Also, sometimes a way of making a difficult person go away.) Retracting is admitting the mistake. I'd like this a little better if they had some way to access the old material in a fashion that made it clear it was withdrawn. But I think this is way better than just leaving the old story up in a form that might be harmful to people. I'm strongly influenced here by Wikipedia's "Biographies of Living Persons" standard, which is much stricter than that for articles on other topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin... For those curious, the Wayback link is here: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/598239092/the-man-who-spent-100k-to-remove-a-lie-from-google https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03... Edit: Actually, user Buge found the real archive link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180403204501/https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/04/03/598239092/the-man-who-spent-100k-to-remove-a-lie-from-google https://web.archive.org/web/20180403204501/https://www.npr.o...

jessriedel 9y ago
There are four options here 1. Leave the story unchanged 2. Publicly retract the story, but keep the text available with a disclaimer. 3. Publicly retract the story and "unpublish" it, i.e., remove the text from the website. 4. Silently unpublish the story. Everyone agrees that #1 and #4 are very bad. ColanR is claiming that #2 is better than #3, and in particular that #3 conflicts with existing NPR policy. We are inferring NPR policy from an informal blog post, not some official document, which was written in the context of third parties requesting that content be taken down. However, it is quoting an AP Editor policy that is not in that context. You can argue that NPR didn't intend to endorse this policy in the context when they were the ones who messed up, rather than it being a complaint involving a third party. But then it seems rather hypocritical.
- dmacedo 9y ago
  I feel you are correct. But also wanted to add another option between 2 and 3 where I feel a more valuable editing could also be done. 2.1: Publicly retract the story, and edit the previous text (with visible or not removals/edits) along with a disclaimer, to improve the content and present a fairness assessment of it's text for new and previous readers. I've encountered this before, with both visible (highlighted or striked off content) or completely deleted parts with some "erroneous/unverified content deleted" kind of indication, and I really appreciated the transparency an understanding why something was reviewed. I feel that would be a valuable approach to these kinds of publications.

rahimnathwani 9y ago

When I load that page, I don't see 1300 words. I see only an editor's note of ~200 words. Are they A/B testing their retraction?

gkoberger 9y ago
No, likely a mistake. It's 200 words, but 1300 characters.

Rapzid 9y ago

They should replace it with a story about how people and entities manage to dupe reporters into pushing their agendas..