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US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

theguardian.com

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Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#341

Post by cogman10 »

danpalmer wrote: post #309
cogman10 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishing the name of a suspect should generally not be tolerated. Particularly in the case of mass shootings or general terrorism. Unless the person is a politician or an active danger, no good comes from publishing their name. In the case they are guilty, you are giving notoriety which encourages copycats. In the case they are innocent, you've seriously harmed the reputation of an innocent person. The only reason…

> Unless the person is a politician or an active danger, no good comes from publishing their name What do you think of the case in my comment, tldr: suspected CSAM offences by a scout group leader. I think it was right that the scout group were notified so he could be suspended... but that is only a very small step from publishing the name, unless you put recipients under NDA and/or criminalise further publicity. I'm…

He was already being held in prison so I see no reason to further publish until a trial or settlement hit.

But let's assume he's charged and released on bail or otherwise. In that case, I think it's reasonable for the cops to notify the organizations he's involved with of the pending trial and for a judge to put a restraining order on him. I didn't think anything further needs to happen until he's found guilty or settles with a guilty plea.

My kid's school recently had a related event happen. A guy with a CSAM conviction was released from prison so the cops went around to all the schools to let them know about the dude. (We are friendly with the school secretary and noticed an unusual amount of cops around the school).

Edit: oops, looks like I mixed up your case with the OPs.

But I think what I said still applies and is ultimately what happened in your case.

My main issue is with a public permanent record in the form of a newspaper or news broadcast and not with responsible disclosure by cops.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#342

Post by carlosjobim »

krapp wrote: post #340
carlosjobim wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what are you doing in a comment thread about news reporting if you don't care about any of this stuff? I'm pretty certain that the drug dealers and the network of power they represent has influence on the lives of high school kids even in your sleepy suburb. If you don't care about this, then fine. But many people do. Just like they care about local politics, local business, and everything else that a newspaper…

I don't need to know the names of specific drug dealers or politicians to care about my community or even engage in activism. If I do need to know, again, I don't need the paper to tell me. You're wildly spinning the topic off the rails. The subject of this thread is not news reporting per se, but newspapers removing old crime stories, and whether that would, to quote upthread, "prevent the public from knowing of the…

You're right. The hacker discussion is about all kinds of crime, including murder, but the article is about minor incidents.

"There was some initial internal resistance, but eventually Quinn and his staff came up with general parameters: they would not erase names in cases of violence, sex offenses, crimes against children or corruption."

It's a bit odd, because newspapers rarely report on minor crimes, and when they do they don't put the names of the guilty in print.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#343

Post by krapp »

carlosjobim wrote: post #342
krapp wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to know the names of specific drug dealers or politicians to care about my community or even engage in activism. If I do need to know, again, I don't need the paper to tell me. You're wildly spinning the topic off the rails. The subject of this thread is not news reporting per se, but newspapers removing old crime stories, and whether that would, to quote upthread, "prevent the public from knowing of the…

You're right. The hacker discussion is about all kinds of crime, including murder, but the article is about minor incidents. "There was some initial internal resistance, but eventually Quinn and his staff came up with general parameters: they would not erase names in cases of violence, sex offenses, crimes against children or corruption." It's a bit odd, because newspapers rarely report on minor crimes, and when they…

It depends on where you are, but where I am local papers report on minor crimes, with names, all the time.

And even if they no longer do, archives may still exist. Which as the article states is a problem when employers will search those archives and refuse to hire for even minor offenses, regardless of context.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#344

Post by dessimus »

bb88 wrote: post #177

IRL I knew someone who was charged with child sexual abuse. He went to prison awaiting trial, but the prosecution dropped the charges before it got there. He was released and went about his life. Meanwhile his mug shot photo in the local paper was the number one google search result for his name. And then it reached syndication for other news sites as well. Ideally those news paper articles should be updated to say t…

Just because charges were dropped doesn't mean they were innocent. It could mean there wasn't enough reliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or the evidence was tainted in a way that the prosecution did not believe they would get a conviction in a court of law.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#345

Post by eschulz »

dessimus wrote: post #344
bb88 wrote: post #177

IRL I knew someone who was charged with child sexual abuse. He went to prison awaiting trial, but the prosecution dropped the charges before it got there. He was released and went about his life. Meanwhile his mug shot photo in the local paper was the number one google search result for his name. And then it reached syndication for other news sites as well. Ideally those news paper articles should be updated to say t…

Just because charges were dropped doesn't mean they were innocent. It could mean there wasn't enough reliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or the evidence was tainted in a way that the prosecution did not believe they would get a conviction in a court of law.

You're innocent until proven guilty by a court of law

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#346

Post by dessimus »

eschulz wrote: post #345
dessimus wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because charges were dropped doesn't mean they were innocent. It could mean there wasn't enough reliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or the evidence was tainted in a way that the prosecution did not believe they would get a conviction in a court of law.

You're innocent until proven guilty by a court of law

In the eyes of the law, yes. But that does not mean that a child wasn't damaged due to the abuse by a person the law could not convict.

Or are you of the opinion that that 100% of sexual abusers have been caught, tried, convicted, and have or are currently serving time?

Edit: typo

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#347

Post by ThinkBeat »

tzs wrote: post #288
ThinkBeat wrote: post #186

Presumably this will increase business sand value for the various private companies that sit on silos of such data that you access for a price.

That actually could help. A big reason that say 50 years ago if you had made a newsworthy mistake when young and then had been clean for decades after that mistake being in newspaper didn't cause you to have trouble getting jobs or housing was that it took effort for people to find that archived newspaper item. Move to a new town far enough away that your youthful mistake didn't make the papers there and build your n…

THey dont have to go searching. They have most of it, if not all, already in their systems. A lot of it from far more reliable sources than newspapers.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/11/data-broker-e...

But there are far far worse (in term of all manner of personal details) you can buy

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#348

Post by whimsicalism »

realityking wrote: post #189
gojomo wrote: post #148

Reminds me of a laugh-out-loud closing paragraph in a 2009 NYT article about the clash between Wikipedia & German lawyers over some infamous murderers' right-to-be-forgotten. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html Read the whole thing for maximum effect, but for me it beautifully demonstrates the contrast between the USA/Wikipedia/NYT ethos of "the truth is always printable and your speech is by default 'o…

Worth noting that both Germany’s highest criminal court and the European Court of Human Rights in the end decided that the people in question don’t have a right to get their names expunged from archives (or Wikipedia). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Sedlmayr#Murder

still, very limited speech rights compared to the US

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#349

Post by whimsicalism »

sethhochberg wrote: post #206
ocschwar wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly surprised that after 20 years of the Internet "never forgetting" things like this, we haven't gotten a lot better about forgiving them instead.

Much has been written about Gen Z having a tiny appetite for risky behavior, and the causes are attributed to all sorts of stuff. But my entirely unscientific bet is that there is a real chilling effect to growing up as the first generation that had entirely digital “permanent records” and zero tolerance policies for their entire lives. Very little room for error when, regardless of whether you learned anything from…

young people today are definitely policed way more heavily than in the past

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#350

Post by whimsicalism »

xrd wrote: post #58
irrational wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen to people’s perception of crime if only the crime perpetuated by the rich and powerful was reported on?

It's probably just me, but it feels like reporting on crime is very lopsided and slanted against the powerless.

for national news i strongly feel like it is the opposite, it’s mostly high profile white collar crime
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