In general, editors are not keen on unpublishing stories. They argue they are in the business of publishing, not unpublishing. So unless they are legally required to do so, they are reluctant to unpublish stories. Unpublishing means the removal of a story that is published online. This is also known as deletion, retraction or takedown.
Unpublishing is usually done in response to an external request or pressure. People ask for stories to be taken down because they are inaccurate, violate their privacy, hurt their reputation, embarrass them, or expose them to danger.
Sometimes the request or pressure to unpublish can come from within the media organisation. A famous case is that of a story published by CNN about a study that shows women’s voting is ruled by their menstrual cycles. “After further review it was determined that some elements of the story did not meet the editorial standards of CNN ,” the media organisation said.
Only stories published online can be unpublished. A story printed in the Daily Nation , for example, or broadcast on NTV , cannot be unpublished. It remains published forever. The only thing that can be done is to do a correction in a subsequent edition of the Nation or NTV bulletin.
Even online stories cannot be completely unpublished. If a story on Nation.Africa is taken down it only disappears from the NMG website. Sometimes unpublished stories remain cached in search engines, tweets, blogger’s posts, and other internet archives.
The internet never forgets. This is one of the arguments editors use to justify their reluctance to unpublish stories. They argue that it is better to correct the story and tell the reader why it has been corrected.
They have other reasons for their unwillingness to unpublish stories. The most common is that a published story is part of the historical record whose integrity should be preserved. Material from the archives should not be erased because that is akin to rewriting history. Journalism, they say, is the first draft of history and unpublishing stories would lead to the rewriting of history.
Editors also argue the media have a duty to protect freedom of expression and the public’s right to know.
They have a responsibility to preserve the integrity of the published record. Removing articles from the archives, as one publisher famously said, is “the equivalent of going into libraries and burning books you don’t like.”
Further, editors worry that if they unpublish a story because one person has complained they will open the floodgates. Otherwise, they would be accused of playing favourites. So they prefer not to unpublish unless they are compelled to do so for legal reasons such as cases of defamation, invasion of privacy and infringement of copyright. However, the reality is that some stories need to be taken down, even when there are no legal reasons to do so, because of their harmful impact on individuals.
Policy for unpublishing stories
Therefore, it is necessary for a media organisation to have a policy for unpublishing such stories. The NMG is one of the few organisations that have such a policy. I have written in the past about the NMG policy, pointing out the kind of stories that can be unpublished (“NMG now has criteria on how to deal with all requests to take down stories” — Daily Nation, February 26, 2021).
The policy has removed the uncertainty on whether, when and why content can be removed. It sets out the criteria to be met for content to be erased. Apart from legal reasons, a story can be removed if it is fundamentally or entirely inaccurate and untrue and cannot be corrected without writing a new story. Further, a story can be removed if it is obsolete, unfair and endangers someone’s life.
“To avoid disappointment, it’s my hope readers will take into account the new standard before requesting for a story to be unpublished,” I concluded in my article. I expected the number of requests for takedowns to decrease because of the rigorous criteria set out in the policy. But it has not. If anything it has gone up. Presumably because people now know NMG can unpublish stories.
The Public Editor is an independent news ombudsman who handles readers’ complaints on editorial matters including accuracy and journalistic standards. Email: [email protected] . Call or text 0721989264
