This week’s edition of my Columbia Journalism Review Daily column is online here. Inspired by the example of Wales Online (background), I look at the issue of scrubbing. Here’s the opening of the column:
Scrubbing Away Their Sins
We used to be able to throw out the news; to disappear it.
The morning paper would find its way into the trash. A radio or television newscast would float off into the ether. It’s a cliché to say it by now, but the Web has changed that.
Articles and broadcasts now reside in online archives, are quoted or embedded on blogs, and republished on other news sites. Google keeps a snapshot of the original page cached on its servers. The new permanence of news makes it more important than ever to initially get a story right, lest an error rocket around the world. But when prevention fails, a suitable correction must follow. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen …
