We’re offering a Clean Slate to people whose worst moments linger on our website
Earlier this year, we changed our standards for when we name suspects in crime stories.
Now, we’re offering people who have been haunted by old news stories a chance to move on.
We are launching McClatchy’s Clean Slate program, which allows people who have been named in past crime coverage to apply to have those stories made less visible. The program was tested successfully by our sister newspaper in Lexington, Kentucky.
The idea is not to erase the past, but to eliminate the damage that can be caused by how easily accessible our coverage has become through internet searches.
For some, a simple Google search of their name will immediately return a story about the worst moment of their lives. Maybe the charge we published information about was dismissed. Maybe it was reduced to a far lesser crime. Or maybe they were guilty, but the crime was so minor that we wouldn’t even report about it under today’s standards.
These Google searches are particularly troublesome for job seekers.
What Clean Slate offers, primarily, is a chance to get a story de-indexed so Google and other search engines won’t find it. The stories won’t be removed from our website; they’ll just be more difficult to find.
But for some, this might be an opportunity to update an old story to reflect the outcome of a case. And in rare instances — such as where someone’s safety could be compromised — we might remove a story from our website.
We’ll require the people involved to submit an application, which will be reviewed by a six-person team of Idaho Statesman journalists. They won’t just make a decision based on an application. They will pursue records so we’re thoroughly informed on each case before discussing it.
Stories must be at least a year old, and all related cases — criminal and civil — must be completed. The bar for us to take any action will be significantly higher for public figures, such as politicians. And this is designed for minor crimes, not offenses such as homicide and sexual assault. But we will review all applications.
The Boston Globe was another trailblazer in this area, launching a similar Fresh Start initiative. I’ve heard several presentations by Boston and Lexington journalists in the past year, which made me eager to launch this program.
“Globe journalism was never meant to be a permanent obstacle to someone’s success, with the worst decisions and moments in regular people’s lives accessible by a few keystrokes for the rest of time,” The Globe wrote on its website.
The decisions will do much to align our past reporting with our current practices. We formalized earlier this year a policy under which we name suspects in crime stories only if we intend to follow the case through the court system, so we will know if it’s dismissed or there’s a major change. And we commit to following only those cases involving high-level crimes or crimes of significant public interest, like those involving a public figure.
We can always decide to name someone after the initial story. It’s a lot more difficult to undo it.
That policy is part of a larger overhaul of our approach to crime coverage, which included an extensive training program through the Poynter Institute in the spring and summer that emphasized viewing crime coverage through a public safety lens. We have been headed down that path for at least two years, since our parent company — McClatchy — decided in August 2020 to end the routine use of police mug shots. We use them rarely, and only with editor approval.
We also have doubled down on pushing beyond the police narrative in crime reporting.
All together, this approach will help us avoid the historic pitfalls of over-representing communities of color in crime coverage and publishing too many police accounts that don’t match the facts later revealed.
And perhaps no piece of this effort will be as meaningful as Clean Slate, which the Lexington Herald-Leader found had the power to change lives.
I’m proud to launch it here.
If you or someone you know would like to apply to have a story de-indexed or updated, we’re accepting applications here. For more information on how the program works, read our frequently asked questions here.
Chadd Cripe is in his second year as the Idaho Statesman editor and has spent more than 26 years on staff. Contact him at ccripe@idahostatesman.com.
This story was originally published September 7, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
