When should or shouldn’t you alter the record? Should you take back the news? After the Westminster Media Forum (2, 3, 4) here’s a US take from the news frontline with Mike Orren, of Dallas-Fort Worth website Pegasus News:

[T]oday I got an email from local man who wanted us to remove a story from our site. Our story said that he was charged with a serious crime. He was later acquitted.

We don’t remove stories, but we approach this sort of situation differently than most media outlets. Whether or not we do a new story on the acquittal, we update the old story with a notice and/or a link.

When making the change, I did a quick survey of the coverage from other media outlets around town. Four had carried the original story on the arrest. Two had run stories on the acquittal. None had updated or linked the original story to the new one.

Although search algorithms aren’t public domain, we do know that number of items of a type and volume of traffic and links impact results. And even without statistics to back this up, I think it’s anecdotally safe to assume that sensationalistic “guy thrown in jail” stories get more traffic mojo than paragraph-long “guy acquitted” stories wedged into a regional roundup.

So, when you Google this fellow’s name, what comes up are the “guy thrown in jail” stories.

I’m tempted to say that news organizations have the responsibility to update these stories in both directions – ensuring that the updated version is available to anyone who finds the original. I’m not just talking about the acquitted, but any story where we thought X but then learned that the truth is Y.

But then I realize that we’re often only able to do so fairly easily because our content management system is so damn database-y. Plus, while our technology enables this, we often lack the manpower to follow up on every story we run.

We didn’t catch this one until the acquitted accused contacted us a month later. I suspect that the two outlets who haven’t reported the acquittal aren’t so easy to reach or quick to update, particularly if the acquittal doesn’t make their newscast. And given the business challenges that are leading to media layoffs, followup may only get more difficult.

For sure, we’re in an age where the rules are being re-written every day. Technology is allowing us do things that seemed a pipedream three years ago. Along the way, we need to reflect on the downsides of the upside.

[HT: Terry Heaton]