Online stories can haunt people forever. Sacramento Bee launches ‘Clean Slate’ program
The Sacramento Bee is now accepting applications for a new program that will review old articles online that have made it difficult for story subjects to move on with their lives.
Beginning Friday, people who have committed minor criminal offenses or who have had charges dropped against them can request to have articles published about them reviewed. A team of Bee journalists, after investigating the case, will assess what changes may be warranted.
The Bee is the latest in a string of newsrooms across the country rethinking its crime coverage, considering the longterm negative impacts for story subjects trying to move on with their lives.
Brushes with the criminal justice system or law enforcement can mean a lifetime of challenges — difficulty securing a job, finding a house, attending school or getting a loan.
Often, it’s the top results from a quick internet search by recruiters or landlords that stops someone from getting even a foot in the door.
“The Clean Slate initiative is one part of The Bee’s larger efforts to ensure that our coverage is fair and equitable,” said Colleen McCain Nelson, executive editor for The Bee and California regional editor for McClatchy, in a statement.
“In the era of online news, we know that some news stories can have unintended long-term consequences and create obstacles for those seeking to make a new start,” she said. “That’s why we want to be responsive to requests from the community for us to review some stories with the aim of updating our coverage and minimizing any continuing harm that has resulted.”
Crime stories are historically a staple of local news coverage. Some TV stations and newspapers publish weekly slideshows of mugshots of people who have been recently arrested.
In some cases, reporters publish stories on an arrest for a minor or nonviolent crime. Sometimes the charges against an arrested person were dropped, the case was dismissed, or a person was later found innocent — but rarely do the original online stories reflect the new development.
That can exacerbate challenges for people trying to make a fresh start after their experience with the criminal justice system or law enforcement, according to advocates.
“With the digitization of criminal records, people experience their record as a form of perpetual punishment that can make it quite challenging to attain economic security,” said David Schlussel, deputy director of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the legal issues and stigmas those with criminal records face long after their cases have been closed.
Criminal records can make it far more difficult for people to find employment and housing, receive government benefits, and can impact child custody decisions. People also face “informal barriers,” such as not being able to volunteer or coach youth sports, along with a “stigma and the sense that their record is following them around,” Schlussel said.
Last year, The Boston Globe started a similar program called “Fresh Start,” and The Lexington Herald-Leader announced the Clean Slate pilot project. McClatchy, The Bee’s parent company, owns the Herald-Leader.
In July 2020, The Bee announced it would no longer publish police mugshots and surveillance photos, with limited exceptions. A policy move that came during a national reckoning over racism and police violence after the murder of George Floyd, it mirrors similar changes made by other news outlets like the Houston Chronicle and the Biloxi Sun Herald, which is also owned by McClatchy.
Under the initiative, people can submit an application for a review of articles that are more than a year old and don’t involve cases that are in the midst of legal or criminal action.
Cases that involve public officials or serious crimes are unlikely to qualify, though the Bee will consider those applications.
The “Clean Slate” team will consider a range of options for addressing applicants’ cases — updating the story, deindexing the article from internet search engines or even removing the story from sacbee.com entirely. In some cases, no action may be taken.
“We will proceed with caution, evaluating each case individually while remaining ever mindful of the value of public records,” McCain Nelson wrote.
You can learn more at this link and apply here.
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM.