Stories about minor criminal offenses to be reviewed under The Bee’s ‘Clean Slate’ program
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Should one mistake define your digital identity?
That’s the question The Sacramento Bee is contemplating as we re-evaluate the long-term impact some news coverage can have on people’s lives.
Even though The Bee’s digital archive is an amazing resource that puts thousands of news stories within easy reach at sacbee.com, this historical record can also become an insurmountable obstacle to those seeking to make a new start.
Stories about minor criminal offenses, convictions that were later expunged or charges that were eventually dropped can haunt people for years and decades to come, surfacing every time a potential employer or even a potential date Googles their names.
That’s why we’re starting a new initiative aimed at updating selected news stories and making some others less prominent or accessible online.
Next month, The Sacramento Bee will launch the Clean Slate project, an effort to re-examine some older news stories about incidents, minor criminal offenses or cases that ultimately were dismissed but still live on in the digital world, sometimes making it difficult for the subjects to find jobs or move on with their lives.
As this country has wrestled with questions about racial equity and criminal justice reforms, several news organizations across the country have developed systematic approaches to reviewing older articles and considering actions to minimize the continuing harm caused by some news coverage. Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer newspaper have been leaders in this realm, developing a “Right to be Forgotten” policy in 2018. The Boston Globe launched its own “Fresh Start” program in January.
And in April, the Lexington Herald-Leader announced the Clean Slate pilot project. McClatchy, The Bee’s parent company, also owns the Herald-Leader.
Soon, The Bee will offer a chance for a Clean Slate as well.
We will provide people who have been the subjects of news stories the opportunity to submit applications seeking a review of articles that are more than a year old and don’t involve ongoing legal or criminal action.
A team of Bee journalists will evaluate each application, research the case and assess whether action is warranted. The Bee could consider a range of options, including amending or updating a past news story, removing the article from Google searches, removing the story from sacbee.com — or taking no action at all.
This isn’t an attempt to rewrite history.
We won’t take action simply because the subject of a story didn’t like The Bee’s news coverage. Cases that involve public officials or serious crimes also are unlikely to qualify, though we will consider all applications. And we won’t remove stories from our permanent Sacramento Bee archive.
We will proceed with caution, evaluating each case individually while remaining ever mindful of the value of public records.
In January, we will publish additional details about the Clean Slate project and begin accepting applications.
We’re not erasing the historical record, but we are updating it and looking with fresh eyes at ways to ensure fairness and equity in our coverage and mitigate unintended long-term consequences.
This story was originally published December 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
