How the “Right to be Forgotten” Challenges Journalistic Principles

What is it about?

The Right to be Forgotten is a fairly new aspect of human rights law in Europe. It gives people the right to get Google to remove embarrassing items about them from search results. We looked at this legal right and identified some principles that might help journalists to rethink, or at least modify, how they respond to people who ask for news items about them to be "unpublished" or modified. We also raise the question of whether and when journalists should provide people with "informed consent" about the consequences of being in the news.

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Why is it important?

Journalists care about keeping an honest record of what has been published in years past, but people featured in news reports may want to get on with their lives without a youthful indiscretion or a careless quote or unfortunate picture forever coming up in Google search results on their name. Imagine looking for a job ten years after you said or did something really stupid (or stupid-seeming) while drunk a student. Wouldn't you like the campus paper story about you removed from the Internet? But if you're the editor of a publication, how do you decide when and how to remove or modify items that you've published? And if you're a journalist, interviewing someone who doesn't seem to realize the consequences of being on record about what she's talking about, should you point it out?

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