The Culture Of Journalism Prevents Forgetting

Michael Hedges July 7, 2014 - Follow on Twitter

Journalists do have a way with words. It is their claim to fame, at least for those fortunate enough to find a bit. They are, understandably, sensitive to public perception of the Fourth Estate role and their position in it. Paper and ink journalism isn’t what the used to be. Today we might say “never pick a fight with someone who buys bandwidth by the terabyte.”

In May this year the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled the “right to be forgotten” under the European Commission’s Data Protection Directive compels search engine companies to de-list upon request links to material on third-party websites that are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” Google, which links to 30 trillion webpages, and other search engine providers were far from pleased, neither about the potential expense nor the ambiguous language. But ECJ rulings cannot be appealed and Google – and presumably others – collected requests to “be forgotten”.

“In addition to weakening one of journalism's most powerful research tools, the ruling harms journalists by enabling the censorship of links to their work,” wrote the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) (June 4). The CPJ predicted a wholesale cleansing of history by the rich, the powerful and the corrupt. “By robbing journalists and other researchers of context, and the public of its right to know, the European court's ruling portends an uncertain period for press freedom and rational thought.”

So last week notices went out from Google to publisher’s webmasters – not directly to journalists as often incorrectly stated - that links to certain material have been disabled on European portals such as google.co.uk as a means of complying with the ECJ decision. Google’s primary web portal – google.com – does not fall under the ECJ decision and, therefore, links to material were not removed. Journalists, editors and publishers were spitting mad, in that order.

By far the greatest expression of outrage came from the UK, not coincidentaly the same week as another former newspaper employee was sentenced to a jail term for phone hacking. Links were removed to material on online portals of the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Daily Express and public broadcaster BBC, arguably some of the most visited news portals worldwide. “It is the equivalent of going into libraries and burning books you don’t like,” said Daily Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke, quoted by Bloomberg (July 4).

BBC economics editor Robert Peston complained his work was “cast into oblivion” by a link take-down to a 2007 blog post about former Merrill Lynch investment banker Stan O’Neal. “Most people would argue that it is highly relevant for the track record, good or bad, of a business leader to remain on the public record, especially someone widely seen as having played an important role in the worst financial crisis in living memory,” wrote Mr. Peston in a much more recent BBC blog post (July 2).

Continental European publishers certainly reported the story but with far fewer mentions of local take-down notices. The online edition of German news magazine Der Spiegel received at least one for a link to a story about Scientology. The link to a 2008 story on El Mundo’s website about an investment fraud conviction was also removed.

Prior to the May decision ECJ Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen recommended the court reject the “right to be forgotten” approach to privacy concerns as potentially “sacrificing pivotal rights such as freedom of expression and information.” Anyway, he added, pushing off public-private disputes to search engine providers would be “unworkable.” The court did not follow his advice.

There have been about 70,000 requests to de-index more than a quarter of a million webpages. Most have come from France and Germany, roughly 12 thousand each, then six thousand or so from Spain and Italy down to 1,600 from Poland. “It may be that they’ve decided that it’s simply cheaper to just say yes to all of these requests,” said EC vice president for the digital agenda Neelie Kroes spokesperson Ryan Heath in the first of several complaints about Google. He also said the intent of the ECJ ruling was not to allow people to “photoshop their lives.”

Within about a day several of the Google links had been restored, according to the BBC and the Guardian (July 5).  Online publishers have the right to appeal a search engine company’s decision to remove material from indexing to their national data protection regulator. By exciting the brotherhood of journalists, Google executives have very likely forced the European Commission to return to the ECJ for a ruling of clarification.

“Technology isn’t a section in the newspaper any more,” said online news portal Buzzfeed chief editor Ben Smith to the New York Times (July 6) in different context. “It’s the culture.”

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