• by Ray Schultz , January 5, 2025

Individuals with minor criminal offenses on their record are able to have news accounts about them deleted at some publications.  

For example, the Plain Dealer has since 2018 pursued  a “right to be forgotten” policy that allows individuals to apply for removal of old stories that do not involve sex offenses, crimes of violence, crimes against children, corruption or wrongdoing by police officers, The Guardian reports. Generally, the incidents are at least four years old.  

Typical cases might include people who made a mistake as teenagers, but have had a clean slate since then. 

Other newsrooms doing the same include Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Bangor Daily News in Maine, the Oregonian and New Jersey’s NJ.com, the Guardian adds.

This is an important benefit for people who made a single mistake when young and are now applying for jobs or housing.  

“In the old days, you put a story in the newspaper and it quickly, if not immediately, receded into memory,” says Chris Quinn, editor of the Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com, according to The Guardian. “But because of our [search engine] power, anything we write now about somebody is always front and center.”

Past news accounts of crimes often included the suspect’s home address, a practice that seems to have gone out of favor. 

Of course, legal records might not be expunged. And some journalists might argue that accurate coverage of any sort should not be removed from the record. 

But Quinn argues that removal of stories is warranted in these instances  “People would say: ‘Your story is wrecking my life. I made a mistake, but … I’ve changed my life,’” the Guardian reports.