People with criminal records who have done their time and paid their debt to society have long been calling for the expungement of old cases so they can start over with a clean slate. The same could be said of any media coverage of those crimes. These news stories can haunt people for years after they’ve reformed, handicapping them as they apply for jobs or try to buy homes.

The Guardian looked into several news outlets around the country that have started programs to review and potentially remove or modify old stories that might cause harm to people who committed crimes in the past. They’ve moved on and are now fine upstanding citizens. The justice system worked out as it should, reforming the criminal into a model citizen, yet googling their name digs up a relic of who they used to be.

In 2018, Chris Quinn, editor of Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer, a major national newspaper and Cleveland’s biggest newspaper, started a “right to be forgotten” project. He was constantly being bombarded by messages from people who had committed minor crimes that were reported in the newspaper and who were begging him to remove or modify the news stories. They were different people now but they were still suffering the consequences of a mistake they had made years prior.

News Outlets Are Offering People a ‘Clean Slate’ by Deleting Their Old Crime Stories

The program allows for the removal of names or the deletion of articles for those who have committed crimes in the past and want to move on. Of course, he doesn’t just allow for blanket removal of anything and everything a person has done in the past. He mostly focuses on nonviolent offenses or minor crimes that happened several years ago. For instance, for years a young man struggled to escape news reports of a minor drunken act of vandalism he was charged with as a teenager. After contacting Quinn, saying that he had atoned for his past yet the existence of the news articles prevented him from truly being able to move on, Quinn granted the man’s request — his name was removed from the article.

The idea is now catching on across several newsrooms in the United States. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Bangor Daily News. The Oregonian. NJ.com, one of New Jersey’s leading news sources. The Boston Globe. Several media outlets are now reassessing past stories and their practices moving forward, especially the use of mugshots in stories that can haunt average citizens for the rest of their lives.

The Oregonian, for instance, built on Quinn’s idea by establishing a “clean slate” program in 2021. A team reviews requests for the removal of mugshots, names, or even entire articles about minor offenses. They review each request carefully to ensure the individual whose name or image is being expunged from the public record has paid their debt to society and has been rehabilitated.