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Blaming the Times for Your Bad ReputationThe newspaper's public editor gets all verklempt over a nonissue.

By Jack Shafer
Posted Monday, Aug. 27, 2007, at 5:39 PM ET
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.

Of all the disruptions caused by the Web, the chance that an old New York Times story featuring incomplete or outdated bad news about you might nix your chance of getting a job must rank near the bottom. Yet that's what Clark Hoyt, the newspaper's public editor, spends his Sunday, Aug. 26, column on.

Roughly one person a day approaches the Times to complain about how his or her life might be unnecessarily complicated by an old Times story unearthed by a Web search, Hoyt writes. His prime example is Allen Kraus, a former New York City official. Kraus "wonders if" the negative and incomplete Times story from 16 years ago riding atop a Google search of his name might be deterring clients from hiring him in his current incarnation as a consultant.

Notice that Hoyt doesn't cite evidence of harm done to Kraus' reputation by the Google search. He just reports that Kraus wonders if it has scattered potential clients. The other aggrieved individuals described in Hoyt's column—all unnamed, by the way—also fail to offer any evidence of injuries inflicted by incomplete or erroneous Times pieces. One person grouses that the Times published a story about his arrest for fondling a child but didn't report the dropped charges. A woman literally weeps to Hoyt over a Times article about weight loss that inaccurately reported her a size 16. Another woman worries that prospective employers will think her résumé a fraud if they cross-check it against the wedding announcement in the Times from 20 years ago that misnamed her alma mater.

This isn't to suggest that nobody has ever been inconvenienced or even ruined by a moldy Times account. I'm sure some have. But under Hoyt's supervision, it's a spindly peg for a column.

The public editor interviews senior Times editors and others to discuss the "problem" and how to solve it. Pull the offending stories from the archives? Re-report every story challenged as incomplete or wrong? Rig the archives so that incomplete stories get buried in Web searches? Program the public archives to forget "news briefs, which generate a surprising number of the complaints," but still keep them on hand? All overkill, but Hoyt still believes something should be done.

One of the flaws in Hoyt's thinking is his belief that one's reputation is a possession—like a car or a tennis racket—when one's reputation actually resides in the minds of others. A person can have as many reputations as people who know him or know of him. Positing that the top link in a Google search of a name equals somebody's reputation is silly, and Hoyt's column only encourages that notion.

If Google users conclude that an individual is guilty of fondling a child just because a Times story reported his arrest, that says more about their gullibility than it does about the inadequacies of the Web or the Times. The Times is wonderful, but it's not a vaccine against stupidity.

Whatever their shortcomings, search engines are a million times superior to human memory, which they are rapidly replacing. In the old days, a reader was just as likely not to recall the exonerating or corrective stories about an individual published in the Times. At least the Web makes it possible to look for the pieces.

The Web also offers those wounded a variety of ways to manage their reputations and mitigate the offenses of the New York Times (and of other publications). For instance, instead of carping to the public editor about the damage the ancient Times story might be doing to his career, I advise Allen Kraus to purchase the allenkraus.com domain—which is available, according to a WHOIS search. Build yourself a simple home page, Mr. Kraus, containing your résumé and quotations from—and a link to—the later Times story that absolved you of any mischief. With a little enterprise, you could persuade colleagues and customers to link to the home page and boost it to a place of prominence in Google searches of "Allen Kraus."

By exaggerating the absolute power of the Times and Google to determine reputation, Hoyt's column encourages people to think of themselves as technopawns. (It also damages Hoyt's reputation in the process, but that's his problem.) I'm all for getting the Times to correct meaningful errors of fact in a decent interval, but if you want to secure a better reputation than the one that Google currently spits out, get busy and build it yourself.

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Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
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Remarks from the Fray:

So basically, if a newspaper makes an error, and someone doesn't perform detailed research to invalidate it, well, hey, reputation is determined by more than just news stories. This theory would be fine if we were all district attorneys. In the real world of job decisions, where our reputation is backed up by a resume and maybe a few references, it's utterly implausible.

But besides the ridiculously low standards of journalism articulated by Slate's editor-in-chief, why the initial skepticism of whether an inaccurate newspaper article can have damaging consequences? Frankly, I don't think the Times Public Editor even needs to bother establishing that. It should be understood by anyone who writes something publicly that words have power- let alone an editor.

As for the proposed remedy of setting up your own web site. There are a number of obvious problems that make the idea difficult to take seriously. One, by setting up the web site you will be drawing everyone's attention to the offending article, including those who wouldn't have seen it. Two, if you don't have any other content, how are you going to convince associates to link to your ever so interesting web site that says essentially, "Joe Shmo" is not a pedophile? Three, if you aren't a professional web designer your web site will shabby and reflect poorly on you. I could go on, but at this point I think I have devoted more thought to the idea than the original author.

I enjoy Slate's to-the-point contrarian attitude, but this article is all attitude no substance, or empathy.

--supercito

(To reply, click here.)

Shafer and Hoyt are a little bit off base in their assertions. In this day and age of kidnappers and pedophiles, that fellow who was falsely accused of fondling someone is indeed being damaged by the paper for its not printing a correction on the accusation. That's very serious stuff.

As more and more employers and potential clients turn to the internet for information regarding the people they hire it is very important that we seek out accuracy. Imagine if you lost the love of your life because she googled your name and found accusations of child fondling. It doesn't take much these days to be written off in the business world either. Even an old DUI or pot smoking case from 25 or 30 years ago can ruin an otherwise stellar life's work.

Now, if those accusations have been proven false, the innocent person must once again work to clear his name. In the case of competition over a promotion, sometimes all it takes is a sliver of doubt to destroy a person's career. By the time the person has re-cleared their name the new position has been filled or the client has hired someone else.

Newspapers have an obligation to print the news and to print only things that are true. If an honest mistake is made then the newspaper has an obligation to correct that mistake. Now that old articles are appearing across the net from 20 years ago, long forgotten mistakes are coming back to injure people.

I disagree that a person's reputation is not his own. A reputation is based on perceptions and facts regarding the person whose reputation is in question. If a man has worked hard his entire life to live within a certain set of parameters in order to have a good reputation, then he has every right to insist his reputation be protected from false information and allegations. The man who was falsely accused of fondling another person has a legitimate beef with that accusation being the first thing people see of his personal history, particularly since the paper refuses to print another story detailing the [falsity of the] allegation.

Even today if newspapers print stories with names of people accused of crimes in their headlines and then the accused are later cleared the newspapers owe that person and the public another story with equal headlines outlining the persons innocence.

Look at Richard Jewel and the living hell he experienced as the news media tried and convicted him. The news media hounded that poor man and his mother into hell. After the man was proven innocent he was given a little bit of press stating he was wrongly accused but the damage was done. Hell that guy should have been given the medal of honor for what he did in Atlanta, he saved a lot of lives that night. Instead America handed him a shit sandwich.

--NickD

(To reply, click here.)

Is it so ridiculous that some people may go to the newspaper of record to get information? By Shafer's logic, anyone who believes something they read in the newspaper is simply gullible. So what's the point of newspapers? Not everyone has the time/inclination/know-how to track down the real story. Some people have "jobs" and rely on newspapers to learn what's going on in the world.

--corkystclair

(To reply, click here.)

(8/31)

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