
NPR Retracts Story 'The Man Who Spent $100K To Remove A Lie From Google' - jessaustin
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/598239092/the-man-who-spent-100k-to-remove-a-lie-from-google
======
ColanR
According to NPR's own standards, it is unethical to remove erroneous stories.

> “We are guided by a newsroom policy that says it is inappropriate to remove
> content from our Website. If a report is inaccurate, we will correct it and
> state why it has been altered. If relevant new information emerges, we will
> update or do a follow-up story.

> “But our content is a matter of public record and is part of our contract
> with our audience. To simply remove it from the archive diminishes
> transparency and trust and, in effect, erases history. This is not a
> practice engaged in by credible news organizations or in line with ethical
> journalism.”

[http://ethics.npr.org/memos-from-memmott/how-to-explain-
why-...](http://ethics.npr.org/memos-from-memmott/how-to-explain-why-we-wont-
take-down-a-story/)

~~~
tantalor
They didn't "simply remove it", they replaced it with 1,300 words explaining
what the problems were with the story and why the story did not meet their
standards, hence the retraction.

The guidance you cite is a suggested response to third parties asking to
remove embarrassing information from the Internet. It doesn't apply in this
case; the story was retracted not because it was embarrassing, but because the
reporting did not meet their standards of fairness.

~~~
ColanR
Nope. It sure was responding to "third parties asking to remove embarrassing
information", but the policy that NPR pointed to (and that I quoted) is more
general than that. See what I quoted above.

~~~
jmull
I don't think you can just say "nope" here.

It's pretty dubious to take that quote completely out of context and apply it
to a different context.

Why should we accept your claim that the policy "is more general than that"?
Just pointing back to the out-of-context quote does literally nothing to back
that claim up.

I'll just note, what they did passes the sniff test... if you forget about
interpretations of their policies, how they handled the retraction looks
strongly ethical to me.

It seems likely you're simply misunderstanding their policies, doesn't it?

~~~
jessriedel
> If you forget about interpretations of their policies, how they handled the
> retraction looks strongly ethical to me.

But don't you agree that it would increase transparency to leave the original
text available on the website with a large disclaimer that the story was
retracted and NPR no longer endorses the text?

~~~
jmull
I agree it would increase transparency, but at the cost of further damage
caused by the bad story.

E.g., [https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/24/study-finds-that-we-
still-...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/24/study-finds-that-we-still-
believe-untruths-even-after-instant-online-corrections/)

Damage has already been done, since it appears that retractions have limited
effect, if any. But removing the bad story at least means new people won’t
stumble across it and be misled.

It’s a balance and personally, I think they made the right choice.

If it were me, I’d feel better if there was an indirect and obscure way to
retrieve the original story. Perhaps in this case there’s an archive that
severs the purpose? If so, great. Of course it would be much better if no
mistake had been made, but sooner or later mistakes are always made. You only
find out the character of a person or organization by how often mistakes are
made and what the reaction is.

~~~
jessriedel
Then prevent them from easily stumbling across it, but don't prevent them from
accessing it in any form.

~~~
fourthark
It's interesting how this relates to the "right to be forgotten." Some
interpret that to mean that the content will still exist, but will not be
indexed by search engines.

If so, then we are evolving into two Nets, the searchable one and the - what?
- one you have to follow links into? Links with grave warnings on them?

I'm not sure this is entirely bad but it's weird. Will we also have pirate
offshore search engines that ignore robots.txt and refuse to deindex?

Also see: the internet archive of things they aren't allowed to show because
of robots.txt

~~~
jessriedel
I agree that these issues are closely related, and one people's opinions on
them will be correlated. However, much of the time we can find solutions that
will almost everyone happy, e.g., removing just the name of individuals from
retracted stories (an idea suggested by someone else in this thread).
Importantly, almost no one thinks the mistakes of the newspapers have a right
to be forgotten, or more precisely, that newspapers have an defensible
interest in erasing the details of their errors and leaving only a summary
(written by themselves!) describing the error and declaring a retraction.

------
ocdtrekkie
So did they completely remove it, so you have to find an archive site to read
the original mostly-accurate story?

Wow, both archive.org and archive.is' oldest snapshots are of a notice that
the story is hidden pending editorial review. NPR may have purged this from
the Internet pretty darn well.

Makes me wonder who really called them about it.

EDIT: rightos managed to find the original story on the archive.is page from
another website: [https://archive.is/QxQtZ](https://archive.is/QxQtZ)

Generally a retraction is in the form of a note that the top, not attempting
to purge a story from existence over a minor technicality.

~~~
danso
A correction/editor's note is usually in the form of a note. A retraction is
exactly that -- a story being retracted, i.e. pulled from view.

According to the retraction note, this was not a minor technicality. The
reporter failed to talk to the other party in this story (the purported author
of the malicious website) and apparently mischaracterized the nature of the
website.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The "purported malicious website" is a trivial element though: This is a story
about how hard it is to get something removed from _Google_. That story is
still accurate, and still deserves to be public, but has been purged from the
Internet nonetheless.

~~~
danso
No, the story was about one businessman's purported difficulty in getting
something removed from Google. For all we know, the difficulty was because his
grievance was not as clear of a case as the original story claimed.

------
modeless
So what's the real story here then? Was the alleged lie actually true? Or was
NPR just unable to verify whether it is true or not?

Many people held up this story as a justification for the "right to be
forgotten", but if it turns out that even a respected news agency can't figure
out whether censorship was justified in this case, I think it rather supports
the case against censorship.

~~~
nostromo
There are so many problems with the story. It's fairly embarrassing for NPR.

Besides being a one-sided story, it's also obvious PR for Ervine's new
company, which is dutifully linked at the end of the story.

Secondly, the story presents Ervine as the heroic protagonist. An interesting
choice for someone that turned in his middle-eastern clients to the FBI
because they took a cab and didn't talk like typical rich people. Ervine's
response to this is to hand over all of his client's private information to
the FBI, without a warrant, after which his client is jailed and deported.

~~~
lmm
> An interesting choice for someone that turned in his middle-eastern clients
> to the FBI because they took a cab and didn't talk like typical rich people.
> Ervine's response to this is to hand over all of his client's private
> information to the FBI, without a warrant, after which his client is jailed
> and deported.

So he suspected someone was breaking the law and reported them to the
appropriate authorities? Or are citizens supposed to always cover for
criminals unless and until the government gets a warrant?

~~~
nostromo
Probable cause matters. Taking a cab and being foreign is not probable cause
for fraud.

He ended up being correct, but that’s posthoc justification.

~~~
salvar
Are citizens required to follow rules of probable cause before reporting
someone to the authorities?

------
cmiles74
I would really appreciate more information from NPR on why the story was
retracted and what, specifically, was wrong with the story. NPR's statement
mentions that the site that was allegedly defaming Jefferey Ervine was never
contacted and that the author of that site was maybe not really the author and
they weren't contacted either. In fact, reading through the retraction, I was
left with the suspicion that the _only_ person that NPR talked to was Jeffery
Ervine himself.

Jeffery Ervine is now the president of Bridgit.com which... Well, even after
looking at the site it's not clear to me what they do. It kind of sounds like
they work with schools to combat bullying[0] and there's a page on the site
covering the same material as the NPR piece.[1] But the NPR piece does end up
spending a lot of time on Ervine and the story wraps up with a plug for his
new company.[2]

Without more information from NPR, my first thought is that Ervine mis-
represented his story in an attempt to drum-up publicity for his new company
and NPR was sufficiently embarrassed that they have removed the story from
their site. Bu that's just me guessing, since this retraction has practically
no useful information.

[0]
[http://www.bridgit.com/about/#whybridgit](http://www.bridgit.com/about/#whybridgit)

[1] [http://www.bridgit.com/jeffrey-ervine/](http://www.bridgit.com/jeffrey-
ervine/)

[2] [https://archive.is/QxQtZ](https://archive.is/QxQtZ)

~~~
gcb0
1\. spread lies that being rightly forgotten by google costs over $100k and
get branded as an expert

2\. start a company that offers a $50 form submission for $50k. a killer deal
based on lies from #1

------
sqdbps
Wow, a full retraction!

I'm holding back on the kudos for NPR's editorial accountability until we get
some context.

The subject of that story was a hedge fund guy who didn't like the search
results appearing for his name and the legal expenses that went into trying to
change them, the piece was sympathetic to him and it was framed as a story
about 'net privacy and the lack of regulation around it, but of course it
wasn't about privacy it was about censorship, two concepts that are too often
conflated nowadays what with publications falling all over themselves trying
to extol EU regulations.

The bottom line is that the so called "right to be forgotten" is as
nonsensical an expression as it is a policy.

~~~
djsumdog
The EFF opposes the Right to be Forgotten. Some of their staff talked about it
at Defcon two years back. In too many cases it simply leads to censorship.

Freedom of speech, and its implementation by the Supreme Court in the US,
makes this kind of legislation impossible.

There are trade offs. Even if you can afford to get your criminal record
expunged, data collection firms can still hold a copy of your record while it
was public; so it can still show up on some background checks.

We need to move away from the stigma of lifetime labels more than we need to
be able to erase the past.

~~~
Kelbit
I don't know why criminal record checks aren't treated similar to a credit
bureau report. There is a legal time limit as to how long a bad debt or
bankruptcy can stay on a report, as the people who wrote the credit reporting
laws recognized that people can change. But a criminal record, even for a
minor crime, lives forever unless explicitly expunged.

~~~
tzs
One reason for the difference, at least in the case of very serious crimes,
might be that bad debt is often either due to bad luck, or due to mistakes on
your part that you learn from and are much less likely to make again.

For example you might get laid off during an economic downturn and not be able
to find a new job in time to avoid missing payments. A few years later, when
you have gotten back on your feet and caught up on everything, there is not
much reason to believe that you are a bad credit risk.

Or maybe you don't appreciate how big an impact high interest rates on credit
cards can have when you carry a large balance. You can easily learn from this
and not make that mistake again.

If short, as you note people can change, and in the case of bad debt there is
a good chance that they have done so after a few years. And if they haven't,
they will probably have newer bad debt on their credit report to take the
place of the expired items.

Compare to a very serious crime, such as child molestation. You don't do that
because of bad luck or poor judgment. To do that you have to be seriously
broken mentally, and modern medicine does not yet know how to fix that level
of broken. You are very likely as dangerous 30 years from now as you are
today.

In short, except in rare cases the people who do these kind of crimes do not
change. They just learn to be more careful to avoid getting caught.

~~~
Kelbit
I'm not talking about serious violent crimes like child molestation or
aggravated assault or murder. Those sorts of things _should_ show up forever.

I'm talking about things like petty theft, drug possession/petty trafficking,
and impaired driving. Those are crimes that people can change from.

------
danso
The discussion of the retracted story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16752468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16752468)

~~~
rightos
Think I found the full text of the original article hosted on another site
too. Archived mirror here:

[https://archive.is/QxQtZ](https://archive.is/QxQtZ)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Thanks, I saved a copy before someone manages to find and purge this too.

------
vinhboy
I am confused why NPR removed the story instead of adding this correction to
it. It seems that this revelation only makes the story more interesting, given
that it's about a con-man.

~~~
scott_s
Removing the story _is_ the correction. They no longer consider it a valid
story; that it is now more interesting is not relevant to the ethics.

~~~
vinhboy
I had to visit like 3 different sites to understand the whole story. I feel
like NPR got caught up in this scam. They should use the opportunity to
investigate how this happened instead of burying it.

~~~
danso
The ombudsman also addressed it:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/npr-
issues-rare-retraction)

~~~
vinhboy
> NPR's standard procedure in cases of errors is to make a correction, not
> remove a story entirely, as was done in this case.

Glad to hear that the ombudsman raised the same issue I am raising here.

------
3steve
Am I too late to point out that they have an article about sexual violence in
the military[1] disallowed in their robots text[2]. I noticed this last summer
and can't find a reason why, using Wayback Machine you can see it was added a
while after publishing.

[1]: www.npr.org/2013/03/21/174840895/sexual-violence-victims-say-military-
justice-system-is-broken [2]: www.npr.org/robots.txt

~~~
SiempreViernes
Yes, others have already pointed out this entirely unrelated and boring
configuration mystery about a 5 year old story.

~~~
slim
It's not boring

------
crisnoble
I read the original retracted story linked elsewhere in the comments:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180403204501/https://www.npr.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180403204501/https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/04/03/598239092/the-
man-who-spent-100k-to-remove-a-lie-from-google) But has anyone found the site
that Jeff Ervine tried so hard to get removed from Google? This whole things
sounds pretty interesting and part of me thinks that maybe NPR discovered the
lie that was removed was partially true. Many are wondering why they would
take down the story rather than publishing a note stating it was retracted.
Maybe the same litigious Jeff Ervine is suing NPR to remove this story or
preventing a correct version of the story from being written?

------
montrose
It's actually quite impressive that NPR will retract a story over what would
be standard practice among the bottom half of the media.

~~~
samschooler
I think NPR, since they are publicly funded, they hold themselves to a higher
standard than the rest of the media. You can see it in the last sentence of
the “under review quote”: “the highest standards of public service in
journalism”

~~~
mitchell_h
They also have a really interesting way of dealing with bias. "Tell the
truth".

~~~
testfoobar
By definition, bias isn’t about truth or fiction, but the selection of subject
matter and emphasis. Editorial decisions are, by definition, biased.

~~~
anthony_romeo
Oftentimes I try to look for the fairness of the presentation of issues. Bias
is unavoidable, and most articles will include some degree of interpretation
of the information. NPR, and even far more strongly opinionated publications
like the Economist, at least give a generally accurate representation of both
sides of an issue. This type of journalism is exceptionally far removed from
the Brietbarts and Huffington Posts of the world.

~~~
testfoobar
Even the best organizations are reluctant to challenge the narrative
expectations of their audience: the audience pays the bills. For example,
nearly all economists agree that rent control generates unfair outcomes. Yet,
the papers in SF almost never discuss this. Why? Because it would challenge
the prevailing expectation of their readers.

As an aside, I'm an enthusiastic reader of the Economist: it seems as if
subscriptions are better incentives than clicks for journalists by reducing
pressure to generate clickable headlines appealing to baser instincts. Sadly,
fewer and fewer publications will survive. BTW - the Washington Post's news
content has gotten a lot better under Bezos. I scan it every day now.

------
DubiousPusher
Pulled from at least one affiliate site too.

[http://tpr.org/post/man-who-spent-100k-remove-lie-
google](http://tpr.org/post/man-who-spent-100k-remove-lie-google)

------
caseysoftware
Regardless of their reaction to it.. this line is key:

> _" Fairness" is one of our guiding principles, and to that end we have
> pledged to "make every effort to gather responses from those who are the
> subjects of criticism." In this instance, that did not happen. The story
> referred to one individual as the "author" of a website that another person
> said had posted defamatory information about him. It also described the
> author's motivation as vindictive. But NPR did not contact the alleged
> author._

So NPR did NOT contact the author and then described their motivation. It's
good that they retracted this article but how many times have they released
similar articles with similar total disregard for the truth?

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.imediaethics.org/npr-retracts-reporting-
mistakes...](https://www.imediaethics.org/npr-retracts-reporting-mistakes-
substantially-undercut-story/), which points to this.

~~~
jessaustin
It points to this, but also includes important context. Perhaps even a better
link, from NPR itself, would be the ombudsman's piece:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/npr-
issues-rare-retraction)

The ombudsman (person?) blames various parties, but (rightly, to astute
readers of the retracted story) starts with the reporter, Aarti Shahani. She
screwed up, and NPR management aren't sugarcoating that.

~~~
badcede
Why would they? It's in their interests to blame the reporter. That's the one-
bad-apple way.

~~~
jessaustin
Like you, I would prefer that the "three editors" to whom that link refers
actually be named. I suspect that if the story had appeared without byline
(kind of difficult with NPR's format, but e.g. Economist does it), the
reporter would have remained anonymous even after the retraction. ISTM,
however, that other organizations would have just thrown their source under
the bus, like e.g. _Rolling Stone_ with their UVa rape story. Perhaps NPR will
do that eventually, but they haven't done so yet, to their credit.

HN prides itself on its wisdom and judgement, but we got this one completely
wrong too. When the original story appeared, nearly everyone here swallowed
every detail of this whopper completely, while the few who didn't (hint: me!)
saw their comments downvoted to oblivion.

------
firexcy
I don’t think there’s a problem with their retraction. Shall the original
story remain there, (and maybe also indexed by Google,) won’t that do exactly
the same harm to the alleged site owner what the story claimed to had been
done to the “victim”?

To unpublish the story may lose some informative and educational value for the
public, but since NPR's notice is detailed enough to explain what happened,
such value should give way to the protection to the wrongly-indicted site
owner.

------
JoblessWonder
What strikes me is the NPR story is almost the exact same as this one
published 3 years earlier... "Executive Wages a Painful Fight to Erase a
Slur":
[http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqre...](http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2015120420#PagenoteID0EGDAC1)

------
DoctorOetker
Extra! Extra! "The Right for Men with Funny Hats Not to be Viewed as Men With
Funny Hats."

advertisement: Buy Funny Amulets now! Funny Amulets stop 99% (by weight) of
ridicule about your Funny Hat, never have people make fun of your hat again!
Preorder NOW!!1

In other news:

Person wearing Funny Hat ridiculed for wearing Funny Amulet. Crowd
interviewed:

A woman describes: "It all started when we saw a man wearing a Funny Hat"

A blind person added: "Upon closer inspection the man was also wearing a Funny
Amulet, at least that's what I heard"

The first responding policeman reported: "When I arrived, everybody was
rolling on the ground from laughter. Some were hyperventilating. I was trying
to help them, when suddenly I saw ..." at which point the pink-faced policeman
burst out in hysterical laughter.

This story will be updated as more details emerge...

------
mc32
I don’t see the significance of this. NPR, like many other outlets, but less
emphatically, engages in shaping stories, not simply reporting things.

Innskerp, for example, will often pursue an angle of his while ignoring
implications of ignoring equally valid angles.

Of course all journalism does this, but the point is while they are spearing
“fair” here, it’s not the case in totality.

Interestingly, or admirably, Greene is quite fair, for example, some personnel
abide by this more than others.

------
davesque
Serious question: why is this getting so much attention on HN?

~~~
icelancer
This is a story about people deleting stuff off the Internet without
sufficient justification, which runs directly into Right to Be Forgotten and
Internet ethics and standards in general. It is right up HN's alley.

~~~
davesque
I guess it does seem like NPR may have been coerced into removing the article
if that's what people are thinking. I do agree that would be significant.

------
aviv
NPR's biggest accomplishment in the last decade is selling people on the idea
that NPR is unbiased.

------
jbob2000
It is no wonder people are turning to their echo chambers for news. Even the
most established and respected (arguably) news organization can’t even do
basic journalism.

~~~
jiveturkey
What exactly is your criticism? That they published the original story?
There's no such thing as perfection. It was caught and corrected. They seem to
be operating at much higher than a "basic" level to me.

~~~
jbob2000
My criticism is that news orgs shoot first and ask questions later. Even the
news orgs we hold in very high regard (NPR) do it. To me, that means it's a
systemic problem with the profession.

They need to operate more like the justice system; you should be _absolutely
sure_ of the facts before you publish them. Yes, that means good stories
sometimes won't be published, just like the justice system is sometimes unable
to convict people even though they "did it".

~~~
JustSomeNobody
> My criticism is that news orgs shoot first and ask questions later.

That's a gross generalization.

> Even the news orgs we hold in very high regard (NPR) do it.

Source?

> They need to operate more like the justice system; you should be absolutely
> sure of the facts before you publish them.

One should never use absolutes as there are exceptions to nearly everything.

