Research · Literature

Literature

These are the sources we gathered while planning the project. We haven't gone back to check each one yet, so treat quotes and dates here as unconfirmed until a source is marked otherwise. The proper literature review, with its search method and the work that argues against our premise, will replace this list.

Policies outside the Atlas

Guidance from standards bodies, researchers and newsrooms that aren't in the Atlas, some of them outside the U.S. NSMPA found these quotes automatically and nobody has checked them yet.

• BBC (United Kingdom)

  “Under UK law, a requirement to amend or remove online content arises only in limited circumstances and the guidance in this note extends beyond the BBC’s legal responsibilities as a publisher.”

  Source
• Canadian Association of Journalists (Canada)

  “Those who approach the search engine to have content removed from search results are told that the information must be changed on the news site where it was published.”

  Source
• Maine Trust for Local News

  “However, we also recognize there may be rare and limited instances where circumstances justify taking down or removing an article.”

  Source
• ONA Student Newsroom

  “As newsrooms continue exploring solutions for this ongoing issue, Lee says it’s important for the industry to foster conversations and share successes and shortcomings with other newsrooms that might be considering to unpublish too.”

  Source
• The Carillon (Canada)

  “If the editorial board determines that this is the best course of action, we will consider replacing their name with a pseudonym or removing their name and only identifying them by occupation should their occupation be obscure enough (e.g. “U of R President” would still be very easily identifiable).”

  Source
• The Martlet (Canada)

  “Unpublishing Policy The Martlet sometimes receives requests to remove or unpublish our articles.”

  Source
• University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications

  “This framework says that unpublishing decisions should take into consideration the interest of the individual (in having the article removed to protect their safety, reputation and economic well-being) as well as the public (in having potentially important information available and accessible).”

  Source

What we still need to check

• A 2017 survey of newsroom policies by Dwyer is often cited for the figure that about 80% of roughly 109 responding newsrooms had a policy on unpublishing. We haven't obtained its questionnaire or full text yet, so that figure is unconfirmed, and it describes that sample only, not U.S. newsrooms in general.
• The newsroom practices cited here need checking against each newsroom's current published documents, with citations or lawful snapshots kept.
• We haven't run a systematic literature search yet. When we do, we'll publish the search strategy and keep studies that take the opposite view.