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.

> A retraction is exactly that -- a story being retracted, i.e. pulled from view.

This is not true. Retraction means you withdraw endorsement of the story and cease to publish new copies of it. It does not mean you pull it from view. Likewise, retracted scientific papers are not expunged from the websites of scientific journals. See for instance this:

http://www.jbc.org/content/283/45/31012.full

You can tell infer that this is the correct use of the term "retract" because daily newspapers retracted stories long before the internet, when it was obviously impossible for them to do anything besides removing endorsement and admitting error.

In many English dictionaries, "retraction" can mean either a disavowal/withdrawn endorsement, or to take back/withdraw.

Paper newspapers had no physical way of doing the latter without literally pulling every copy in existence, which would be impossible once it's been released (as you also pointed out). Because of that, you can't really infer the correct use of the term based off what they did. Furthermore, languages evolve, so even if that was the only "correct" use of the term back then does not mean it's also the only use today.

I'm happy to agree that none of this should be held up by a dispute over mere semantics. And I agree that languages evolve, and is used different but consistently by different communities at different times. But let me just note that since most scientific journals and some newspapers use "retract" to mean disavowal without textual removal, clearly describing whatever NPR and the NYTimes are doing requires an additional word (or at least a modifier). The term I've heard used sometimes, and which I think is clear, is "unpublish" (but this is not standardized).

"Retraction" in publishing usually doesn't mean "removing from view. Also, Google's dictionary doesn't mention "view".

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+retraction

1. the action of drawing something back or back in. "prey are grasped between the jaws upon tongue retraction"

2. a withdrawal of a statement, accusation, or undertaking. "he issued a retraction of his allegations"

In traditioal practice, it means "Adding a Retraction tag". In CS terms, it's a soft-delete.

For a very famous example:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The traditional practice you're referring to, in traditional publishing, has been around for centuries. It was very difficult/impossible to physically retract a printed article. But had that ability been there (and it probably has in limited cases) it's not hard to believe that given the option physical retraction would have been the preferred option. The Internet now allows us to go the preferred route.

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.

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.

When I read the original story, I thought it was a story about a guy who made a business and the story was basically free publicity for his business. The fact that they retracted the story makes me think that the person's claims were overblown and he was just trying to get free publicity for his business

is it ?

There is a big difference between trying to get accurate or false information removed from the web.

Interesting.

Joy Ann Reid is recently in hot water for lying about hackers inserting homophobic blog posts in to the archive.org record of her old blog. She has now requested that archive.org stop serving archives of this blog.

I wonder how frequently mainstream media scrubs old version of stories from archive sites.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/claims-by-joy-reids-cybersecur...

Its common for political parties in the UK to delete old content / speeches.

Mainstream media gets attacked for not doing enough fact checking, but also gets attacked for removing incorrect stories. I guess there's no way to win.

Removing stories completely is akin to hiding the fact taht you failed in your journalistic responsibilities. It would be better for the integrity of the journalist if the story remained available with the details of the failure plastered above/below etc.

Don't erase your mistakes - own up to them.

If your story unfairly libels someone, particularly a private individual, that presents its own ethical challenges, doesn't it?

Not at all. One could do as NPR has done in this case: Remove the original story and replace it with a statement of why it has been retracted. Nothing is hidden, and the incorrect story is removed.

I guess my concern is someone looking you up and the results being dominated by results like "Joe Smith, 55, of 22 East Wessex St, caught stealing from orphans" being a problem, even if clicking through shows a correction rather than the original story.

It is owning up to the mistake - hence the published retraction.

Being an authority on truth is a challenging role that requires caution and responsibility.

Doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we should hold journalists to a high standard - journalistic standards have weakened in the past decade with the rise of clickbait and promoting partisan editorials as news.

Agreed, but journalism and journalists are meanwhile being facetiously attacked as "#FakeNews". And I don't think we should hold journalists up to a higher standard than elected officials; or, to be accurate, I don't think we should allow either journalists or elected officials a low moral and ethical standard.

Get it right the first time.

If you can’t, don’t pretend to.

Especially with software, right everyone?

Even the atom bomb was tested at least once.

But not in production.

The first two atomic bombs in production were considerably different designs from each other, and there was only one test explosion before those two, so doesn't that mean that at least one bomb was in fact tested in production?

No bugs ever made it to production.

There is a very easy way to win. Do not censor stuff. Own up to your mistakes and failings. Be responsible for what you publish. Maybe that is a foreign concept to modern "journalists".

What do you want NPR to do in this case? You may think they deserve mocking scare quotes around their profession, but these are real journalists trying to fix a mistake following industry guidelines.

Here [1] are NPR's own published guidelines on why they will supposedly not remove 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."

[1] - http://ethics.npr.org/memos-from-memmott/how-to-explain-why-...

Wow good catch, you may want to share this as a top-level comment.

Found it from another comment (that is top-level): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16943135 Quite damning!

Yes, I'm sure modern journalists are all wrong and you're right.

It's still on archive.org . Apparently NPR started forwarding to a new URL after doing the retraction.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180403204501/https://www.npr.o...

I got the original URL from the original HN post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16752468

I wonder if this will have the Steisand Effect.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

I'm not sure it applies. Streisand effect is more when one person/group wants to publish something and another more powerful group wants it hidden, people want to root for the underdog. In this case they're both the same group. When the original group says they made mistakes, it sort of taints how much people value it.

I wonder if archive.org/archive.is wills soon be running afoul of EU laws.

No, because the only thing the EU is gunning after is how easy it is to access the information. Easy to access though simple google search? Needs to be removed. Only found through searching through archives? Not a problem.

Why would there be a distinction between two different search services just because one is using a historical database?

What happens when the search engine indexes the archive?

Do they have offices in EU? The US has very strong freedom of speech rights. EU's are weaker. So it makes sense for them to only be based in the US.

Excellent find! Good catch.

Generally where? I went to check if that was the case for scientific journal, and I was shocked to see how easy it is to see full-text of a retracted article. There are "RETRACTED" tags scattered about, but it's still easy to grab a page of bad text. I'd expect the whole document to have some sort of marking on every horizontal line or as a watermark.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6446

Usually on the average news blog I've seen retractions in the form of "we didn't realize this author was paid by x and it doesn't meet our standards of integrity" notices, followed by "original article below".

Do you have any examples? A "retraction" is not just a synonym for "massive correction". It literally means to withdraw something.

Some recent notable examples of retractions; in all cases, the story was completely pulled:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/business/3-cnn-journalist...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05/23/statement-on-cove...

http://www.newsweek.com/alt-right-trump-franken-mueller-twit...

This is indeed common practice in journalism (but not science) when retracting a story, but it's not synonymous with "retraction". Indeed, daily newspapers before the internet often "retracted" stories when they clearly couldn't change how many copies were available. This is why the term "unpublish" has been introduced in the age of the internet.

> I'd expect the whole document to have some sort of marking on every horizontal line or as a watermark.

Why? Do you think anyone is at risk of not noticing the huge warnings on each page? What is the point of erasing the text?