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In many English dictionaries, "retraction" can mean either a disavowal/withdrawn endorsement, or to take back/withdraw.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