Newspapers are deleting old stories about certain crimes so the rehabilitated can more forward.
A growing number of newspapers in the United States are doing their part with the rehabilitation of former criminals and helping them achieve new lives. How? By literally deleting their old ones.
Bringing it to worldwide attention by The Guardian, several American newspapers and their websites have taken down and erased old reported stories of local crimes. This movement was spearheaded in 2018 by Chris Quinn, an editor at Cleveland.com, who founded a “right to be forgotten” edict for his publication.
Multiple requests from readers to pull down old reports about them or simply remove their names from the stories inspired Quinn’s movement. One such example that Quinn experienced was a woman in the health field who at one point stole some drugs from her job. She served her sentence and not only was deemed completely rehabilitated by a judge, but had the records of her crime sealed. In short, no one would be able to find records of her crime today through official channels. Google, however, doesn’t forget.
Having a mistake from your past available online makes it more difficult during job interviews.Photo credit: Canva
While she tried to start a new career outside the medical field (she accepted the fact that her actions made it so she couldn’t reclaim her medical license), any potential employer could see her mugshot from Cleveland.com’s news coverage of her past crime upon just Googling her name. This made it difficult to move forward by obtaining a new job for her new life.
She’s just one of millions of people going through this struggle. Per The Sentencing Project, more than 60% of formerly incarcerated people are unemployed within one year of being released, and as many as one in three Americans have a criminal record of some sort. Given that most job applications require a background check, employers can unearth past offenses of job applicants through a simple Google search, which can influence whether or not a person can be hired. This means that a good chunk of Americans are losing out on opportunities due to being judged by a mistake they made deep in the past, some of which are decades-old.
With their stories still available to the public years later, some rehabilitated offenders still feel imprisoned by their past.Photo credit: Canva
“We heard from many people about the pain this caused for them, especially those who had turned their lives around and were striving to be better people,” said Quinn in a 2022 op-ed updating their readers. “In 2018, we started our Right to be Forgotten project, accepting applications from people to remove their names from dated stories about them. We received 10 to 15 a month on average, and a committee of editors considered them.”
Other publications took notice and in recent years started enacting their own “right to be forgotten” practices, such as The Oregonian and The Boston Globe.
“Our response up until now has been that we do not remove accurate stories, as they are a snapshot of historical fact,” wrote Therese Bottomly, editor at The Oregonian. “But news organizations are coming to realize that such stories linger and affect lives in ways that can be outsized compared to the incident itself.”
Each publication has their own standards as to what stories get taken down and which ones remain online. Certain factors come into play in making that decision such as how long ago the incident was first reported and the severity of the crime committed. Some publications may elect to keep stories as written, but remove any mugshots that identify the persons involved. In any case, the overall focus is universal: Not letting a person’s past define their future.
A clean slate means a fresh start and a new road for the rehabilitated.Photo credit: Canva
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.