

In the digital age, it seems everything you have ever said or done is online. Today on WTMJ Conversations, WTMJ’s Libby Collins sits down with TMJ4’s Shannon Sims and Tim Vetscher for an inside look at how news decisions are made and to discuss an initiative removing articles from their website to help people “move forward” with their lives. Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: What were some of the kinds of stories that people said, “Could you remove this from the archives?”
TIM VETSCHER: Oh, gosh, various criminal convictions that people had experienced that we reported on. Some of the requests were also, “I was a person on the street interviewed for my opinion on the president’s stance on this particular issue, I no longer want my name associated with this story.”
LIBBY COLLINS: It wasn’t even necessarily that somebody committed a crime or was —
TIM VETSCHER: No.
LIBBY COLLINS: — accused of a crime —
TIM VETSCHER: No.
LIBBY COLLINS: — and maybe exonerated, these are just regular people who said, I don’t want to be associated with this newscast anymore.
TIM VETSCHER: Yeah, if we were doing a story that was political in nature and we were just soliciting a variety of voices or opinions on a particular story and somebody was interviewed for that story, but then they say, “I agreed to it at the time, but I didn’t realize it was going to live on on the Internet for months if not years and I would like you to remove that.”