Talk:The Daily Iowan

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[edit] Publishing criminal records

Some recent edits by Californiawikieditor:

The Daily Iowan publishes arrest records of Iowans, including college students. They then publish the arrest articles to google, where they remain indefinitely whether or not the person is convicted. This rather hateful reporting, although perfectly legal, has damaged thousands of lives and continues to date.

The Daily Iowan publishes arrest records of Iowa's college students. They then publish the arrest articles to google, where they remain indefinitely whether or not the person is convicted. This controversial reporting has damaged thousands of lives and continues to date. It is part of the larger problem of the merge between government and media, a tell-tale sign of fascism.

The Daily Iowan publishes arrest records of Iowans, including students at the University of Iowa. They then publish the arrest articles to google, where they remain indefinitely whether or not the person is convicted. For some reason, this information has been frequently censored.

The Daily Iowan is a right-wing, 19,500-circulation daily student newspaper serving Iowa City and the University of Iowa community. It has consistently won a number of collegiate journalism awards, including multiple National Pacemaker Awards. The editors rewrite and publish police logs, then publish them to google where they remain permanently. This is extremely damaging to college students, whose charges remain on google even if they were not convicted of those charges, and even if the charges were not reported accurately by the Daily Iowan.

My issues with these edits:

• The newspaper does not "publish the arrest articles to google" -- Google (and the various other search engines) crawl the web and find the pages by themselves, the newspaper doesn't push the articles to Google. At least, get rid of "Google" as this is not limited to Google.
• For reference, the criminal records are indeed visible on the web (such as http://media.www.dailyiowan.com/media/storage/paper599/news/2008/03/07/Metro/Police.Blotter-3258233.shtml ). I do find it a bit odd to list such minor issues ("public intoxication" etc) on the web (and presumably in print as well), but then again, I live on the other side of the pond where the standards in journalism might be slightly different. And as Californiawikieditor said, this is perfectly legal.
• "hateful reporting" -- this implies that they're intentionally trying to damage the reputation of those persons. Please tone down your language a bit.
• "It is part of the larger problem of the merge between government and media, a tell-tale sign of fascism" -- well, let me just say that I'm glad you removed this.
• It appears that publishing criminal records is a common habit in smaller newspaper -- see these for example: http://www.independentmail.com/news/2007/aug/03/arrest-records-anderson-and-oconee-counties/ , http://www.localcrimenews.com/city/1623/Los-Angeles-crime-news.html , http://www.statesboroherald.com/news/section/11/ , http://www.telegram.com/article/20080304/COURTRECORDS/803040617/-1/court_records_recent -- I fail to see why it's noteworthy to mention that Daily Iowan does the same.
• The placement of your edit makes it look like the primary purpose of the Daily Iowan is to publish criminal records. If you must express your criticism about The Daily Iowan, please at least place it to some less prominent place in the article. Newspapers do attract criticism, The New York Times has even its own page for criticism at Criticism of The New York Times, but that's probably because it's a slightly larger newspaper than The Daily Iowan.

Sorry, but I think it's better to revert the changes you've made until some kind of a consensus is found. Avij (talk) 19:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Virtually every local newspaper publishes the "crime blotter" or "police report" or something of the sort. When the police are called out - and particularly when an arrest is made, it goes into the newspaper. It's not unusual - it would be unusual if a paper failed to do this. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 03:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

They are indeed intentionally damaging the reputations of people and benefitting from their losses in a hateful way. Ain't no bones about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Californiawikieditor (talk • contribs) 18:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)