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Radiolab

Right to be Forgotten

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

History, Science, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Society & Culture

4.644.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In an online world, that story about you lives forever. The tipsy photograph of you at the college football game? It’s up there. That news article about the political rally you were marching at? It’s up there. A DUI? That’s there, too. But what if ... it wasn’t. In Cleveland, Ohio, a group of journalists are trying out an experiment that has the potential to turn things upside down: they are unpublishing content they’ve already published. Photographs, names, entire articles. Every month or so, they get together to decide what content stays, and what content goes. On today’s episode, reporter Molly Webster goes inside the room where the decisions are being made, listening case-by-case as editors decide who, or what, gets to be deleted. It’s a story about time and memory; mistakes and second chances; and society as we know it. This episode was reported by Molly Webster, and produced by Molly Webster and Bethel Habte.  Special thanks to Kathy English, David Erdos, Ed Haber, Brewster Kahle, Imani Leonard, Ruth Samuel, James Bennett II, Alice Wilder, Alex Overington, Jane Kamensky and all the people who helped shape this story. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.  To learn more about Cleveland.com’s “right to be forgotten experiment,” check out the very first column Molly read about the project.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Wait, you're listening.

0:03.1

Okay.

0:04.4

All right.

0:05.6

Okay.

0:07.0

All right.

0:08.5

You're listening to Radio Lab.

0:11.4

Radio Lab.

0:11.9

From W. N. Y.

0:13.9

C.

0:14.8

See?

0:15.1

Yeah.

0:19.3

All right.

0:20.1

Here's a good one.

0:22.6

This is a guy who's murder conviction overturned, but he shot and killed somebody.

0:28.7

I mean, this is violence, right?

0:30.7

It ends up not being a crime, but he took somebody's life with a gun.

0:37.5

His position is...

0:39.3

Hey, I'm Chad Ebon-Rod. This is Radio Lab.

0:42.0

And we're going to start off today with a conversation that happened in a conference room somewhere in Ohio.

0:47.7

Let's see.

0:48.8

So just how I got to Cleveland.

0:51.0

Let me walk us through that part.

...

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