Have you ever heard of Jim West?  Well, up until last week I hadn’t.

Recently in an ethics class, I was introduced to Jim West, the mayor of Spokane, Wash.  In 2005, he had been accused of not only living a double life, but of molesting young boys in the 1970s.  Now, according to a documentary by Frontline, the reporter who wrote about West was not only unethical in his research, but he also wrongly accused West of molestation, which in response, damaged his reputation.

This brings me to historical record.  Since when is it OK to publish something that is clearly a personal conversation between two consenting adults?  When is it OK to publish something that is off the record?  In my opinion, NEVER.  Like Elizabeth Zwerling said, “Easy access to online news archives is one of the Web’s amazing benefits for journalists,” but at the same time I can’t help but think of it as a curse.

Although Jim West is now dead, he died in 2006 from colon cancer, his tarnished reputation pops up anytime anyone searches his name on the Web.  For Zwerling, she knows the repercussions that come from quoting someone that thought it was “off the record.”  Like I said before, the Web, journalism and the historical record can definitely be a curse.

Paul McAfee, director of interactive operations at the Press Enterprise newspaper in Riverside, Calif., said “he hopes the visibility and permanence of the online record will make journalists take their job of getting it right more seriously than ever.”

I hope so too.

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