ROGER ACH-- SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
People think they have “arrived” when they Google their name and find a whole page of references to themselves on the Internet. Information is so easy to disseminate now days and so accessible for all of us, that we as publishers of information have a responsibility to ensure that the information that we publish is accurate.
How many times have you seen a front page article in the newspaper that turns out to be “not exactly.” The injured party demands a retraction, and even if he or she gets that retraction, it turns up buried on page 29 in the lower left hand corner. Several years ago, a friend of mine, Roger Ach, a Cincinnati businessman, was falsely charged with check fraud. To his chagrin, Mr. Ach, was arrested and the news was all over the Cincinnati papers, including the Cincinnati Enquirer. While the article in the paper is now dust, that article still appears on Google, even though the incident happened over 5 years ago. The injustice is that since the Enquirer never published a retraction, there is nothing on Google to refute the false charge. Mr. Ach was exonerated of all charges and the judge found the charges so egregious that Mr. Ach’s record was expunged. Unfortunately, that expungement was never published anywhere, so there is nothing on Google to refute the damage done to Mr. Ach’s reputation. While Mr. Ach has had many successes and accomplishments since that dreadful day in 2003, this one article continues to haunt him.I’m sure there are many other instances where people have been hurt by words published on the Internet and we, as responsible journalists, need to be sure that we have our facts correct and when those researched facts turn out to be incorrect, we need to be responsible enough to admit our mistake and to correct the damage we have done