Government workers, teachers and green card holders across the country are asking editors to remove their names — and the record of their support for causes now targeted by the Trump administration — from old stories.
Journalists from around the country routinely ask me for ethics help. In the last month, I’ve heard from the editor of a gay newspaper, several alternative publications, a newsroom that covers immigrant issues, student newspapers and several mainstream commercial newsrooms.
Kevin Naff, the editor of the Washington Blade, the nation’s oldest gay newspaper, reached out to me for advice in March. Government employees were asking that their names be scrubbed from his archives. They feared that an open record of their sexual orientation, or their views on issues that run contrary to President Donald Trump’s, could make them targets for job cuts.
Taking down stories or removing sources “is not something I’ve ever done before with the exception of foreign sources who are facing life and death situations,” Naff said.
The rise of these requests speaks to the level of fear under the Trump administration. “These are unprecedented times in many ways,” Naff said.
After Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was snatched off the street of Somerville, Massachusetts, by plainclothes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and shipped to a detention facility in Louisiana, several student newspapers reported a surge of requests for name removals. The editor of a startup that serves a community with a high number of immigrants close to a U.S. border reached out for advice on how to handle the influx.
This is not a simple or easy decision to make, as the consequences of removing names can affect both the individuals involved and the integrity of the newsroom. Here’s the process I’ve used to help these editors make these difficult decisions quickly, given the high stakes.
- What is your mission or your promise to your audience? How does that inform your obligation to minimize harm to people in your audience?
- Do you take down or alter old content for other reasons? Many newsrooms have policies that permit the removal of names from articles or entire articles when the information is no longer accurate and serves no larger public value. This doesn’t necessarily indicate that you should also remove names from old stories, but it does provide a parallel case to compare.
- Do you have the capacity to consider requests on a case-by-case basis?
- Is the individual making the request part of a group that has been targeted? Is there clear evidence, for instance, that gay government workers are being targeted for DOGE firings?
- What harm could this person suffer? Could it put their life at risk? Being shipped off to a mega-prison in El Salvador is much more likely to put someone’s life at risk than being fired from their job.
- For each request, what does your audience gain by keeping the name in the story and how does that compare with the risk of harm to the individual?
- How can you be transparent about your decisions?
- If you are going to consider one person’s request, how can you be transparent and fair to others who may not even know they can ask?
Almost every professional editor I’ve talked to has said they will consider name removal requests on a case-by-case basis. However, knowing that government officials are cross-referencing student publications, some student editors told me they were considering proactively removing names of people who hold student visas and green cards from stories about protests against the Israeli military.
Even with these precautions, the protections might be futile. Revising the current version of information on the web does not remove it from the internet’s cache, which government authorities could still access.
As I walked through these questions with Naff, he told me, “Our mission has always been to write the first draft of history, because when we leave it up to the mainstream media, it usually gets screwed up.”
For years, the Washington Blade documented government hostility against gay workers. Now, the paper is once again documenting fear and persecution. To better protect those who share their stories, Naff said his paper is granting more anonymity.
“We’re going backwards,” he said. “The fear is really intense. People are scared. They’re scared to lose their pensions and, you know, all of that.”
As he considers altering past stories, Naff assesses the risk of harm, the individual’s media savvy at the time they were quoted, and the public value of keeping the story intact. While he’s open to considering such requests, he said he’s setting the bar pretty high.
“We’re all going to have to make new and uncomfortable choices about how we comply or don’t with what’s happening,” he said. “But, you know, we have to be mindful of the truth and stay true to our mission of reporting facts.”
