Jack Shafer writes for Slate about New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt’s Aug. 26 column:
One of the flaws in Hoyt’s thinking is his belief that one’s reputation is a possession—like a car or a tennis racket—when one’s reputation actually resides in the minds of others. A person can have as many reputations as people who know him or know of him. Positing that the top link in a Google search of a name equals somebody’s reputation is silly, and Hoyt’s column only encourages that notion.
If Google users conclude that an individual is guilty of fondling a child just because a Times story reported his arrest, that says more about their gullibility than it does about the inadequacies of the Web or the Times. The Times is wonderful, but it’s not a vaccine against stupidity.
Whatever their shortcomings, search engines are a million times superior to human memory, which they are rapidly replacing.
The Web also offers those wounded a variety of ways to manage their reputations and mitigate the offenses of the New York Times (and of other publications).
By exaggerating the absolute power of the Times and Google to determine reputation, Hoyt’s column encourages people to think of themselves as technopawns. (It also damages Hoyt’s reputation in the process, but that’s his problem.) I’m all for getting the Times to correct meaningful errors of fact in a decent interval, but if you want to secure a better reputation than the one that Google currently spits out, get busy and build it yourself.
