Recently the Fitzhugh was contacted by the mother of a young man who had gone through the court system in Jasper after being arrested on drug-related charges. The woman, who called from an out-of-province area code, was deeply upset. She said her son’s troubles in Jasper were following him wherever he went as a result of the information about his case being available online through the Fitzhugh website.

Her son is trying to forge a new path in life, she said, and is looking hard for a job. But prospective employers aren’t giving him a chance, she claimed, because a simple Google search of his relatively unique name quickly leads them to the articles about his arrest.

We won’t repeat his name here or reveal any specific details about his case that might exacerbate the situation for this young man, but we also won’t remove the articles from our website, as his mother pleaded with us to do. This was a difficult decision but we believe it was the right one.

As a general policy, a newspaper cannot and should not refrain from publishing information that is of public interest simply because a person involved doesn’t want the information published. That is not to say, however, that journalists should publish information with no regard for how it will affect those involved. Quite the contrary.

We believe strongly in the Society of Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics, which states that journalists should “show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage.” The code also states, however, that journalists should “balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.”

In this case, the deep and genuine concerns of this woman for her son weighed on us heavily. But, when balanced against the public interest of maintaining an open-court process, which is an essential component of a functioning justice system, that concern was not enough to justify removing the articles from our website. There are some exceptions, but typically when someone is arrested and charged with a crime, the public has a right to be informed.

At one point the mother asked if it was the newspaper’s intent to make it difficult for her son to find work. Of course it isn’t. The intent behind any article we publish – in print and online – is to document and record events that are relevant to the community. Communities ought to have a public record, and the Fitzhugh serves as the newspaper of record in Jasper, especially now that it is the only news periodical in town.

The real issue here is that the record of any given community now extends well beyond that community’s borders or the distribution area of its newspaper. Thanks to the Internet – and particularly to Google – vast quantities of information are now easily accessible by virtually anyone, anywhere.

But, in spite of this radical change in information flow, public information ought to remain public. Part of the reason for having an open court system is to make information about criminal charges available to the public – including to prospective employers.

The difference today is that it’s much more difficult to leave your past in the past. Moving to a new community used to be a way to wipe the slate clean, but this no longer is the case. The challenges this young man is now facing are no doubt shared by countless other individuals who have gone through the court system in recent years and now have information about their history easily accessible with an online search, regardless of where they live.

The same goes for people who didn’t even commit a crime, but simply posted a poorly chosen sentence or two on a blog or social networking site. There are plenty of stories of people who have lost their jobs as a result of questionable information they posted online that quickly became part of an increasingly vast and permanent record of all of us.

This is a new reality that extends well beyond Jasper and the Fitzhugh. It is frightening, in some ways, fascinating in others, and likely to create challenges for most of us at some point in our lives as we learn to adapt to it.