Don’t rewrite history based on current standards

Is it 1984? Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s fictional book, “1984,” about living in a socialist society, works at the Ministry of Truth. Ironically, he spends each day rewriting history so that it agrees with the current political ideas and propaganda.

Recently I read that some major newspapers are rewriting or removing previous articles if they reflect negatively on persons who are members of minority groups. Since the electronic files are changed, anyone conducting research would find a different version of a story, or no story, compared to what was published at the time of the event. The stated purpose of this effort is to protect minority persons from an image of them participating in criminal or negative activities. The motivation for this change effort is the belief that minority persons were unfairly targeted — i.e., that news articles were written about them when a white person would have escaped the notoriety.

I’m not a journalist. I don’t know how they decide if a particular event is newsworthy, or not, or how minority status might come into play in that decision. Certainly, everyone should be treated fairly. But if history is being rewritten to comply with current political ideas, it appears we might be living in an Orwellian world. I’m very concerned.

Jim Carnahan

Baker City