Paedophile mis-linkage: News aggregators need to address issue of identification and verification.

'H' from Steps, as I will choose to call him (and any PR would probably advise he chooses to be called going forward) has been hard hit and unfortunately so by the misfortune of having the same name as a repulsive paedophile who was recently jailed for 35 years (Ian Watkins). Unfortunately for 'H', he shares not only the same name but the same profession and even country of origin as his depraved and reviled namesake.

While 'H' last week secured a High Court apology after the E!Entertainment TV website had previously wrongly pictured him alongside a report of the guilty plea lodged by Ian Watkins (formerly of the Lostprophets) - and E!Entertainment had been quick to spot and correct the error and fully admitted fault - this did not stop the same happening again. This time (see Press Gazette for full reports) Google News had published the wrong (i.e. 'H' from Steps rather than Watkins from Lostprophets) picture alongside a CBS News Story of Watkins' conviction. It appears this matter has not been resolved:
Tweets

Ian H Watkins @Ianhwatkins 

So, it seems @cbsnews are not to blame..... My lawyers are now dealing with @google ...

2:48 PM Dec 20th 

Ian H Watkins @Ianhwatkins 

SORT THIS OUT @cbsnews @google !!!! I am very upset ... Again !!!twitter.com/Ianhwatkins/st…

3:04 PM Dec 19th 

What this case highlights is that there is a real danger when it comes to news aggregation that the technological controls are not able to detect and filter out the finer points of identification, jigsaw identification, implication, association, comment, innuendo etc that human intervention (as is the case among us annoying legal types who ruin the fun of many a seemingly good story) can bring to bear. In aggregator terms there was a story about a musician named Ian Watkins and the software coding linked a photograph of 'an' Ian Watkins to the story.

It seems ironic that one of the (many) key points drummed into journalists as part of their training on things legal is the need to identify the specific person in relation to any report, especially in relation to court proceedings [ See CPS guidance on identification ] and that where someone may share a name or address or profession one has to include sufficient detail (where permitted) to correctly identify. So in this case one would ascertain that there were indeed two Ian Watkins who were in the music industry and from Wales and ensure one identified the correct one. But a computer can't do this, it follows an algorithm which, sophisticated as it may be, cannot pick up every distinguishing feature.

So while 'H' from Steps and his lawyers mull over what they can do and who they can sue, the real question is one for news aggregators, namely, how can they build in checks to prevent this sort of mis-identification happening again. To the extent it is great to have a free flow of news and aggregated news from all over the world pulled together and spat out online, there are instances (such as this) where the need for some form of human intervention still seems appropriate and needed. It's the same thing for moderation on websites, chatrooms and twitter, the computer does not always know best.