The DOD IG's disappearing report
IG's report revision illustrates one of the challenges of online journalism.
One of the challenges of trying to provide readers with links to online resources is that those resources don't always stay put.
A story from last week provides a good example. Matthew Weigelt covered a report from the Defense Department's Inspector General regarding the department's accuracy in verifying the status of service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.
We published the story and, as we always try to do when possible, linked to the IG report.
The story began to get readers and we promoted it in the next day's e-mail newsletter – and then the report disappeared.
The link stopped working, and our staff was unable to locate it elsewhere on the IG's website, until today.
It turned out that the IG's office had taken the report down because “there was an inappropriate warning on the cover that was not applicable to the public version,” according to statement the DOD IG's public affairs office sent to Weigelt.
The report is unclassified and should not have had the warning label, but nothing changed in the content, according to the Office of the IG.
Meanwhile, it left us unable to link to the resource that the story was about, and no explanation of what had happened. The link has been restored. If you read the original story and were frustrated that you couldn't read the report, click here to return to it.