As journalists, we care deeply about being accurate in our reporting and getting the facts right. Despite our best efforts work, we still sometimes get it wrong. That could mean a grammatical error or misspelled word, or it could mean something more serious. We might misquote a budget figure, misidentify someone accused of a crime or say someone has died when they are actually still alive.
While the severity of the mistake might influence how we react and what our users see, this most important principle should apply: Our users should know that we take accuracy seriously and that if we get something wrong, we will correct it publicly and will be guided by consistent policies and processes. But that’s not always happening.
Fewer than half of U.S. adults say journalists admit and take responsibility for their mistakes at least some of the time, according to the Pew Research Center. And people with low trust in the news cite a lack of faith in news outlets’ accuracy and the perception that journalists don’t own up to their errors as part of the problem.
We want to help you identify how easy it is for your audience to:
- understand the journalists’ process for correcting errors
- know when a story has been corrected
- know why a story has been corrected
- understand the journalists’ commitment to accuracy
We also want to help you identify challenges and obstacles in your newsroom that prevent more clarity around the process of correcting your news content.
We worked with fellow newsrooms to create best practices around corrections. The following checklist provides best practices from the Trusting News team. Not every recommendation will be a good fit for every newsroom, but we encourage you to use it as a self-assessment of your own outlet’s clarity and transparency around labeling opinion content.
Step 1: Assess your policies
Use this checklist to determine what elements exist in your official policies around corrections and accuracy. It is not intended to be a list of elements every newsroom should include. Rather, our hope is that it will help you consider how you could be more transparent and specific about your policies and practices.
Which of the following elements are included in your INTERNAL corrections policy? Check all that apply.
- The value of publicly correcting errors and why it’s important to your news organization.
- What types of errors are fixed but do not necessitate a public correction.
- What types of errors necessitate a public correction.
- How those standards apply to breaking news or other news updates.
- Whether you have any standards around timeliness, or whether archive stories are corrected.
- How corrections are consistently written and labeled, with example language.
- How a correction differs from any similar elements, such as a clarification or retraction, if used.
- An expression of regret for the error
Which of the following elements are included in your PUBLIC FACING corrections policy? Check all that apply.
- The value of publicly correcting errors and why it’s important to your news organization.
- What types of errors are fixed but do not necessitate a public correction.
- What types of errors necessitate a public correction.
- How those standards apply to breaking news or other news updates.
- Whether you have any standards around timeliness, or whether archive stories are corrected.
- How corrections are consistently written and labeled, with example language.
- How a correction differs from any similar elements, such as a clarification or retraction, if used.
- An expression of regret for the error
Then ask yourself:
For any elements that are in an internal policy but not a public-facing policy, why is that? Find out what you can about resistance to including more detail publicly. Is it a newsroom decision? A publisher or general manager decision? A corporate decision? Based on legal advice?
Step 2: Consider your style
Use the questions below to learn more about how your corrections are written.
- What guidance are you given about how to write corrections? Paste any internal language here.
- How would you describe how your corrections are written?
- In your corrections, does the word “correction” appear?
- Are the corrections easy to understand, or do they read like they are working hard not to actually say very much? Do they leave users understanding what was wrong and what the correct information is?
- How’s the tone — do the corrections seem like they were written by a human, not a robot?
Step 3: Think about your placement
Use the questions below to learn more about how prominently corrections are featured on your website? (For the following questions, consider stories in text, photo, video and graphic formats. Describe where precisely corrections appear on these platforms.)
- Where and how prominently are corrections featured on your website?
- Where and how prominently are corrections featured in print products?
- Where and how prominently are corrections featured in broadcast products?
- Where and how prominently are corrections featured in your newsletters?
- Social platforms and formats offer different options for corrections. What are your standard practices for correcting errors with: Facebook/Instagram text?
- What are your standard practices for correcting errors with: Facebook/Instagram images and videos?
- What are your standard practices for correcting errors with: Facebook/Instagram stories?
- What are your standard practices for correcting errors with: Twitter?
- What are your standard practices for correcting errors with: YouTube/social video sites?
Step 4: Examine how the public can report errors
Use the questions below to help determine how easy it is for the public to contact your newsroom if they spot an error?
- Does your website include an invitation for people to let you know if they spot an error? If so, what does it say, and where is it on the site?
- Does an invitation to report an error appear on story pages on your website?
- Does an invitation to report an error, or a mention of corrections, appear on your home page?
- Does an invitation to report an error, or a mention of corrections, appear in the menus in your header or footer?
- Does an invitation to report an error appear on other platforms (print, broadcast, newsletters, social, etc.)?
- Anywhere you accept messages from the public is a place where they could let you know you’ve gotten something wrong. How confident are you that if a social media message, newsletter, reply, etc., included an error report, that it would make it to the right person?
- In what ways can people submit an error? Is there an online form? An email address? A phone number?
Step 5: Evaluate your newsroom culture
Use these questions to help you better understand your newsroom’s culture around corrections.
- How would you describe how corrections are handled internally? Are employees shamed or reprimanded for acknowledging errors? Or are they thanked for coming clean about them?
- Describe your internal workflow for reporting corrections. Is it easy logistically to get errors corrected?
- Is someone in your newsroom in charge of corrections — approving them individually, or supervising them more generally? If so, what is that person’s role overall, and what is the process for getting them involved?
When you’re done:
Reflect on your findings overall:
- In general, how easy would it be for audience members to know that a story has been corrected, across platforms? What is working well, and where do you have room for improvement?
- In general, how easy would it be for audience members to report when they think you’ve gotten something wrong, across platforms? What is working well, and where do you have room for improvement?
- After going through this exercise, what would you most like to improve about your corrections process?
- Are there obstacles to improving your corrections process within your organization? If so, what are they?
- How likely are your ideas to get adopted? And what support from Trusting News would be useful?
See how other newsrooms do it
For some inspiration, here are some examples of how newsrooms are sharing their corrections policies and talking publicly about how they make corrections:
- Toronto Star’s is fantastic. The policy is here. Corrected stories are collected here. The bottom of every story invites people to report an error and see their standards.
- The Tangle newsletter is written conversationally and counts errors.
- WCPO has a written policy and submission form.
- NPR has a form and a database of corrected stories.
- The Dallas Morning News has a form.
- Grady News source includes procedures for social platforms.
- The Echo tracks corrections on this page and tells people how to report errors.
- In this edition of Trust Tips, we write about how to address an error with humility.
- WCPO explains why weather forecasts sometimes turn out to be inaccurate.
- A mistake can also create a unique opportunity to build trust with your community. Look at how the Star Tribune did just that.
Due credit and thanks. This guide draws from an American Press Institute report by Craig Silverman: How to correct website and social media errors effectively. (Trusting News is a project of API and the Reynolds Journalism Institute.)