Why news outlets seek to update errors quickly and thoroughly, even if it’s embarrassing
By Kelly Burch-Granite State News Collaborative
We’re taught from a young age that everyone makes mistakes. When those human mistakes happen in a news organization, as they inevitably do now and then, the outlet needs to quickly issue a correction.
“Our obligation is to the truth and if we didn’t get it right, it’s our job to make it right,” said Tom Kearney, who has been an editor since the 1980s, most recently with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Corrections are issued for relatively minor mistakes, like name misspellings, and larger factual errors. According to Ethics and Journalism, a project from New York University, “the key is correcting the error as quickly as possible and as thoroughly as necessary.”
Corrections are “a key format in journalism,” said Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth College professor who has researched the impact of corrections on public trust. In the heyday of print newspapers, outlets often ran a correction box, if needed, highlighting mistakes in information relayed in the previous day’s paper. In today’s digital world, corrections can be made right in the original story, typically with an editor’s note pinned to the top or bottom of the text explaining it has been updated.
The ability to make a quick correction can improve the accuracy of the story, said Tom Haines, who teaches journalism at the University of New Hampshire.
“You can intercept the incorrect information and correct it so that most people are seeing the correct information,” he said.
The fundamentals of a correction
The format for corrections should be clear and take full accountability, according to the Associated Press guidelines.
“A correction must always be labeled a correction,” the guidelines read. “We do not use euphemisms such as ‘recasts,’ ‘fixes,’ ‘clarifies,’ ‘minor edits’ or ‘changes’ when correcting a factual error.”
That’s true even if a mistake is noticed seconds after publishing. When it’s updated, it must be labeled as a correction, according to a New York Times explanation of its corrections policy. “There is no five-second rule,” the outlet notes.
Corrections should be given a prominence that’s similar to the original story in which the error occurred.
"The throw weight of the two things should be equal,” said Kearney. He once issued a large front-page correction, after a fundamental misunderstanding in a prevalent story.
“It was embarrassing,” he said, but necessary.
Outlet policies differ on whether the correction should repeat the original error.
“I was taught never to repeat the mistake,” said Carol Robidoux, founder and publisher of Manchester Ink Link.
That's an approach shared by major news organizations, including Reuters, which opt not to include incorrect information like a misspelling, but rather just note that a name was misspelled.
Other organizations, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, include the original mistake so readers can judge the error and correction for themselves, according to Ethics and Journalism.
Corrections and public trust
For many journalists, corrections are a way of maintaining trust and transparency.
“The goal is to get it out there, not only to correct the mistake but to keep the trust of the public that you’re letting them know when you’ve made a mistake,” said Haines.
However, Nyhan’s research shows that maintaining trust is not always the case. In a 2023 scientific paper, he and a team of researchers from the News Co/Lab at Arizona State University found that corrections improve the public’s understanding of a given story. However, the corrections also diminished trust.
“In an ideal world, the public would reward a media organization for being responsible in correcting,” Nyhan said.
Although that isn’t the reality, issuing timely, prominent corrections is still imperative. Nyhan pointed out that the benefits of corrections – improving the public’s understanding of a topic – were more significant than the impact on trust.
“The journalist’s first duty is to the truth,” Nyhan said, “and they should of course make a correction when they make an error, even if it will hurt their reputation.”
Kearney said that mistakes in a news outlet often produce frustrations from readers and subjects of the news. He hopes that corrections underscore the commitment to accuracy.
“In the long run, it builds confidence that we’re going to provide the most accurate record of what happened that we can,” he said. “If we get it wrong…. We will fix it.”
‘An occupational obsession’ with getting it right
The best way to prevent corrections is through accurate reporting and fact checking before a story is published. That can be challenging in the modern environment of lean newsroom staffing and pressure to publish quickly, according Robidoux.
"It’s easy to miss things at the speed at which we move these days,” she said.
Even so, Robidoux said corrections are “minimal.”
“I can’t think of a recent example,” she said.
In part, she believes that’s because journalists truly want to get everything right, and together reporters and editors double and triple-check stories before they are published.
“It’s such an occupational obsession to get everything right,” Robidoux said. “I think the public should understand that about journalism: We want to get things right. We want to be accurate.”
This story is part of Know Your News — a Granite State News Collaborative and NENPA Press Freedom Committee initiative on why the First Amendment, press freedom, and local news matter. Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact.