Corrections Policy
Why this page exists
Every news organisation makes mistakes. A publication that claims otherwise is telling you its first one. What separates serious outlets from the rest is not a spotless record; it is what happens in the hours after an error is found. This page is our binding procedure for those hours. It applies to every article on includednews.com, from a world news lead to a gaming review, and it applies from the day we launched.
What counts as an error
We correct errors of fact: wrong names, numbers, dates, places, titles, quotes, attributions, images and captions, and any statement of fact that turns out to be false. We also fix misleading framing, such as a headline that overstates what the story supports. We do not issue corrections for differences of opinion, for editorial choices about what to cover, or for accurate reporting someone wishes we had not published. Disagreement is welcome at support@includednews.com; a correction requires a fact we got wrong.
How to report an error
Email support@includednews.com with the subject line Correction. Include the article link, the exact sentence or figure you dispute, and the evidence that shows it is wrong. Corrections are the highest priority traffic in our inbox: you will get a first response within 48 hours, usually much sooner, and a substantive answer once we have checked. Every report is investigated by someone other than the person who wrote the passage in question whenever our team size allows it.
How we label fixes
We scale the response to the severity, and we label honestly rather than quietly rewriting:
- Correction: a factual error that could mislead a reader. The text is fixed and a labeled correction note on the article states what was wrong and when it was fixed. Significant errors get the note near the top, not buried at the foot.
- Update: new information in a developing story. Not an error; the story was accurate when published and events moved. Updates are timestamped so you can see how coverage evolved.
- Clarification: wording that was technically accurate but open to misreading. We adjust the language and note that we did.
- Editor’s note: for serious problems that go beyond a single fact, such as a story that failed our sourcing standards, an editor’s note explains what went wrong and what we did about it.
Typos and formatting slips that change no meaning are fixed silently; pretending a fixed comma deserves a formal notice would drown the corrections that matter.
Developing stories are different, and we say so
Breaking news is where most honest errors are born: early official figures get revised, initial witness accounts conflict, and agencies correct their own bulletins. Our practice is to label developing stories as developing, attribute early figures to their sources rather than asserting them as settled fact, and timestamp every substantive revision. When earlier reported information turns out to be wrong rather than merely superseded, that is a correction and is labeled as one, even if half the world’s media carried the same early figure. What we do not do is silently overwrite an earlier version and hope nobody kept a screenshot.
Headlines, social posts and syndication
A correction is incomplete if the wrong version keeps circulating. When we correct an article, we also correct its headline if the headline carried the error, and where the error travelled through a social media post or any feed we control, we issue the correction there too, in a form readers of the wrong version are likely to see.
Removing articles
Unpublishing is journalism’s memory hole, and our strong default is against it. Corrected articles stay up with their correction notes, because the record of the error is part of the record. We remove or materially redact an article only in rare cases: a legal requirement, a serious risk to someone’s safety, or content that should have failed our standards entirely. When we do, a note at the URL explains that an article was removed and why, in as much detail as the reason for removal permits.
Learning from the log
We keep an internal log of every correction: what went wrong, where the process failed, and what changes. If the same class of error appears twice, the fix is a process change, not a second apology. As a new publication we expect this log to shape our standards quickly, and our Editorial Standards page will absorb whatever it teaches us.
