Professor Justin D. Martin called out news outlets for having insufficient corrections policies or practices in a recent post for Columbia Journalism Review.
Martin noted that many “modern news organizations” — and Columbia Journalism Review — don’t post their policies or a page of corrections.
As an example, Martin noted that he waited 21 days for a correction from GlobalPost and the eventual response he received was in reply to his notification he would be “writing about their lack of a corrections policy.”
And, Martin stated he spent “the better part of a month” lobbying the Los Angeles Times for a correction on a “minor factual error about a storied cafe in Cairo.” In that case, he attributes the Times’ eventual response to his daily posts on Twitter about the lack of correction. Martin added that “this was atypical of how the Los Angeles Times usually handles errors.”
Martin’s post now features a correction of its own: Martin had reported that Voice of America didn’t have its online corrections policy published, but as the correction reads, VOA does have its corrections policy published here. Voice of America had posted a comment on Martin’s article letting him know of the error.
Hat Tip: Fishbowl LA