Following its unveiling of a new corrections style on June 5, Reuters has made another adjustment to how it tags corrections on the wire. For background on the new style, we recommend readng our interview with Reuters' Paul Holmes. And here is the original Reuters notice about its new policy. Here's the latest:
From September 1, Reuters will adopt a new policy to help customers distinguish between errors that change the meaning or significance of a news item and minor mistakes that do not alter the meaning of the story.We will continue to rectify all errors openly and as rapidly as possible.
Substantive errors, such as those with inaccurate numbers, facts or quotes, will carry the headline tag CORRECTED.
Mistakes that do not change the meaning of a story, such as a typographical error or a proper name misspelled once among several references, will carry the headline tag REFILE.
All items, regardless of whether they are tagged CORRECTED or REFILE, will explain clearly what information has been corrected and where it appears in the story.
Only senior editors will be authorized to issue a CORRECTED story or a REFILE and we will monitor these to ensure consistency of approach.
Please note that subscribers to Reuters media services will continue to see the word CORRECTED between brackets following the slug of a story, though the headline tag may say either CORRECTED or REFILE. This is to ensure that items which may be republished by subscribers can be rectified swiftly at the subscriber end.
The change follows requests from some clients for an approach that will allow them to distinguish quickly and more easily between serious mistakes and minor errors. The new policy was presented to a global sample of customers earlier this year and the response was very positive.
