The OPA Legal Services Plan Committee is dedicated to 
helping papers with legal questions and concerns.

The suggested correction policy and procedures 
ARE NOT REQUIRED BY LAW 
but are provided as educational materials for newspapers 
that have questions about corrections.   
Thank you for being an LSP member.

SUGGESTED CORRECTION POLICY AND PROCEDURES
1.	Goal ­ Always be accurate and fair.
2.	Policy ­ Any significant errors of fact will be promptly corrected in a clear and timely manner.  
3.	Notice ­ Each edition of the newspaper should contain a notice similar to the following:
"To report errors requiring correction or clarification, call or e-mail the editor at 
phone no. 			 or e-mail 			."
4.	Procedures ­ The following procedures should be followed before publishing a correction.
a.	Suspected errors should be reported to the editor.
b.	The editor should rigorously investigate the facts to make sure that a significant factual 
error was made and, if so, to determine the language of an accurate correction.
c.	The editor should consider seeking advice from the LSP Counsel.
5.	When ­ When the editor is confident that a significant error of fact was published and is 
confident about the appropriate language to correct the error, a correction should be published in 
the next edition of the newspaper.
6.	Where ­ A correction will be published on the same page as the original article was published or 
on a consistent "corrections page", e.g., page 2.
7.	Form ­ A correction should contain the date and page of the original publication, identify the 
factual error either by quoting or paraphrasing the error in context, publish the correct 
information, and, if warranted, an apology such as: "The [newspaper name] regrets this error." 
Use this or another form of apology if the error was the newspaper's fault and the newspaper 
wants to publicly express its regret.
8.	Sample ­ The following is a sample of the form of a correction:
CORRECTION
On page 3 of the June 3, 2007 edition, we published an article 
headlined "Man Killed In Crash" containing the following 
sentence:  "The man killed in the crash was John Doe."  The 
man killed was James Smith not "John Doe".
 
 
 
 

Provided by the OPA LSP Committee 		 October 24, 2007