When coverage gets it wrong

Corrections are hard to get. They are given reluctantly and less often than people expect, and knowing which complaints have a chance is most of the skill. That judgement is the part nobody writes down, so it is most of what follows.

Any reader can write to an outlet about a piece, without a group, a job title or anybody’s permission.

Before you write anything. A complaint that fails in public can leave the original piece more visible than it was. An outlet that publicly rejects you has, in effect, published the sentence twice. That is a reason to pick your target carefully, not a reason to accept every error. Complaints that name one sentence and one fix do get won, by individuals, with no organisation behind them.

What this page cannot tell you. What complaints body exists where you live, what powers it has, or how long you have. Those differ enormously between countries, and this site states no country’s law. There are questions further down you can go and answer in an afternoon.

Is it an error, or a framing you object to?

Everything else here depends on getting this right, and most complaints fail because the reader did not.

A factual error is a statement that is untrue and can be replaced with one that is true. A date, a number, a name, an attributed quote, a claim about who did what. These are correctable.

A framing is the selection, the emphasis, the adjective, the person quoted, the paragraph left out, the photograph chosen. You may be entirely right that it is unfair. It is still almost never correctable. An outlet is entitled to its own judgement about what matters, and no complaints process will substitute yours for theirs.

The replacement sentence test. Write out the sentence you want printed instead. If you can produce one the outlet could run without changing its opinion of the events, you have a factual error. If your replacement sentence only works when the outlet also changes its view, you are objecting to framing, and a complaint will not move it.

Run that test before you write a word to anybody. It takes about five minutes. It is the difference between a complaint with a chance and one that spends your credibility.

Two ways of saying the same objection.

Weak: “Your coverage of the march was one-sided and gave a completely false impression of what happened.”

Strong: “Paragraph three says the march was held on 14 March. It was held on 12 March, as the attached council licence dated 2 March shows.”

The rule underneath: name the sentence and supply the fix. An impression cannot be corrected because it cannot be replaced.

Capture it before you complain

Do this first, before any contact. Online copy is edited without notice and without a visible record. A page that has been quietly fixed can leave you unable to show what it said when you read it.

Take a full screenshot, not a crop, showing the headline, the byline and the date. Save the whole page. Use a public web archiving service too, because a timestamped version you did not create yourself is harder to wave away. Note when you first saw it.

For broadcast, note the programme, the date and the time to the minute. Recordings come down quickly, in some places within days.

Go to the outlet before you go anywhere else

Almost every external route asks whether you approached the outlet first, and a complaint that skipped it is commonly sent back. More usefully, this is where most fixed errors get fixed, quietly, without a fight.

Write to the named journalist and to the corrections address if one is published, in the same email. Be polite and be dull. An editor can act on a dull, specific email in ten minutes. Open by naming the piece and saying what you are there for, so the reader knows in one line which kind of email this is.

“I’m writing about your piece on the march, published on 15 March. There’s one factual error in it, and the correction is below.”

What a good complaint contains

Six things, numbered because a complaint missing one of them gets a holding reply instead of a decision.

1. The piece. Headline, byline, the exact link, and where it appeared.
2. The date. When it was published or broadcast, and when you saw it.
3. The exact sentence, quoted in full. Not the paragraph, not the gist.
4. What is wrong with it, in one sentence, stated as a matter of fact.
5. The evidence, attached or linked, in a form the recipient can check without taking your word for anything.
6. What you want done. Name it. A complaint with no ask gets acknowledged and filed.

Items three and four are one sentence in practice, and this is what that sentence sounds like.

“Your third paragraph says the march was held on 14 March. It was held on 12 March, and the council licence attached here is dated 2 March.”

One line worth including near the end:

“I’m not asking you to change the piece’s view of the event. I’m asking you to correct one date.”

That sentence tells an editor you are not the complaint they were bracing for.

What you can realistically get

Ranked by how often it happens, most likely first. We have not measured these frequencies, so treat the order as more reliable than any figure would be.

Nothing, or an acknowledgement that changes no text. This is the most common outcome by a wide margin, including for complaints that are entirely correct.

A silent amendment. The copy changes and nothing marks the change. Common, and the reason you captured the original.

An appended correction or footnote. The piece carries a line saying what changed and when. Less common, and a real result.

A published correction in the outlet’s usual corrections slot. Uncommon.

A right of reply, meaning space for your own words. Rare, and rarely offered for anything smaller than a serious allegation about a named person or organisation.

Decide before you write which of these you would accept. An editor offering you the third while you hold out for the fifth is offering you the win.

The commonest brush-off answers something you did not raise, usually your tone or the outlet’s independence. Reply once, in the same words you used the first time, and add nothing new.

“Thank you for coming back to me. I’m not raising the tone of the piece. Paragraph three gives the wrong date. Will that be corrected?”

Speed, and the limits you have to look up

Move within days, not weeks. Two things run against you. The piece stops being live in anybody’s mind, and formal routes close.

Most countries have some form of press or broadcasting complaints body. Their powers range from binding orders to nothing more than publishing an opinion, and their time limits vary enormously. Some cover print and not broadcast, or the reverse. Some accept complaints only from a person directly affected.

Four questions to answer where you are, all findable in an afternoon:

• What body, if any, handles complaints about this kind of outlet?
• Is this outlet within its scope, or does it sit outside any scheme?
• What is the deadline, counted from what date?
• Does it require you to have contacted the outlet first, and in what form?

Write down who told you, what they said and when. The deadlines and the membership lists are the parts that go stale first.

When not to complain

Some errors are not worth the attempt, and saying so is not defeatism.

Leave it if the error is trivial and the piece is otherwise accurate. Leave it if your replacement sentence failed the test above. Leave it if the piece has already sunk, and a rejected complaint would be the only reason anybody reads it again.

The question is not whether you are right. It is whether the sentence changing is worth more than the risk of the piece being seen again by more people. Sometimes it plainly is, and then you go.

About volume

Many complaints from an organised group about one piece are visible as organised. They arrive close together, they share phrasing, and they are recognised at once.

This can strengthen an outlet’s position rather than weakening it, because it lets a response address the campaign instead of the error. That response is easier to write than a correction, and it plays better.

If several of you have the same objection, one carefully built complaint from the person most directly affected beats thirty identical emails. The others can hold their evidence back for an appeal, where it counts for more.

Do not complain to prove a point. Complain to change a sentence. If you cannot name the sentence and the change, you are not making a complaint, and the process will treat you accordingly.

The sentence, and the change

Fill in the blanks181 words

Answer both from memory, because a complaint that cannot is not yet a complaint. Which single sentence are you asking them to change, and what would the corrected version say? And what is the difference between an error you can win and a framing you object to?

Then fill this in, while the detail is fresh.

If I find an error I intend to pursue, then before I contact anyone I will screenshot the full page and save an archived copy, on the same day I see it.

If the replacement sentence test fails, then I will write my objection down for my own records and send nothing.

And the coping plan, because this is where most attempts stop. If I get no reply within seven days, then I will send one short chaser to the same addresses, quoting my original email and nothing else. If that gets nothing either, then on the day the chaser expires I will decide, in writing, whether to go to the external route or to stop, and I will accept stopping as a legitimate answer.