Corrections Policy
This page says what happens when a bulletin is wrong. Short copy is easy to fix and easy to fix quietly, which is the temptation this policy exists to remove. Last updated: August 2026.
Correction, clarification, update
A correction means we published something that was not true: a wrong figure, a wrong name, a decision attributed to the wrong body, a claim we called established when it was contested. A clarification means the bulletin was accurate but could be read the wrong way, usually because a line was compressed until it lost a condition attached to it. An update means the bulletin was right when it published and the situation has since moved.
The three carry different notes because they are different admissions, and the word we reach for first is correction. Clarification is the comfortable one, and a newsroom that uses it to describe an error is managing its reputation rather than the record. If we got a fact wrong we say we got a fact wrong, in those words.
The note goes on the story
Corrections are made on the original bulletin, at the same address, with a dated note saying what the piece said before and what it says now. Nothing is silently edited into being right. Where the error was material, meaning it changed what a reader would take away, the note sits at the top so the bulletin cannot be read without it. Smaller factual fixes carry the note at the foot.
We do not republish a corrected bulletin at a new address to reset its history, and we do not change a wrong headline without recording that it changed. Where the headline was the error, the note says what it used to say. Our overnight check of the previous day’s bulletins exists partly for this, as our editorial standards describe, and what it turns up is handled like any reader report.
Serious errors and small ones
Material factual errors always get a dated note. That covers any number, a misspelled surname or wrong job title, a misattributed quote, the wrong court or the wrong regulator, and any case where we said something had happened and it had not yet. Getting a person’s name wrong is a factual error here, whatever it looks like on the page.
Fixed without a note: a duplicated word, punctuation, a broken link, a formatting fault, alt text. The test is whether the change alters what the bulletin tells you. If it does, it is a correction and it is dated. If you think we have filed something as housekeeping that deserved a note, say so and the note goes on.
How to report one
Write to support@theibulletin.com with CORRECTION at the front of the subject line. Quote the exact sentence you are disputing and, where you can, point us at where the correct information can be checked. There is no form and no separate corrections alias, because a second inbox would only mean a slower answer from the same small group. Our contact page explains the subject-line habit.
You get an acknowledgement the same working day. A clear factual error is usually fixed within a couple of hours of us agreeing it is one. Where the answer depends on a document we have to obtain or a body we have to ask, we tell you where the check stands within two working days, and again when it closes. If we conclude the bulletin was right, we write back and explain why. Send the counter-argument if you have one.
Where else the wrong version went
A bulletin is rarely only on the site. Where the error appeared in a social post, that post is deleted if the error is in the post itself and corrected in the thread if it is not, because a wrong summary standing over a fixed article is still wrong. Where it went out in the email bulletin, the correction runs in the next send with the original wording quoted, not only on the website those readers may not return to.
Where a bulletin has been licensed or syndicated, we notify the publisher in writing and ask them to run the correction. We cannot compel them, and saying otherwise would be a promise we do not control. Search snippets, caches and aggregators are outside our reach, so the story page is the authoritative version and the note on it is the record.
We correct rather than delete
Bulletins are not unpublished because they became inconvenient, embarrassing to us, or unwelcome to somebody in them. An accurate story stays up. If the outcome later changed, a charge dropped or a case dismissed, tell us and we will add it as a dated update on the original, which serves a reader better than a deletion would.
The narrow exceptions: a valid legal order, a genuine safety risk to a named individual such as an exposed source or a published address, fabricated material as covered in our editorial standards, and content that was never ours to publish, which follows the process on our DMCA page. Even then the address does not go dark. A note stays in place saying a bulletin was removed, with as much of the reason as we can give.
Who decides, and what we keep
Our managing editor decides corrections. The editor who wrote the bulletin does not rule alone on their own error, which is less about trust than about the fact that the person who made a mistake is badly placed to judge how much it mattered.
Every significant correction goes into an internal log with the date, the bulletin, what was wrong and how it got through. We read the log back every few weeks looking for a repeating class of error rather than individual slips, and the one that keeps appearing is a number taken from an early wire on a story still moving. We have not settled whether to publish that log as a page. Ask by email and we will send you what is in it.
