Last updated: August 30, 2025
Our Commitment
The Labari Journal is committed to accuracy in every story we publish. Because our work often involves civic data, public finances, and accountability reporting, we hold ourselves to a high standard of factual precision. When we get something wrong, we say so clearly, promptly, and publicly.
This policy governs how we handle errors, corrections, and clarifications across all Labari Journal platforms — web, social media, and any syndicated or republished content.
Scope: What Counts as an Error
We distinguish between three categories:
- Correction — A factual error: a wrong name, date, figure, quote, attribution, or a misstatement of fact that changes the meaning or accuracy of the story.
- Clarification — The facts were accurate but the phrasing, context, or framing was unclear, misleading, or open to misinterpretation.
- Update — New information has emerged since publication (e.g., a court ruling, an official response, updated data) that supplements — but doesn’t invalidate — the original reporting.
Typos, minor grammatical fixes, and formatting issues that do not affect meaning are fixed silently and are not subject to this policy.
How Errors Are Reported
Anyone — readers, sources, subjects of a story, or Labari staff — can flag a suspected error by:
- Emailing hi@labarijournal.com
- Messaging Labari Journal’s editorial desk directly on social media
Reports should include the story URL, the specific claim in question, and supporting evidence where possible.
Verification Process
- Acknowledgment: All correction requests are acknowledged within 24 hours.
- Review: The assigned editor re-checks the claim against original sources — documents, data, recordings, or named sources — before any change is made. Where the story relied on official data, the editor re-verifies against the primary source, not a secondary citation.
- Author involvement: The original reporter is looped in wherever possible, both to preserve institutional knowledge and to protect against unilateral changes that misrepresent the reporting.
- Decision: The Editor-in-Chief (or a designated senior editor) makes the final call on whether a correction, clarification, or update is warranted, and which category it falls under.
How Corrections Are Made
- The story is fixed. The erroneous text is corrected in place — we do not delete or unpublish stories to erase mistakes, except in rare cases involving legal risk, safety, or a fundamentally unverifiable claim.
- A correction note is appended. Every correction includes a dated, visible editor’s note at the bottom of the article (or top, for corrections that affect the story’s central claim), stating:
- What was wrong
- What has been changed
- When the change was made
- Significant errors get a standalone note. If a correction materially changes the story’s conclusion or a public figure’s reputation, we publish a separate corrections notice alongside the inline fix, and flag it prominently on the homepage/section front for at least 24 hours.
- Headlines and social posts are corrected too. If an error appeared in a headline, subhead, or social media post, those are corrected or deleted and reposted with an explanatory note — errors are not left live on distribution channels just because the article itself was fixed.
Timeliness
- Minor factual corrections: fixed within 24 hours of verification.
- Complex corrections requiring source re-verification (e.g., disputed data, financial figures, legal matters): fixed as soon as verification is complete, with an interim editor’s note acknowledging the story is under review if resolution will take longer than 48 hours.
Right of Reply
Individuals or organizations named in a story who dispute a factual claim are given a fair opportunity to respond. Responses that reveal a factual error trigger the correction process above; responses that dispute interpretation or framing (but not fact) are handled as clarifications or, where relevant, published as a right-of-reply addendum.
Transparency and Accountability
- All corrections are logged internally with the date, story, nature of the error, and source of the report, maintained by the editorial desk.
- The Labari Journal does not silently alter facts, figures, or quotes after publication without a visible correction note — this applies regardless of who requests the change, including subjects of investigative stories.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or to report a possible error: hi@labarijournal.com