Corrections policy

Everything published here is capable of being wrong, and some of it will be. What separates a publication from a content farm is not the error rate. It is what happens next.

We would rather hear it from you than leave it standing. Nothing on this page depends on who you are: a manufacturer's press office, a reader who was at the event, and somebody who noticed a number looked odd all get the same process.

Telling us

Use the contact page and choose a correction to an article as the subject. It goes into the editorial queue and is copied to the editor, so it arrives in two places and is answered from one.

Corrections do not need to be sent by anyone official, they do not need to be polite, and they do not need to come with proof attached. A message saying only that a figure looks wrong is worth sending.

What to include

• The address of the article. Paste it out of your browser. It attaches your message to that page in our system, so whoever reads it is looking at the right one.
• What the article says. Quote the sentence if you can. Articles get revised, and knowing which version you read tells us whether we have already touched it.
• What is actually the case. As specifically as you can put it.
• Anything that shows it. A filing, a press release, a specification sheet, a photograph, a date. This is what turns an investigation into a fix, and it is genuinely optional.

What happens, and how quickly

We aim to acknowledge within two working days. Most corrections are settled inside five. Where a claim needs checking against something we have to obtain, it takes longer and we say so rather than going quiet.

Where an article is seriously wrong on a central point, we do not wait for the investigation to finish before acting. The claim comes out or is marked as disputed the same day, and the full note follows once we know what happened.

Whoever answers you did not write the piece.

The four things we might do

Not every change to a page is a correction, and calling them all one would make the label meaningless. We use four, and each behaves differently.

Correction

We published something factually wrong. The article is fixed, a dated note at the foot of it says what it used to say and what it says now, and the article's revision date moves.

Clarification

Nothing was untrue, but the wording carried an implication we did not intend or left out context that changes how it reads. The article is reworded and a note explains what was ambiguous.

Update

The article was right and the world moved. A recall was extended, a launch date slipped, a company answered after publication. The new information is added, dated, and marked as an addition rather than folded into the original text as though it had always been there.

Retraction

The story does not stand up. The article is withdrawn, and a notice remains at its address explaining what was published, that it was wrong, and why. We do not delete the address, because the people who need to see the retraction are the ones who followed a link to the original.

A typo, a broken link, a mislabelled photograph or a formatting fault is none of these. We fix it and move on.

What moves the date on an article

The revision date shown on an article moves for a correction, a clarification, a retraction or a substantive update, and for nothing else. Fixing a comma does not move it.

That restraint is the point. A date that changes every time somebody touches a page tells a reader nothing about whether the article changed, and a publication that refreshes dates to look current is doing something closer to marketing than to record keeping.

Why we do not edit silently

The version somebody has already read is the version they will remember, and possibly the version they have quoted somewhere else. Changing a page underneath them without saying so leaves them defending something that no longer exists at the address they cited.

So corrections live on the article rather than on a separate page nobody visits, and they stay there. We do not remove a correction note once it has been up for a while.

If we disagree with you

We will tell you why, in plain terms, and we will point at what we relied on. Disagreeing with an article's conclusions is not the same as identifying an error, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to end an awkward exchange. But you will get an answer, and it will be a reasoned one.

Where the disagreement is about interpretation rather than fact, and the point is substantial, we will consider adding your position to the article.

Taking it further

If you are not satisfied with the answer, say so and ask for it to be reviewed by the editor. Put complaint in the subject and include the earlier exchange. A second reading by somebody senior to whoever answered first is not a formality here, and it does sometimes go the other way.

Articles rebuilt from the archive

Pieces restored at addresses this site used between 2008 and 2018 are newly written, and carry a notice at the top saying so. They are as open to correction as anything else here.

These are the ones we most want to hear about, because we were not there. If you attended the launch, worked at the company or simply remember it differently, your recollection is a better source than the archived pages we had to work from, and we would like it.

Bylines from the original run

If you wrote for InAutoNews before 2018 and want your byline recorded, tell us which pieces and we will record it. If you would rather your name was not associated with anything published here now, tell us that instead and we will make sure it is not.

Rights, images and takedowns

If you believe something here infringes your copyright, or that a photograph is used without a licence permitting it, tell us what and where. Every picture on this site records where it came from and the terms it is used under, so this is usually quick to settle either way.

A rights claim is answered whether or not it is framed as a formal notice, and we do not require a particular form of words before looking at it. The full picture of what may be reused, and on what terms, is on the terms page.