Corrections Policies in Online Journalism: A Critical Analysis, Ethical Discussion and Typology

This thesis demonstrates the need for standardized online corrections policies through a critical analysis of several news outlets' current corrections policies, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, and Christian Science Monitor. An examination of why corrections policies are necessary, including a look at the ways the internet has changed modern journalism, prefaces this critical analysis. There is an ethical discussion of how certain online corrections policies do or do not support the traditional journalistic principles of accuracy, transparency, accountability, and credibility. Finally, a typology was created to rank several news outlets' current online corrections policies. Ultimately, it was found that the emergence of online journalism has affected the way in which journalists correct their mistakes. The transitional timeframe, in addition to the lack of a guarantee that readers will ever return to an online news article (or even the news outlet’s website in general), means that mistakes and their ensuing corrections can quite literally become lost in cyberspace. These changes indicate that it is time to address the issue of how best to deal with corrections in online journalism. Moreover, it was found that the current state of online corrections policies is a wildly inconsistent situation, and some sort of standard is vital to the journalism industry.