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How much prominence should online corrections and clarifications get? 2

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Malcolm Coles

The Press Complaints Commission is on Twitter. It tweets when it arranges for a correction or clarification to be made. Which lets us see how much prominence they are given when they're published.

Today, it tweeted:

The PCC has negotiated this page 2 and online Daily Telegraph clarification after a complaint from Graham Allen MP http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7207124/Graham-Allen-MP.html

I asked whether this clarification was linked to, and it said:

Yes, there's a link to the clarification on the Telegraph's news homepage: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/

Oddly, if you search for Graham Allen MP on the Telegraph site, the clarification isn't in the results (this seems a fairly major omission to me - surely these things should appear in the search results. Although poor Mr Allen also gets a "Did you mean Graham Alleyn MP"!) .

But there is indeed a link - a link that says "Graham Allen MP" (no use of the word clarification). I've ringed it in red to help you find it ...

Picture 173Picture 234

So not all that prominent then ...

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2 Responses to “How much prominence should online corrections and clarifications get?”

  1. JTownend says:

    Media Standards Trust had an interesting idea in its submission to PCC review: that corrections should be scaled in size depending on seriousness, with financial implications for advertising space. Not sure if it would fly, but implies corrections would have more prominence: http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/537348.php

    Any idea if the article in question here appeared online? I can't find it straight off. I wanted to see how it had been corrected.

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