When we get something wrong, we fix it in the piece, date the fix, and leave a note where it happened. We don’t quietly overwrite.
What counts as a correction
- A correction is a factual error: a wrong number, date, name, citation, or legal characterization. Corrections are always noted.
- An update is a change in the world, not an error in the piece — a new contribution limit, a statute amended, a ruling that settles something we had marked as unsettled. Updates change the piece and move its Updated date; when the change is material, we note what changed.
- A clarification is a sentence that was true but easy to misread. We reword it and, where it mattered, say so.
- Not a correction: a disagreement with an editorial judgement, a preference for a different source, or a typo that changes no meaning. We still fix typos; we just don’t log them.
How to report one
Email info@billsandbeans.com with the piece, the line, and — if you have it — the source that shows the error. You don’t need to prove the case; you only need to point at the sentence. We check the claim against its original source and against yours, and we reply either way.
What happens next
- The sentence is fixed in the piece itself, so nobody reads the wrong version again.
- A dated note at the foot of the piece says what was wrong and what it now says. If the error was the piece’s central claim, the note also appears at the top.
- The piece’s Updated date changes. Every piece on the site shows both its published and its last-updated date.
- The same error is checked for across the rest of the site, because a wrong number rarely appears only once.
- If the piece’s central claim can’t stand at all, we take the piece down rather than leave it up with a note.
Law that hasn’t settled
Civil-liberties pieces describe statutes and decided cases. Where a question is still open in the courts, the piece says so in a section called What’s still unsettled, dated “as of” the day it was checked. That section is an update waiting to happen, and we treat a ruling that closes it as an update, not a correction — the piece never claimed to know.
This policy is part of how we work, which also describes how we try to catch errors before they run.