When and how should news organizations alert readers that changes have been made to a story after it has been published online? Is it ever ok not to? When does something like “Updated, Date/Time” at the bottom of a Web piece suffice? When do readers deserve to know more (like how the changes came to be)? What if the changes were made after an “activist” alerted the reporter to problems she had with the original piece?
Many are the questions raised by this case— summarized on Nature‘s blog and flagged by my colleague Curtis — involving what I’ll call an evolving BBC online story on climate change. Wade in, if you dare.
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.