Guide · Updated 13 November 2026

Retraction vs. correction: what's the difference?

A correction fixes part of a story that still stands. A retraction withdraws the story, or a statement in it, because the outlet no longer stands behind it. Retractions are much rarer, and much more serious.

Correction

A correction fixes a specific factual error: a wrong number, name, date or quote. The rest of the story remains, and a note says what was wrong, often in the form "An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported…". This is the everyday tool. How corrections work, and the other labels you'll see.

Retraction

A retraction says the outlet is taking back what it published, either because the story's central claim was wrong or because its reporting can't support it. The story may be removed or kept with a prominent notice. When Newsweek withdrew a 2005 report, its chairman and editor-in-chief wrote: "We have unequivocally retracted our story."

Retractions are not always about recent events. In 2013 the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, retracted its own 1863 editorial dismissing Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, 150 years after it ran.

Editor's note

An editor's note sits between the two. It addresses how a piece should be read, for example its sourcing, missing context or a conflict of interest, often without pointing to a single error. In 2004, The New York Times published a long editor's note acknowledging that some of its reporting before the Iraq War had not been skeptical enough of its sources. That was neither a correction of one fact nor a retraction of particular stories.

Standards guides warn against using softer labels to avoid the word "correction". PBS's guidance, for example, says "editor's note" and "clarification" should not be used as euphemisms for corrections.

When a story is removed

Responsible newsrooms rarely delete a story outright. When they do take content down, the common standard is to leave an editor's note explaining why, so readers following an old link aren't left with an empty page. A story that simply vanishes, with no note, leaves readers unable to tell whether it was retracted, moved, or removed for some other reason.

If you want something fixed

Ask for a correction of the specific error, with evidence. Public-relations professionals often advise against asking for a retraction unless a story is wrong at its core: editors treat the word as a demand to withdraw the whole piece, and a precise correction request is far more likely to succeed.

How these show up on NewsFacts

• A correction or editor's note added to a story is recorded with the label "Correction noted".
• A story that stops loading, or starts redirecting to a section page, is recorded as "Article removed". We can't always tell whether that was a retraction, so the record says what happened, not why.

Use the "Deleted stories" filter on the Changes page to see removed stories we have published.