Most corrections don't come from stories that were wrong. They come from stories that were almost right: a surname missing a letter, a date that slipped by a day, a figure lifted from a press release that had already been rounded up for effect. None of that feels urgent at three in the afternoon. All of it feels urgent when the phone rings the next morning.
Fact-checking isn't a personality trait, and it isn't paranoia. It's a routine — the same questions, asked in the same order, every time, whether you're filing 400 words on a parish council or 2,000 on a company's collapse. The ten points below take about fifteen minutes on a straightforward piece, and rather longer on anything involving a live court case, a set of accounts or a bereaved family.
Names, titles and identities
1. Spell names the way their owner spells them
Kathryn, not Katherine. Rahman, not Rehman. Cross-check against a primary source — Companies House, a council's list of members, the register of members' interests, a court list — and then confirm it back to the person in writing. "Just checking I've got your name right for the piece" is a normal, unembarrassing question. If someone has changed their name and an old one appears in records, ask yourself whether it is genuinely relevant to the story before you use it, and raise it with an editor first.
2. Interrogate the job title
Titles shift with elections, reshuffles and reorganisations, and a title that was accurate last year can be wrong this month. A councillor is not an MP. A police and crime commissioner is not a chief constable. "Former" and "then" are doing useful work in a sentence — make sure they're in the right place. If you're describing someone's role at the time of the events, say so plainly rather than leaving the reader to assume.
Dates, times and sequence
3. Convert every relative date into an absolute one
"Last Tuesday", "this week" and "recently" all expire. Write the actual date in your notes and let the desk decide how to phrase it. Then check that the day of the week matches the number: a line reading "the meeting on Tuesday 12 March" is wrong if 12 March was a Wednesday. Sequence matters too — was the decision taken before or after the complaint? A timeline written out in order will catch contradictions that prose hides.
4. Watch the clock, the calendar and the map
Check whether a time is GMT or BST, and whether a deadline has already passed by the time you publish. School terms, bank holidays and financial year-ends are all quietly relevant. On place names, check the current spelling for Welsh, Scottish and Gaelic names, and don't trust your memory for county boundaries — local government reorganisation has changed several of them, so name the council area as it exists now.
Quotes and attribution
5. Listen to the recording before you trust your notes
Once at speed, then again over the passage you're using. Notes taken in a hurry turn "we're not ruling it out" into "we're not doing it" more often than anyone likes to admit. If there is no recording, read the quote back to the source before publication. That single call prevents most of the corrections you will ever have to write.
6. Read the quote the way a hostile reader would
Qualifiers carry the meaning: if, unless, in principle, not. Check nothing has been stitched together across two separate answers, and that removing a sentence for length hasn't changed what the speaker was conceding. If you have tidied the grammar, it should still be their words, their meaning and their register. On attribution, give the reader a reason to weigh the claim: not just "a source" but how that source would know. Anonymous quotes work best when something else — a document, a second voice — stands behind them.
Numbers and statistics
7. Go to the original source, not the press release
Press releases round upwards. Summaries lose caveats. Find the actual release, report, freedom of information response or set of accounts, and check the period covered, the population measured and the geography — England only, Great Britain or the whole UK are three different claims. Note whether a rise is measured against last year, a five-year average or a different baseline altogether.
8. Interrogate the comparison
Ask: compared with what? A move from two cases to six is a 200 per cent increase and four extra cases, and both sentences are true. Treat "up to", "almost" and "as many as" as claims to verify, not as hedging. Check that percentages in a list add up sensibly and that a percentage of a very small number isn't being presented as a trend. Sort out units, too — £ and £m, millions and billions, metric and imperial. On anything heading for a headline, ask a colleague to do the arithmetic independently.
Legal red flags
This is where a checklist earns its keep. If a story touches any of the areas below, build in time to speak to a media lawyer. That conversation isn't there to kill the piece; it's there to catch the sentence you haven't worried about. Laws differ across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so be clear about where you are publishing.
9. Examine the nouns and verbs in every allegation
Ask whether the person or company is identifiable, whether the words could damage their reputation, and which defence you would rely on — truth, honest opinion, public interest or privilege. Words like "alleged" and "reportedly" do not make an unproven claim safe. If you cannot stand behind a sentence, change it or take it out. Keep your notes, recordings and correspondence, because a complaint can arrive long after publication.
10. Check restrictions, anonymity and rights
- Active criminal proceedings: once someone is arrested or charged, reporting can fall foul of contempt rules. Check before publishing anything that could prejudice a fair trial.
- Reporting restrictions and anonymity: court orders, youth courts and the automatic protection given to complainants in sexual offence cases all limit what you can print. Confirm the position for the jurisdiction you're writing about.
- Privacy and data protection: is there a genuine public interest in the detail, or merely interest in it?
- Copyright: images and video lifted from social media are not free to use. The fair dealing exception for reporting current events does not cover photographs, so get permission or use something you are licensed to use.
The final fifteen minutes
Before you hit publish, run a short, unglamorous pass that has nothing to do with reporting and everything to do with trust.
- Read the piece aloud, start to finish. Your mouth catches errors your eyes skip.
- Check the headline, standfirst and social copy against the article. They are written last and checked least, and they are what most people will read.
- Confirm every name, number and date one final time against your source, not against your own earlier draft.
- Make sure anyone criticised has had a proper chance to respond, and that their response is fairly reflected.
- Check links, captions, credits and picture permissions.
If something still nags at you, it usually deserves five more minutes. A story held for an hour is a minor irritation. A correction published the next morning is a different thing altogether.
Photo: Pexels / Pixabay
