A Journalist Got Your Story Wrong: What to Do in the First 48 Hours

You finally get the coverage you wanted, a proper feature in the local paper, and the second paragraph says your clinic has closed. Or it gives your owner the wrong name, or quotes a figure you never said. Your phone starts buzzing with customers asking if you’re still open.

Almost every business that works with the media gets one of these eventually. The way you handle the first two days matters more than the error itself, because an angry email can turn a fixable mistake into a damaged relationship with someone who may cover you again.

This post walks through a process I’d use with a client: how to check whether it’s really an error, how to ask for a correction, what it costs, and what to do if nobody replies. It is general guidance, not legal advice.

What counts as an error worth correcting?

An error worth correcting is a factual mistake in published material: a wrong name, number, date, location, job title or attributed quote. A story that is unflattering, or that leaves out the point you most wanted made, is usually not an error. Journalists will fix the first kind readily and will push back on the second.

Before you write to anyone, sort what you’ve found into three piles. This takes about 15 minutes with the article open and a pen.

1. Factual errors. Things that can be checked against a document, a recording or public record. Your registration, your opening hours, the amount you said.
2. Missing context. Everything you said was reported accurately, but a qualifier was cut. This is frustrating and often a matter of space.
3. Things you simply dislike. The headline’s tone, the photo, the order of the quotes. You can mention these politely, but you won’t get them changed.

Only the first pile justifies a formal correction request. The second might justify a short follow-up note or a clarification. The third needs a deep breath and a walk around the block.

A quick example

Take an illustrative case: a Newcastle physio clinic is described in a regional news story as “closing its Hamilton rooms”. In fact it is moving across the road, and the owner’s quote about “consolidating” was meant to describe that. The closing line is a factual error, and it is costing bookings. That belongs in the first pile.

The same article also calls the clinic “small”. The owner finds it a bit dismissive. That goes in the third pile and stays there.

What should you do in the first hour?

Do nothing public for the first hour. Read the piece twice, gather your evidence, and decide what outcome you actually want. Replying angrily on social media, or phoning the newsroom while upset, is the most common way a fixable mistake becomes a bigger one.

Here is the hour, broken down.

Minutes 0 to 15: read and sort

Read the article slowly, once for what it says and once for what it gets wrong. Sort your list into the three piles above. If the story is a broadcast rather than a print or online piece, note that now, because the complaint route differs (more on that below).

Minutes 15 to 35: collect evidence

For each factual error, find the proof. That might be your ABN lookup, a screenshot of your opening hours, the email thread where you gave the figure, or your own notes from the interview. If the interview was recorded, find the recording. If it wasn’t, make a note of that for next time.

Take a dated screenshot or archive of the article as it currently reads. Online stories are sometimes edited quietly, and you’ll want a record of the original wording.

Minutes 35 to 60: decide the outcome

Ask yourself what would actually fix the damage. For most small businesses it is one of these:

• a corrected sentence in the online article, ideally with a note that it has been updated
• a short correction in a later print edition
• a clarification the journalist can use in a follow-up story

Knowing which one you want makes your email shorter and your request easier to say yes to. Wanting “an apology and a retraction” for a single wrong sentence is rarely realistic, and asking for it signals that you want a fight.

How do you ask a journalist for a correction?

Email the journalist who wrote the piece, politely and briefly, within about 24 hours. State the error, give the correct fact with a piece of evidence, and say what you’d like done. Copy the section editor only if you don’t hear back, not on the first message.

Short emails get fixed faster. Journalists are used to hearing from people who are upset, and the ones who get quick action are usually the ones who make the fix easy.

Here is the structure I use:

1. One line of thanks or acknowledgement for the coverage.
2. The specific sentence that is wrong, quoted exactly.
3. The correct fact, with a link or attachment as evidence.
4. The change you’re asking for, in one sentence.
5. An offer to help, such as a phone number for a quick call.

If you want a first draft, an AI assistant is good at tone here. Paste in the article text, your evidence and this prompt:

I’m a small business owner in Australia. A news article contains one factual error about my business. Write a polite, brief email to the journalist (under 150 words) that thanks them for the coverage, quotes the incorrect sentence exactly, states the correct fact, points to the evidence I’ve attached, and asks for the online article to be updated. Do not apologise for asking, do not use accusatory language, and do not mention legal action. Use Australian English.

Read the draft aloud before sending. If any sentence sounds like it came from a corporate complaints department, delete it.

What the email should not include

Leave out adjectives about the journalist’s competence, speculation about motive, and anything about what you’ll do if they don’t respond. A reporter who feels threatened will pass your email to a lawyer or an editor, and the tone of the whole exchange changes.

What if the journalist doesn’t reply?

Wait two working days, then send one short follow-up and copy the section or news editor. If that fails, you can usually go to the publication’s published corrections or complaints process. For print and online publishers that are Australian Press Council members, the Council also takes complaints, normally within thirty days of first publication.

Specifically, the Australian Press Council’s own page for complainants says complaints normally should be made within thirty days of the first publication of the material, and that you can complain after contacting the publication, at the same time, or without having done so. The Council may ask you to raise it with the publication first. This is correct as at 29 October 2026, per presscouncil.org.au/complaints/information-for-complainants. Check that page again before you rely on it, as the process could change.

Two limits are worth knowing. The Council deals with newspapers, magazines and their digital outlets, and its page says it passes advertising and radio or television broadcasts to other organisations. Not every publisher is under its jurisdiction either, and the page notes that publishers outside its constituent bodies are not under a legal obligation to cooperate with the Council.

So the 30-day window is a practical reason to keep a timeline. Note the date of publication, the date you wrote, the date they replied. If this ever escalates, that record will be useful.

When to call a lawyer

If the error suggests something damaging about your honesty, your safety record or your competence, or it has caused serious financial loss, talk to a lawyer promptly rather than waiting out the process above. Defamation law in Australia has its own procedures and time limits, and I’m not going to state specifics here because they need a current check against a primary source and your circumstances. Ask for a fixed-fee first conversation so you know the cost before you start.

How much does a correction request cost?

Most corrections cost only your time: about two hours spread across 48 hours for the steps in this post, plus a few dollars of software if you use AI to draft. A lawyer is a separate and much larger cost, and fees vary widely, so get a written quote before you commit.

Here is how I’d budget it for a small business.

• Your time: about 15 minutes sorting, 20 minutes gathering evidence, 25 minutes deciding the outcome, 20 minutes drafting and sending the email, and 30 minutes for follow-up and record keeping. Call it two hours.
• AI drafting: you can do this on a free plan. Anthropic’s pricing page lists Claude Free at $0, and Claude Pro at US$17 a month on an annual subscription (US$200 billed upfront) or US$20 billed monthly, with prices excluding applicable taxes, as at 29 October 2026 (claude.com/pricing). You don’t need a paid plan for a 150-word email.
• Monitoring: Google has a help page for setting up Google Alerts on your business name, so you hear quickly about new coverage (support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696, checked 29 October 2026). It takes about ten minutes to set up. I haven’t verified its cost on that page, so check before you sign up.
• Legal advice: I’m deliberately not quoting a figure, because I haven’t verified one against a primary source. Ask for a quote.

What should you not do?

Don’t reply in public, don’t go over the journalist’s head first, and don’t ask for the article to be removed. Each of these feels satisfying for about ten minutes and then makes things harder. Here are the mistakes I see most often.

• Posting about it before you’ve written to the journalist. If you call out the error publicly first, you’ve told them you’d rather embarrass them than fix it.
• Asking for the story to be taken down. Newsrooms rarely remove a story over a fixable error, and the request tends to end the conversation.
• Blaming a journalist for something your own spokesperson said. Re-read your notes honestly. Sometimes the quote was accurate and the wording was loose.
• Sending the same demand to five people at once. You’ll irritate everyone and create a thread nobody owns.
• Going quiet for a week. Online corrections are easiest in the first day or two, while the story is still being read.
• Letting an AI tool write the whole thing unreviewed. A generic, formal draft reads as a form letter, and journalists spot those immediately.

If you work with the journalist again, the best protection is preparation. Our post on preparing for a media interview covers how to agree on key facts and figures before the interview, and keeping a press page with your approved facts means reporters can check details without guessing.

What can AI not do in a correction?

AI can draft the email, tidy the tone and help you sort the article into piles. It cannot tell you whether the error is real, decide what outcome you want, judge whether a journalist is receptive, or give you a view on the legal position. Those jobs stay with you, and sometimes with a lawyer.

There are a few specific limits.

• It can’t verify facts about your business. If you paste in your own evidence, it can summarise it. It can’t check it.
• It can’t read the room. Whether the journalist is under deadline, new to the round or mid-way through a bad week is something you learn from how they’ve written to you before.
• It may invent details. An assistant asked to “strengthen” your case will sometimes add claims you never made. Check every sentence against your evidence.
• It can’t give legal advice. It will produce plausible-sounding statements about defamation that may be wrong for your state or out of date.

The relationship is the part that matters most, and it is human. After more than two decades in communications, the corrections that go smoothly are nearly always the ones where the journalist thinks “this person is reasonable, and they’ve made this easy for me.” Plan for that outcome, and if you have a crisis plan in place, slot this process into it. Our guide to writing a crisis communications plan before you need one shows how.

If you’d like help drafting a correction request or a holding statement, the AI-Stories Crisis Comms department is built for this kind of job, and the PR Team trial is free. For something more serious, get in touch.