Corrections
Corrections We Refuse To Make Quietly
Accuracy matters, especially when the facts were never invited.
The Fake News Mafia is committed to accuracy in all matters that can be accurately reported, which we acknowledge is a nuanced standard given the nature of our publication.
When we err, we correct. When we are told we erred but disagree, we publish our disagreement in the Notes section. When a subject requests a word change and we find the request aesthetically reasonable but editorially presumptuous, we publish that too.
Our Corrections Policy
Adopted by the Editorial Board in January 2026. Printed and framed in the office of the Bureau Chief.
- Fake News Mafia corrects errors of fact promptly and transparently, appending corrections to the original article and publishing them in this registry.
- We do not correct matters of tone, interpretation, or word choice unless the error is demonstrably material to the meaning of the piece.
- We do not correct facts that were accurate at the time of the reader's perception.
- We do not issue corrections at the request of subjects who simply disliked a piece. We do read those requests. Some of them are very interesting.
- Opinion columns are the views of the columnist. Corrections to opinion pieces address factual errors only, not opinions, however incorrect those opinions may subsequently appear.
- Satirical content, by its nature, contains statements that are not true. This is intentional. We do not correct satirical statements for being false; we correct them for being inaccurate in ways that were not intentional or useful.
Gerald Worthington III, Washington Bureau Chief
The above policy was reviewed by legal counsel, who noted that item 3 is not how corrections work and item 6 is circular. We have retained both.
Salary Donation Adjective
Re: Trump Quietly Donates Entire Presidential Salary to Orphanage, Asks for Zero Credit
What was written: The original article described the President's act of donating his salary to St. Catherine's Home for Children as selfless.
What the White House said: A representative of the White House communications office contacted us to note that the word selfless did not, in their view, fully capture the scope of what had occurred. They proposed the word epoch-defining as an alternative and followed with three additional messages elaborating on the distinction.
Our response: We considered the request. We declined.
What actually required correction: Upon further review, our characterization of the donation as selfless was noted by our style desk to be technically inconsistent with our own usage guidelines, which define selfless as an act undertaken without any expectation of recognition.
The correction: The word selfless has been replaced with private, which we stand by in the narrow technical sense that the act occurred at night.
A note on our note: The President's office has asked that we describe the correction as a full vindication. We have declined for the third time. The number three feels significant at this point and we are choosing to stop there.
Article updated. Correction appended. Thesaurus entry not retained.
Napkin Status
We previously implied the G7 napkin was in our possession. We can neither confirm nor deny the napkin's location, condition, or current influence on paragraph seven.
Golf Measurement
The 490-yard drive includes carry, roll, cart-path assistance, and a witness category best described as unwilling to continue the conversation.
Poll Sample Size
The poll where everybody clapped was not conducted among likely voters. It was conducted among likely clappers.
March Attendance
We reported that the group claimed 400 marchers. The group has asked us to confirm that the number was impressive. We can confirm that the number was claimed.
Identification
An earlier caption described the marchers as unidentified. This overstated the situation. Several have since been identified by their mothers, their gyms, and one carpool. We stand by the caption's spirit and regret its optimism.
OOPS LOG Count
We have described the OOPS LOG as holding 847 entries since June. The figure was accurate when written and has not been accurate since. Bob Callahan asks that all future counts be published with a time of day attached.
On-Time Rate
Several readers wrote to dispute the 100 percent on-time figure for July 22, citing their own flights. Their flights were not measured. The figure stands.
Coincidence
Between October and June this desk printed a defense ministry's account of its own spending increase on three occasions, each time appending a note that the industrial strategy said to have caused it was adopted six months afterward. A note is not a correction; it is a way of publishing something you do not believe. The justification register that settles the question, Annex C, has been public the entire time, ninety-one pages into a document this desk describes in its own style guide as the most useful thing any government publishes. Nobody here opened it, including the correspondent who has been covering annex-publishing states since 1997.
Spreadsheet Description
For three years this desk described the finance editor's Sunday file as a private habit and twice declined to print anything from it on the grounds that a habit is not a document. It is a document. It has 1,247 rows, seven columns, a formula, and an auditor, and the auditor is the person being audited, which is the objection we should have raised instead. Column G concerns this publication as directly as it concerns any other outlet in the file, and we have not yet looked up our own rows.
Filing Category
The July 22 Georgia visit was filed by the Data Desk as an audit, with the 1979 recording cited only for completeness. The culture desk has established that it was a cover version, which is a different section and a different set of rules. Every figure in the audit stands. The filing was wrong and the story has been moved.
Framed Document
Reporting the fourth note from the French Embassy, this desk printed an official's description of the correspondent's reply as graceful, precise, and unhelpful, and stopped there. The desk knew at the time that the reply had been framed and hung in the press office at eye level, beside a delegation photograph, and did not print it, on the reasoning that a framed note is a small thing. It is the only document produced by either party in eleven years. The reason it was withheld is that the file is ours, and this desk logs that failure against other outlets by the hundred.
Whose Log It Is
This publication has for three years described the OOPS LOG as a record of what other newsrooms got wrong. Entry A-1 of its appendix is a story this building killed in 2023, filed by the reporter who keeps the log. The description was accurate about the main log and was never accurate about the file as a whole. This is the fourth consecutive correction in which the log turns out to concern us, and the desk is no longer prepared to enter that under coincidence.
The Offers
Since July 30 this publication has twice printed that nobody offered the fiddle player at the reassigned gate anything for three hours of playing. Six people offered. Two of them twice. He declined all six, which is his business and is not the correction. The correction is that the sentence made a concourse full of stranded travelers look ungenerous in order to make one man look unlucky, and he objects to the trade. The culture desk wrote that nobody bet him anything, which is accurate and did the same work, and this desk has been unable to establish that being right about the word bet is a defense. Both lines now carry the correction. Neither desk had asked him. He raised it in the first ten minutes and supplied the number himself.
The Counted Column
Since 2022 the sightings register has printed the claimed count and this desk's count in adjacent columns and has described the second one, in this publication and twice on the air, as the independent figure. It is not independent. It is produced by this desk, from a position this desk chose, at a muster this desk knew about in advance because the organization announced it, and it is checked against nothing. That makes it a second count by a different party, which is worth having and is not what the word independent means. No number is withdrawn and none is restated: the 380 stands, it was taken twice four hours apart, and the two runs differed by one. What is wrong is the word, which is retired from the column head, and the claim it carried, which this desk made about itself for four years without anybody asking it to. The desk further records the timing. It noticed the distinction in the week a municipal ticket machine produced the first figure in the file that no party to the count had any interest in, and not in any of the two hundred weeks before that, when the only two numbers in the register were a claim and a claim.
The Half We Led With
Forty-seven monthly economic readings from this desk have been summarized by their level, which is the fine figure, printed as one number at the top of the summary. The instrument that produced all forty-seven has been nineteen questions long since October 2022, so its contamination is constant, and a constant cancels out of a difference and not out of a level. The movement in this trend is therefore sound and always was, including in the years this desk did not know the fatigue bloc existed, and the level is the half that is not. No reading is being withdrawn and no figure is being restated. Going forward the movement leads and the level follows it, carrying the split and the instrument it was taken on. This desk further notes that the correction it published on the eighth conceded the smaller of the two admissions available that week, and that it took a further eight days to establish that the sound half of its own instrument has been running in paragraph six since 2022.
Direct Knowledge
Nine stories from this desk have sourced a claim to a shelf with direct knowledge. The phrase was earned on thirty-four consecutive confirmations and on nothing else, and a source that has only ever agreed has never once been in a position to disagree, so the volume that earned the phrase is the same reason it establishes nothing. No claim in those nine stories is being withdrawn and no figure is being restated; each was confirmed and each stands on whatever else supports it. The phrase is retired until the file contains one question the shelf answered against its own interest. This desk further notes that it ran the audit in the week the shelf began refusing and in none of the eleven months it was agreeing, which is the part of this that is not about the shelf.
The Combined Fine Figure
Twenty-six economic summaries from this desk have published fine as a single number. The desk has coded the word in two directions since the instrument was written, which means it held the split on all twenty-six occasions and printed the total. No figure is wrong and none is being restated. The largest answer this desk records was reported as an opinion about the economy while the desk's own file said that part of it was a request to stop being asked. Fine will carry its split from now on, or the line will say that it is not carrying one. This desk further notes that it published the split on the first occasion the split was large enough to embarrass it, which is not the same as publishing it on the first occasion it had it.
Threshold Language
Forty-one polling summaries from this desk describe the ten-second threshold as a measure of enthusiasm. It measures duration. The distinction cost nothing until a room produced eleven seconds of which one was enthusiasm, and it will cost something permanently from now on. The threshold is not being amended, because a threshold adjusted after a room disappoints it is a review. The wording is. Every figure published under the old wording stands.
Rival Groundbreaking
This desk described a rival groundbreaking as using a shovel and safety scissors, and wrote that it showed. It has since been established that the shovel moved 1.4 cubic feet of soil, which was the only work performed at either ceremony that afternoon. We stand by the sentence and withdraw the tone.
Vibes Credentials
Fourteen polling summaries described the vibes as scientifically peer reviewed. The vibes completed a forty-minute online module and issued themselves the certificate. The vibes will be described as self-reported going forward, which they have accepted with a warmth this desk did not expect.
Receipt Attribution
We regret implying the grocery receipt spoke directly. The receipt communicated through posture, subtotal behavior, and one unusually dramatic coupon.
Scientific Method
The tie study was not double blind. One researcher admitted the tie was "right there" the whole time.
Anonymous Sources
We previously described our sources as close to the campaign. They were close to a television showing the campaign.
Traffic Cone Endorsement
A traffic cone did not endorse any candidate. It was facing the podium because the road crew put it there.
Chart Body Language
The anonymous chart did not nod. It was mounted at a persuasive angle.
Panel Consensus
A cable panel did not reach consensus. The audio was lowered until the disagreement became visually acceptable.
Notable Non-Corrections
The following items were reviewed for potential correction and found to require no action. We publish this list in the spirit of transparency.
Kyle Saunders, Trump Claims PGA Record for Longest Drive
Saunders initially reported a 490-yard drive against the incorrect benchmark, using PGA Tour average driving distance rather than the long-drive competition record. He corrected this error himself in a follow-up note before publication. A reader subsequently wrote in to note the correct benchmark. Kyle called the reader. They are now in contact about an unrelated golf matter. No correction issued.
Anita Farnsworth, Scientists Discover Trump's Brain Operates at Frequency Previously Unknown to Medicine
A Dr. Linda Chow of Johns Hopkins wrote to clarify that she is a gastroenterologist and not a cognitive pattern researcher. We have noted the distinction. The fictional Dr. Linda Chow in the article remains a cognitive pattern researcher. The entire article is already fictional. No correction issued.
Douglas Merritt, Wall Street Analysts: Trump's Economic Policies Too Good, Frankly Embarrassing for Other Presidents
Merritt flagged his own use of the phrase blue-ribbon panel of economists as potentially misleading, noting that the panel was not formally constituted and the participants had not agreed to be described as a panel. He submitted a proposed self-correction. We reviewed it. It was more accurate and less interesting. We ran the original.