Correction Terms
The Massachusetts Times · Published by The Massachusetts Times Company · massachusettstimes.us/terms/corrections · Effective October 16, 2026
In plain terms. When we get it wrong, we say so — on the work itself, in daylight, with a date. Anyone may ask us to correct the record, through one door, without a lawyer, and every request gets an answer with reasons. Errors are fixed at the speed their gravity demands, corrections travel as far as the error traveled, and every substantive correction is entered in a public ledger we keep against ourselves. What cannot be demanded here is the softening of true reporting — facts are corrected with evidence; opinions are answered with argument. This summary is part of the terms and binds us like any article below, and ambiguity in these pages is read against us, never against you.
Article 1 — The Duty
1.1. The Massachusetts Times Company owes the accuracy of The Massachusetts Times's record to its readers. Correction is not a favor we extend or a public-relations instrument we deploy; it is maintenance of the thing we sold you for nothing — a record you can rely on.
1.2. The duty runs to the record itself. An error is corrected because it is an error, whether or not anyone complained, whether or not the subject noticed, whether or not the correction flatters us.
1.3. These terms are enforceable by you under the Dispute Terms, like every term we publish.
Article 2 — The Right to Seek Correction
2.1. Anyone may seek correction of our record — the subject of a work, a source quoted in it, or any reader who can point at the error. Standing here is universal, because the record's accuracy belongs to everyone it informs.
2.2. The door is massachusettstimes.us/corrections, and the publication's published contact channels reach the same desk. No form is prescribed, no legal letterhead is required, and a plain sentence identifying the work and the claimed error is a complete request.
2.3. A correction request is never held against the requester. Seeking correction does not narrow your grants under any of our terms, and the Access Terms forbid us from answering a complaint with a wall.
Article 3 — The Classes of Correction
3.1. Correction. A statement of fact in a published work was wrong. The work is corrected, and a dated notice on the work states what was wrong and what is right.
3.2. Clarification. The work was accurate but could mislead a reasonable reader. The work is clarified, and a dated notice on the work says so.
3.3. Update. The work was right when published and events have moved. The work carries a dated annotation, as the Archive and Permanence Terms provide; an update is not an admission of error and is not written as one.
3.4. Repair. A defect beneath substance — a misspelling, a broken link, a layout fault — is fixed without ceremony, as the Archive and Permanence Terms allow.
3.5. Retraction. A failure so complete that correction cannot cure it is handled under the withdrawal article of the Archive and Permanence Terms: the work comes down and a dated withdrawal notice stands at its address.
3.6. Where it is arguable which class applies, the question is resolved in the reader's favor — toward the class that discloses more.
Article 4 — How a Correction Is Carried
4.1. A correction lives on the work itself — at the head of the work or at the point of error — not solely on some distant page a reader would never think to check. The reader who finds the work finds its corrections with it.
4.2. We correct the record rather than quietly replacing it. A corrected work shows that it was corrected: the dated notice states the error plainly, in words that do not launder it.
4.3. The correction chases the error. If the error traveled — by newsletter, by syndication, by a licensed reprint under the Licensing and Reprint Terms, by any channel of ours — the correction is sent down the same channels, and licensees are notified so their copies can carry it.
4.4. A correction is never buried in volume, timed for obscurity, or drafted to be unfindable. Visibility proportionate to the error is part of the correction.
Article 5 — The Clock
5.1. Verification begins when the request arrives, and the graver the error, the faster the clock. A claimed error that endangers a person's safety or reputation moves to the front of all work; an ordinary factual error is verified and resolved promptly.
5.2. Every request receives an answer: the correction made, or the reasons it was declined. We do not answer with silence.
5.3. If we decline and you believe we are wrong, the Dispute Terms apply, and your knock on the door at massachusettstimes.us/corrections already satisfies their knock-before-suit article for a dispute about the record.
Article 6 — The Ledger
6.1. Each publication keeps a public corrections ledger at massachusettstimes.us/corrections: a dated record of its substantive corrections, clarifications, and retractions.
6.2. The ledger is kept against ourselves. An institution that hides its corrections count is advertising that it makes no errors, which no one believes; we publish ours and let the record of our repairs argue for the record itself.
6.3. Repairs beneath substance do not clutter the ledger — a ledger of typographical fixes would bury the entries that matter, which is its own way of hiding them.
Article 7 — Errors We Find Ourselves
7.1. We hunt our own errors and aim to catch them before you do. An error we find ourselves is corrected with the same visibility, the same dated notice, and the same ledger entry as an error demanded of us.
7.2. Self-discovery earns no quieter treatment. The measure of a correction's prominence is the error, never the identity of whoever caught it.
Article 8 — Against False Correction
8.1. A correction must itself be true. We verify before we correct, because replacing a true report with a false "correction" is the worst error a record can make — it is the original sin committed twice, the second time in the name of accuracy.
8.2. Pressure is not evidence. The volume, status, or fury of those demanding a correction neither speeds nor slows the one question we ask, which is what the facts are.
8.3. When a demanded correction is refused because the report was right, the refusal and its reasons go to the requester, and the record stands.
Article 9 — Subjects of Coverage
9.1. A person or institution covered by a work holds the same right as any reader, through the same door, judged by the same standard: evidence.
9.2. Where we erred about a person, the correction says so plainly — the error, the fact, the date. Where a person disputes a work that the evidence sustains, Article 8.3 answers; where events have vindicated a subject after publication, the annotation of Article 3.3 is theirs to request.
9.3. Claimed personal harm moves a request to the front of the clock under Article 5.1, and that priority is the subject's regardless of the request's merit, which is decided after verification, not before.
Article 10 — What Correction Is Not
10.1. Correction is not the negotiation of judgment. Opinion, analysis, and editorial conclusions are disputed by argument and answered with argument; the correction machinery moves on facts.
10.2. Correction is not a takedown lane. Removal of a work has exactly three grounds, and they live in the withdrawal article of the Archive and Permanence Terms, not here.
10.3. Correction is not a siege instrument. A request already answered on the evidence may be answered once more by reference to that answer; repetition without new evidence does not reopen the question, though new evidence always does.
Article 11 — Changes to These Terms
11.1. Any narrowing of these commitments is a material adverse change and takes effect no earlier than thirty days after we publish a dated notice, as the Terms of Use require. Silence is not notice, and continued reading is never consent.
11.2. No change reaches backward. The corrections machinery that governed a work when it was published continues to govern that work, and no later edition of this page shrinks a ledger already owed.
Article 12 — The Spine These Terms Share
12.1. These Correction Terms incorporate the Open Covenant and the general articles of the Terms of Use: the reader's canon, one-way severance, assignment to successors, the record of versions, and the governing law and open courts carried by the Dispute Terms.
12.2. Where these terms and any other page we publish could be read to conflict about an error's handling, the reading that discloses more, sooner, governs.
Article 13 — The Record of These Terms
13.1. The current text of these Correction Terms lives at massachusettstimes.us/terms/corrections, with its effective date at the head. Prior versions and their dates are kept and published alongside it, so what we owed on any given day can always be checked.
These terms are part of the Terms that govern this publication.