Why sorry is still the hardest word

Newspapers are always apologising. They apologise for what they have printed, and they apologise for what they haven't. They apologise for tiny errors, and they apologise for scandalous gaffes. But some apologies – like this correction which appeared, in 2004, in the Lexington Herald-Leader – take longer to appear than others. "It has come to the editor's attention," said the American journal, "that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the Civil Rights Movement. We regret the omission."

Given the Herald-Leader's tardiness, Peter Hill, the editor of The Express, must consider his paper extremely unlucky to have been rapped over the knuckles by the Press Complaints Commission this week. In April this year, The Express printed an apology on page 33 of its newspaper, correcting a story from 11 January entitled "Council axes Christian Prayers after 600 years. You guessed it... in case it offends other faiths."

The original story had prompted a complaint by Pruw Boswell-Harper, the mayor of Totnes, claiming that the story was factually incorrect. A PCC investigation found in Boswell-Harper's favour and The Express voluntarily agreed to print an apology. But when The Express got around to printing a correction, the paper buried it so thoroughly that Boswell-Harper issued another complaint. So, on 3 July, the paper was forced to run the apology again – on page 9.

" The complainant," said a PCC spokesman, "was entitled to expect it to appear more prominently. Not least because the apology wasn't published until four months after the article."

This is an embarrassment for The Express, and these are testing times for newspapers.

Strict libel and privacy laws, and an increasingly vigilant PCC, mean the press needs to be keener than ever on mistakes that appear in their publications. But, as Tim Toulmin, director of the PCC, points out, a correction is less messy than a court case.

"It's only human to make mistakes," he says. "But when you get something wrong, do something about it quickly. Unless you disagree with the complaint, I can see few downsides to publishing a correction quickly and prominently. Actually, we find that complainant's expectations are proportionate and reasonable – most will accept an apology if it's dealt with in the right way. It's in the newspaper's interests not to have to deal with a long-running complaint or an expensive libel action."

Toulmin insists that The Express episode was a "rare case of bad practice" in an industry which has genuinely sharpened up its act on this issue. But Mark Stephens, leading media lawyer, says securing a correction can still feel like pulling teeth.

"It's easier with broadsheets than with tabloids," says Stephens, "because [the tabloids] see a correction as an admission of failure. I also think they are worried about a correction leading to a libel suit. But that's not what normally happens. Most people who come to see me simply want something corrected. They don't want the newspaper's money. It's when the newspaper starts getting difficult about the correction that they start asking about money."

While some national newspapers shy away from corrections, others have embraced them. In a decision that mirrored the American obsession with errors and omissions, The Guardian began its own Corrections and Clarifications column almost 10 years ago, under the guidance of its Reader's Editor, Ian Maze.

The column is now overseen by the new Reader's Editor, Siobhain Butterworth, who says that the newspaper's interest in righting editorial wrongs has not only proved popular with readers, but financially prudent. "I've only been in this job for three months," says Butterworth, "but I was legal director for 10 years. I definitely noticed a decrease in libel payments in that time."

The column, which appears towards the back of the main section, is unusual in British journalism, because it precludes a proportional response to the seriousness of the error. Whereas other newspapers might decide where to place a correction based on its importance – a weighty article might appear further forward in the paper than a trifling one – The Guardian lumps all its corrections together. Do complainants ever want their corrections published more prominently?

"People occasionally ask for it, but all our corrections, legal and non-legal, go in that column," says Butterworth. "The column is now very well known, and everyone knows that is where the corrections go. Most people are satisfied by that."

"People aren't concerned with where the apology appears in the print edition of the paper. Because they're concerned about personal reputations, they're concerned with search engines. So what is more important to them is that when they search their name on the web, a correction appears at the top of the article."

Toulmin, though, is keen to ensure, for those old-fashioned readers who are still concerned with how a newspaper prioritises its news, that where there is not a specialised errors column, corrections appear as far forward in as possible. And, he says, most newspapers are complying.

"What we've encountered over the years is a degree of scepticism over where and when a newspaper puts its apologies," says Toulmin. " People seem to think that newspapers bury their apologies on page 94, but they don't. They are getting better. Our survey said that 80 per cent of newspapers put corrections on the same page, or further forward, than the offending article. That's pretty good."

Editors need not worry unduly. A well-written correction can be much more entertaining than the offending article. Who, for instance, wants to read a piece in the Daily Mirror about the little-known musician Roger Miller? Everyone, on the other hand, wants to read a beautifully turned correction like the one that appeared on 2 January this year: "SINGER-SONGWRITER Roger Miller was not celebrating his 71st birthday last week, because he died in 1992."