Reporting and tracking corrections
The Open Brief is built on public-record material about people in public life. We get things wrong sometimes — and when we do, this is how we fix them in the open.
What happens when you submit
- Acknowledgement. You get an email within minutes confirming receipt and a reference number (e.g. COR-2026-0042).
- Triage. We route your submission to one of three paths based on its category — see below.
- Action. We update the page, annotate it, or explain why it stands. Either way you get a written response.
- Public log. Resolved corrections appear on this page so the record of what was changed is visible to everyone.
Categories and response times
| Category | What it covers | Response by |
|---|---|---|
| Factual error | Wrong date, wrong role, citation that doesn’t support the claim, misspelled name. | 5 working days |
| Classification dispute | Source orientation we’ve assigned a publication, stance we’ve attributed to a piece, sector mapping for an organisation. | 10 working days |
| Removal request | Asking that a dossier or claim be taken down. Default answer for public figures and public-record material is no, but every request gets a written response. | 15 working days |
| Methodology concern | A systemic issue (a classifier producing wrong outputs across many pages, a rubric that needs revisiting). Routes to the methodology team rather than a single page. | 10 working days |
Submissions from a verified subject of a dossier, claims involving safety or live legal threats, and requests that mention defamation are escalated to a 24-hour acknowledgement window regardless of category.
What we will and won’t change
- We will correct factual errors when supported by evidence.
- We will reconsider classifications when challenged with reasoning — sometimes by changing them, sometimes by adding an annotation, sometimes by explaining why we’re keeping them.
- We will not remove dossiers about public figures based on public-record material.
- We will not concede claims under pressure of legal correspondence without independent review.
Recent corrections
No published corrections yet. When the first resolved correction lands its summary will appear here.
Legal correspondence
For solicitor’s letters, defamation notices, or other legal correspondence please use [email protected] rather than the corrections form. Keeping the channels separate means legitimate corrections aren’t crowded out by legal threats, and legal correspondence reaches the right person directly.
See the methodology page for the full rubric we use to classify sources, stances, and sector mappings.