> There's no legal requirement to issue a retraction if you later know that your previous statement was false. The public speech -> printed statement -> online

> There's no legal requirement to issue a retraction if you later know that your previous statement was false. The public speech -> printed statement -> online publishing transition problematizes the meanings of "retraction" and "previous statement". Probably not legally, of course, but I'm thinking about the ordinary usage of these terms here. Lots of traditional journalism outlets also publish online, but the way the reporting ends up being used is very different. Anything they put on their websites tends to live forever, and it's often difficult even for careful readers to remember to check the publishing dates. If an article was published a year ago, but the page itself doesn't carry a retraction notice, I often assume the published information continues to be accurate. The lack of a retraction on an easily editable webpage indicates to me that the publishing individual or organization continues to endorse the material, as if it had been published the day I read it. That's why organizations with journalistic integrity are so careful to add retraction notices to incorrect articles, even for small changes. I doubt it amounts to defamation to not add such a notice, but it certainly makes the violation of journalistic integrity much worse.