Actors who died corrections: writing a request editors can act on

Someone finds a mistake in a published notice: a middle name spelled as strangers spell it, or a stepdaughter left off the survivors list. A film credited to the wrong person with that name.

The error is usually small, almost never small to the family. For a while, this page is the most public thing about someone who can no longer correct anything.

This is what happens next, and what makes a request easier to act on.

Actors are not spared. In 1982, People magazine mistakenly referred to Abe Vigoda as dead while he was performing in a stage play in Calgary; he posed for Variety sitting up in a coffin with the erroneous issue. He died on January 26, 2016, at 94. The other examples here are invented to show the shape of a request.

What to take away

A correction, an addition, and a second thought are three different requests

Publications sort incoming requests into rough categories, and the category decides how fast anything moves.

A factual correction is a claim that something published is wrong and can be shown to be wrong: a date, a spelling, a place, a relationship, a piece of work attributed to the wrong person. These are the most straightforward, because the question is answerable.

An omission is a claim that something true was left out: most often a survivor. In a paid notice this is usually easy to add. In an editorial obituary it may not be, because the piece was never meant to be a complete list of anyone's family, and adding one name raises the question of the next.

A second thought is a request to change wording that was accurate when submitted. Examples: a title someone now dislikes, a marriage the family would rather not mention, or a phrase that read differently in print than on screen.

This is not a correction. When handled at all, it is a favor, not a duty.

Saying which of the three you are asking for, in the first sentence, saves a week.

Who owns the words matters more than who published them

The same newspaper can carry two pieces about the same death, and they follow different rules.

A paid notice is submitted by the family, usually through a funeral home, and the family's words are the copy. If it is wrong, it is generally wrong because of a typing error somewhere in the chain, and the publisher's job is to restore what was meant. Families have real standing here.

An editorial obituary is written and owned by the publication, and it is reported rather than submitted. It is not subject to family approval, which is why families sometimes find it colder than they expected.

It is subject to the publication's own standards, including acknowledging errors openly as the Associated Press statement of news values and principles sets out.

A publication will correct a fact in it. It will not usually rewrite a judgment, remove an unflattering but accurate episode, or add a paragraph because someone close to the subject thinks the balance is off.

Knowing which of the two you are looking at tells you what you can reasonably ask for.

What a correction request should contain

Keep it short and put everything the editor needs in one message.

A request an editor can act on holds six things:

A short example of the shape: "Correction request, notice for [name], published [date]. Factual correction: the notice says she was born in Dayton; she was born in Toledo. Her birth certificate is attached. I am her daughter and can be reached at [number]."

Send it to the address on the publication's corrections page if there is one, and to the funeral home as well when the notice was placed through them. The funeral home usually holds the submitted copy and can show what was sent.

The record and the correction should both survive

Careful publications do not quietly swap the wrong word for the right one. They change the text and add a line saying what was changed and when. It looks less tidy. It is more honest, and it is the only version that lets a reader who saw the first version understand what happened.

This matters more than it seems, because the first version rarely stays in one place. A notice can be picked up by aggregators, syndicated, copied into a memorial site, printed and pinned to a noticeboard. Correcting the source does not correct the copies, and no publisher can promise otherwise.

What a correction does is fix the version that most people will find next, and put a dated note under it that anyone comparing versions can follow. When an error has spread widely, ask the original publisher whether they can notify the services that took the feed.

In a searchable archive, questions get harder, and the reasoning is in correcting archived material. Erasure rights regulators describe cover living people: the UK Information Commissioner's Office explains that the right to get your data deleted is also known as the right to erasure, which a person uses to ask an organisation to delete data about them.

A request about someone who has died usually rests on the publisher's own policy rather than on a right, and rules differ by country.

What to expect, honestly

Response times vary enormously and depend more on staffing than on how much anyone cares. A small paper may fix a paid notice the same day. A large one may take a week to route the request to whoever is responsible for the archive.

Print is unrecallable: a correction can run in a later edition, but the earlier one exists.

Some requests are refused, usually for one of three reasons. The fact as published is supported by a source the publication trusts more than the one offered. The change is a matter of wording rather than accuracy. The piece is an editorial obituary and the request is to soften it.

A refusal can be appealed to an editor, and in some places to an independent press body, but it is fair to know that the answer may not change.

If the notice is one you placed yourself, keep a copy of what you submitted and the confirmation you were sent. It is the single most useful thing to have when something has gone wrong further down the line, and it costs nothing at the time.

Where this sits

The broader index of screen and stage lives on this site is at actors who died. It is compiled from published records and carries the same corrections process described here.

For how a published notice should be read, see deaths this week. For requests about material already years old, see anniversaries and archives, and for a cause the family never gave, see cause of death guides.

Common questions

How do I know whether I am looking at a paid notice or an editorial obituary?

A paid notice usually sits in a classified section in a house format with no byline. An editorial obituary carries a writer's name and reads as reporting.

Can I ask for a survivor to be added?

To a paid notice, usually yes. To an editorial obituary, often not, because it was never a complete list and adding one name raises the next.

Will they tell me who complained if I ask them not to?

Ask explicitly that your details are not published or passed on. Reasonable publications agree.

Is it worth correcting a notice that is years old?

Yes. The old version is what future writers will cite, so fixing it changes what gets written next.

What if the publication refuses?

Ask for the reason in writing and what evidence would change the answer. Where a national press body exists, a refusal can sometimes be taken there.