The photograph that travelled
A photograph of an empty bookshop appeared in our neighbourhood chat with the caption "The last bookshop has closed." Within an hour, several people had shared it. Our student news team considered using the story, but the picture raised questions.
The sign above the door had been cut out of the image. We searched for the uncropped photograph and found it on the shop's own page. It had been posted six months earlier, when the floor was being replaced. The shelves had been moved temporarily. A recent notice said the shop would close for two afternoons that week, not permanently.
We wrote a short correction. Before publishing it, we checked the date of the original picture, the full notice and the shop's current contact page. Our draft said, "All the facts have been checked." Our editor crossed that out. We had checked three specific details; we had not investigated every statement about the shop.
The published version explained exactly what had been verified and linked to the original notice. We avoided repeating the dramatic headline in large letters, because readers might remember it without the correction underneath.
Later, someone asked whether the shop's future was secure. We did not know. The false caption had been corrected, but that did not answer every possible question about the business. Our final sentence was deliberately narrow: the photograph did not show a permanent closure, and the announced change concerned two afternoons only.