Corrections & Retractions Policy

The Zioneer is an AI-native intelligence desk. Our stories are drafted and assembled by AI under human editorial oversight, and they move fast — which means we treat being correctable as part of the instrument, not an embarrassment to be hidden.

When we get something wrong, we say so on the story itself. We do not quietly edit a headline and move on, and we do not delete a story to make a mistake disappear. A published claim that was wrong stays visible as having been wrong, alongside what replaced it. The reader should always be able to see not just what we believe now, but that our belief changed — and when.

This page describes how we handle corrections. Every Zioneer story is built as a chain of versions, and our credibility rating — The Zioneer Signal — is itself a moving assessment that we revise as sourcing improves or collapses. We are building the story-page surfaces that show this history to the reader directly; until each one is live, this policy states the commitment we hold ourselves to.

Every Zioneer story is a chain of versions, not a single editable page. When a story develops or a fact changes, we do not paint over the old text — we publish a new version and keep the prior one in the record.

Each new version carries a plain-language "what changed" note describing the correction: what we said before, what we now believe, and why. Material corrections — a wrong fact, a misattributed quote, a misread location, a number that was off — are flagged as corrections rather than blended in as routine updates, so a reader can tell the difference between a story that simply moved forward and a story that we had to fix.

Because the rating travels with the story, a correction often shows up as a change in The Zioneer Signal. A claim that looked Strong and then failed to hold can be downgraded — to Developing, to Doubtful, or, if we conclude it was untrue, to False. That downgrade is itself a logged correction, with the reasoning attached. The earlier, higher rating remains part of the record; we do not pretend we always rated it the way we rate it now.

A correction fixes a story. A retraction withdraws it — the rare case where a story should not have run as it did, or where its central claim is assessed as untrue.

When we retract, the story does not vanish. It remains published with a clear retraction notice, explaining what was wrong and why we pulled it, and the original text stays on the record so we are honest about what we published. A retracted story is marked as retracted in our system as a distinct state — it is never deleted, and it never silently reverts to looking like an ordinary live story. Anyone who saw the original, or linked to it, can return and see exactly what happened.

Retraction is a deliberate editorial act, not an automatic one. Our pipeline is built to fail closed — on error or uncertainty it holds rather than publishes — but pulling something already in front of readers is a decision a human makes and stands behind.

If you believe a Zioneer story contains an error — a wrong fact, a misquote, a mis-rated claim, an image or location that does not match the event — tell us. We would rather hear it from you than leave it standing.

The most useful reports point to the specific story, name the specific claim you are disputing, and where possible link to a source that supports your account. We read every credible report. If a report identifies a genuine error, we correct or retract the story using the process above and date the change; if after review we conclude the story is accurate as published, we will say so to the person who raised it.

We review reports promptly, but we do not trade speed for accuracy: a correction is itself a published statement, and it has to be right. Reports about named individuals receive particular care — an unproven allegation against a named person is held for human review before it can be rated as anything stronger than Developing, and a credible challenge can move a story into that review state.

To report an error, write to corrections@thezioneer.com — it reaches The Zioneer Intelligence Desk. The same address is published on our masthead, alongside our ownership and AI disclosure.

Corrections are a feature of how an honest desk works, not a failure of one. Our commitment is simple and we hold ourselves to it: we will keep the full version history of a story; we will mark what changed in plain language; we will never silently delete a story or a claim to hide that we got it wrong; and retractions will remain on the record permanently.

The Zioneer Signal is our own AI desk's credibility assessment — not third-party certification or external fact-checking — and the same honesty applies to it: when our confidence changes, the rating changes, visibly and with the reasoning attached. A rating we later revise is part of the record, not erased from it.

This policy applies to everything we publish, in both Hebrew and English, since every Zioneer story exists in both languages. If we ever change how we handle corrections, we will update this page and date the change here — the same standard we hold for the stories themselves.