Revision of Economist corrects the record over Government work experience success from 17 April, 2012 - 13:29

Last month Full Fact asked the Economist to correct one of its articles covering the Government's controversial work experience scheme.

Jonathan Portes, Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) had written to the newspaper pointing out that they had mistakenly exaggerated the success of the scheme - claiming that half of its participants had found paid work after completion.

Full Fact found back in February that the Prime Minister had made the same mistake in the House of Commons. At the time, the Government's own analysis showed that half of the participants had moved off benefits, but had no information on how many paricipants had actually found paid work.

Our initial requests to the Economist to correct the record were unsuccessful as the newspaper said it wasn't their standard practice to print corrections, and the letter from Mr Portes was adequate in pointing out the mistake.

We weren't satisfied with this as the misrepresentation of the success of a government scheme is a significant inaccuracy that falls squarely under the Editor's Code of Practice.

After contacting the Economists' Editor to pursue the matter further, we were yesterday able to secure an online correction, which can now be found here.

BEFORE

AFTER

The Economist article also now adds:

"This article originally stated that half of the participants in the work-experience programme found work shortly after completing the scheme. In fact that proportion stopped claiming benefits. See letter Adhering to the facts"