Editorial Policies

Letters Policy

Letters to the Editor must be exclusive to The Daily Beacon and cannot have been submitted to or published by other media. Letters should not exceed 600 words and can be edited or shortened for space. Letters can also be edited for grammar and typographical errors, and Letters that contain excessive grammatical errors can be rejected for this reason.

Anonymous Letters will not be published, and authors should include their full name, mailing address, city of residence, phone number and email address for verification purposes. Letters submitted without this information will not be published. All letters will be published with the author’s email address listed at the bottom of the letter.

Letters to the Editor and Guest Columns may be emailed to [email protected], submitted online or mailed to: Editor-in-Chief, 1345 Circle Park Drive, 11 Communications Building, Knoxville, TN 37996.

The Daily Beacon reserves the right to reject any submissions or edit all copy in compliance with available space, editorial policy and style.

Website Corrections Policy

Our policy at the Daily Beacon is to remove nothing from our online archives. Exceptions can be made if the material is unlawful — meaning that it is potentially defamatory or an invasion of an individual’s privacy – but we will not change the historic account of our newspaper when a reader finds something embarrassing or bothersome.

Our bottom line: material that was lawful and supported by the editorial staff at the time of its original publication does not become improper with the passage of time.

If you have questions or concerns about this policy, please contact our office at 865-974-5206.

Takedown Policy 

To make a complaint that archived content is inaccurate, contact the editor-in-chief in writing by letter or email with the following information:

• Name, telephone number and e-mail address,

• The URL address of the content in question, and

• The specific content that is inaccurate and an explanation of how the information is inaccurate.

The widespread use of search engines has resulted in a significant increase in requests or, often, demands that news organizations remove news items from databases scanned by public search engines. The decision to remove any news content from a digital database of The Daily Beacon or any other platform is at the discretion of the publication’s editor-in-chief.

The Daily Beacon’s policy is that we do not remove, alter or attempt to hide from search engines any material published. This includes articles or portions thereof or letters to the editor or portions thereof once they’ve been published. This applies retroactively to all archival materials on The Daily Beacon website, Instagram and YouTube channel. The Daily Beacon also does not remove authors’ names from articles, letters, videos or posts. Once published, whether in the print edition of The Daily Beacon, on the website or other social media platforms, it is considered a historical record and should not be altered.

Requests for removal or alterations to content should be judged on a case-by-case basis. The only situations in which content should be changed are in situations of libel, inaccuracy, copyright, ethical breach or if it is discovered to have been written partially or in whole by artificial intelligence software. The current editor-in-chief will make decisions on actions regarding alterations to content.

If the current editor-in-chief is confronted with a removal request for content not published under their term, the editor under whom it was published should be contacted and approve the removal.

Published content that was lawful, factually accurate and properly researched at the time of publication does not become illegal as time passes. Nor does a subject’s embarrassment or offense create a legal duty on the publisher’s part to remove a factually accurate story.

In extreme cases where The Daily Beacon editor-in-chief determines that follow-up material should be reported, such as in coverage of criminal cases, The Daily Beacon will amend the article or material.

Regarding content published more than one year ago, the complainant must provide reasonable proof to the editor-in-chief that the content in question is no longer accurate. For example, a copy of expungement papers should be provided in case any criminal charges are dropped. If published more than a year ago, contested quotes are highly unlikely to be amended without written or audio documentation.

If the contested content was published less than a year ago, routine internal procedures for checking the material’s accuracy will apply, and you may be asked to provide written documentation. Updates or corrections may be added if the material is factually inaccurate, but nothing will be removed.

In the event of a correction, a note detailing the date and time of the change will be included. The request will be reviewed and checked by the editor-in-chief, and if the editor determines it to be valid, an update or correction will be posted. If a correction or amendment is to be made, the change will be noted in an editor’s note placed at the top of the article, along with the date and time of the alteration.

Great care will be taken to ensure the appended material is accurate since changing the article could constitute a new publication of that article. In some cases, such as new information or developments that are material to the story (such as an adjudication), the editor may decide whether a story must be updated regardless of whether the person making the original request or the subject wants it to be updated.

Unprecedented Times

Due to threats happening under the 2025 Trump Administration against immigrants holding visas or undocumented, the Student Press Law Center warns “about the current threats to student speech posed by recent immigration enforcement actions on campuses across the country, (and) recommends student media leaders revisit their policies on takedown requests and anonymous sources, particularly for those whose immigration status may make them targets for their lawful speech. It also provides resources to aid in those decisions.” This “comes after Tufts University international student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by federal authorities and had her visa revoked, reportedly based on opinions expressed in a student newspaper op-ed.”

That being said, if any editor or the editor-in-chief is approached with a takedown request from an immigrant whose name or image was published under The Daily Beacon’s platform, they must revisit the article and consider removing the individual’s name or image from the Beacon’s website and/or socials if the content published could pose any threat to the individual’s ability to remain in the United States.