use strict;
use warnings;
use List::Util qw(first);

my %data = (
     date => ['', '2009-01-01', '2009-01-02', ''],
     correct => ['Article_text1', 'Article_text2'],
);

my $correction = first { length($_) } @{$data{correct}};
my $date       = first { length($_) } @{$data{date}};