A rough name. A careful standard.

01 / Verify before publishing.

Build the story on a traceable record. Explain what is known, what is disputed, and what has not been established.

Check names, dates, quotations, totals, and the status of public decisions against appropriate sources. A proposal is not an enacted measure; an accusation is not a finding. Use original records where practical, link useful public documents, and describe gaps rather than filling them with a plausible guess.

A headline, caption, or social preview must not claim more than the reporting supports. Speed is not a reason to manufacture certainty.

02 / Be fair. Be specific.

Represent the substance of a position accurately. Seek a meaningful response from people or organizations facing significant, specific criticism and explain when a response was requested or unavailable. Give relevant context without treating an unsupported assertion as equal to a documented fact.

Do not publish unnecessary personal information merely because it is available. Consider the public interest, relevance, foreseeable harm, and the vulnerability of the people involved.

03 / Treat sources and records carefully.

Identify sources when possible and explain why a source is credible on the matter at issue. Use anonymity only through an explicit editorial decision with a clear public-interest reason, appropriate verification, and an honest assessment of what can be protected.

Do not promise confidentiality through a routine web form. Establish any off-the-record, background, or anonymity terms before sensitive information is exchanged. Keep unpublished reporting and source identities out of unapproved automated services.

The current tip tool is for ordinary, non-sensitive leads. It is not anonymous source intake.

04 / Tell readers what they are reading.

Satire, reconstruction, archival material, and design samples also need labels that prevent confusion. Labels should travel with the content when it is shared or republished.

05 / Keep commercial interests out of the edit.

An advertising agreement does not buy favorable independent coverage or removal of criticism. Relevant conflicts, financial relationships, gifts, outside work, and organizational connections should be disclosed to the editor and to readers where needed.

Editors retain responsibility for news judgment. Any future funding or sponsorship disclosure should describe actual relationships, not imply support that does not exist.

06 / Keep images and tools honest.

Do not pass off generated imagery, a reconstruction, or a materially altered scene as a documentary photograph. Captions should identify what an image is, where it came from, and any relevant limits.

Automated tools may assist a workflow, but they cannot invent interviews, quotations, evidence, or sources. A responsible person must verify factual claims and approve the finished work. Disclose material uses that affect how readers should understand the story.

Articles prepared with AI assistance are checked against the cited records. Generated illustrations are identified in their captions and are not documentary images.

07 / Correct the record visibly.

A substantive factual correction should identify the change and when it was made. A clarification should explain the added context. New reporting should be dated as an update rather than silently rewriting history.

Minor spelling or formatting repairs need not become a correction notice unless they affect meaning. Serious errors may require a prominent correction, editor’s note, or retraction proportionate to the problem. The Corrections page explains how to raise an issue.

08 / Make responsibility visible.

Before publication begins, the publisher should approve these standards, identify who is responsible for editorial decisions and corrections, and connect a verified public contact. A policy page is a commitment to a process, not evidence that the process has already been followed.