Editorial standards and human review policy
These are the rules our newsroom works to. They govern how stories are sourced, the checks a draft must pass, what our editors reject outright, how AI-assisted drafting is supervised by people, and how mistakes get fixed.
How a story reaches the site
- Reporting is identified from accountable news organisations and clustered with corroborating outlets.
- A draft is written in our own words, with every source named and linked.
- Automated checks screen for length, structure, missing attribution, duplicates and low-value topics.
- A human editor reads the draft, verifies the sourcing, and approves, revises, holds or rejects it.
- Published stories stay under review: any editor can correct or withdraw them, and every change is versioned.
1. Sourcing
We draw on reporting from established news organisations with editorial accountability. We do not build articles from anonymous aggregators, content farms, or unattributed social posts. Where a claim originates with a single outlet, we say so explicitly rather than presenting it as settled fact.
2. Attribution and linking
Every article names the originating publisher in the body text, carries a standing attribution box, and links directly to the original report. Those outbound links are permanent — we do not strip or redirect them. Attribution is also emitted as structured data (creditText and sourceOrganization) so search engines and aggregators can read it.
3. Rewriting, not copying
We write our own account of each story. We do not reproduce a source's article text, and we quote only short passages where the exact wording is the news. Headlines and excerpts remain the property of their respective publishers.
4. AI disclosure and human review
Drafting is AI-assisted inside a supervised newsroom pipeline; judgement stays with people. Named editors hold publishing rights, monitor the review queue in our newsroom dashboard, and can revise, hold or withdraw any story at any time. Every change is written to a revision history that records what changed, when, and by whom. No article stays online if an editor cannot stand behind it.
5. Quality checks before publication
Every draft is run through automated pre-publication checks and then read by a person. A story must carry at least 1,000 words of substantive reporting, a section setting out what is still unknown, a background or context section, an explanation of why the story matters, named and linked sources, an accurate headline that matches the body, and no near-duplicate already in our archive. Where several outlets report the same event, we synthesise them and cite each rather than following one account.
6. What gets rejected
Drafts fail review and are never published if they are thin (under our word floor), rest on a single unnamed source, recycle celebrity gossip, rumour, listicles or clickbait, carry statistics or quotes we cannot trace to a named source, lack working links to the originating outlet, duplicate a story already on the site, read as a close paraphrase of one publisher's copy, or make legal, medical or financial claims we cannot verify. Rejected items are logged with a reason and are not silently retried.
7. Accuracy and corrections
If we get something wrong, we fix it. Send the article URL and the disputed passage to the newsroom. Verified errors are corrected promptly, and material corrections are noted on the article itself rather than made silently.
8. Independence from advertising
Advertising is served programmatically and is clearly separated from editorial content. Advertisers get no advance sight of coverage and no influence over it. We publish no advertorial, no paid links, and no sponsored placements dressed as journalism.
9. Privacy and consent
Analytics and advertising only load after you grant consent under Google Consent Mode. You can withdraw consent at any time and we will stop measuring and stop requesting personalised ads.
10. Right of reply
Any organisation or individual named in our coverage may request a right of reply. We will publish a fair summary of a substantive response alongside the original article.
Rejection checklist
A draft does not publish if any of the following is true:
- Fewer than 1,000 words of substantive reporting, thin context sections, fewer than five concrete data points, or no “what we don’t know yet” section.
- Clickbait, gossip, rumour, speculation or listicle framing.
- A single source, or claims we cannot trace to a named organisation.
- Missing, broken or stripped links to the originating outlet.
- Wording that stays too close to a publisher's original copy.
- A near-duplicate of a story already in our archive.
- Headline that overstates or misrepresents the body of the article.
- Unverifiable legal, medical, financial or safety claims.
Report an error
Corrections take priority over everything else in our queue. Contact the newsroom with the article link and the passage in question.