Editorial standards

The newspaper exists to help people understand what is happening, why it matters and what has changed. Every standard below serves that purpose.

Significance over engagement

The shared front page is ranked by editors according to public significance. Engagement data is reported to the newsroom separately and is never an input to editorial ranking. Personalization adds to what a reader sees; it never removes important public-interest reporting.

Grounded in sources

Claims are classified as fact, interpretation or forecast and linked to the evidence behind them. We do not invent quotations, statistics, studies or citations. Where evidence is insufficient we say so.

How we use AI

Language models assist with drafting, summarization and the Ask the Newspaper research desk. Their output is never treated as its own evidence, is validated against source material, and is reviewed by editors before publication. High-risk stories cannot be published without a human decision. Readers’ questions are answered only from the verified material of the article they are reading.

Corrections

Corrections are published on the article, recorded in its version history and, when the article belongs to a living story, added to the story’s record so followers see them. Retracted articles remain reachable with a notice explaining the retraction.

Illustrative content

During development, demonstration articles are labeled Illustrative in the headline area, the article notice and the source list. We never present invented events as current reporting.

Rights and attribution

We do not republish full articles or images from feeds without a license, do not scrape paywalled content, and attribute every source. Placeholder artwork is labeled as such until licensed photography is in place.