About & editorial standards

What we publish, and how it is labeled

Every piece on this site carries a label above its headline, and the label is not decoration — it tells you what kind of work you are about to read. There are three:

• Reporting — an account of something that happened, built from sources that can be named or described.
• Analysis — an argument about what something means. It draws on reporting but goes beyond it, and it is the author’s reading, not a fact.
• Commerce — reader-supported product content. It may contain affiliate links, and it never appears on the editorial home page.

The split between the first two and the third is enforced in the site itself, not left to editorial memory: commerce content is filed to a separate index at Reviews and carries its own disclosure.

Sourcing

A material claim — something a reader might act on, or that damages someone if wrong — should be tied to a source a reader can go and check, and should be read by a human editor before it publishes. Where a claim comes from a single source, or from a source with an interest in the outcome, the piece should say so in the sentence that carries the claim rather than in a note at the bottom.

Breaking news, election results, polling and live policy claims need current primary sources. Where we cannot get them, we do not publish the claim.

What we do not do

• We do not accept payment to cover, or not cover, a subject.
• We do not run political advertising, and we do not sell merchandise on editorial pages.
• We do not present product reviews as reporting. If a page can earn us a commission, it says so above the article body.

When we get it wrong

Substantive changes are explained, dated and preserved rather than quietly edited away. The full policy, and how to send us an error, is on the corrections page.

Who pays for this

Ownership, funding and the commercial relationships that could bear on our coverage are set out on the ownership & funding page.