Editorial Standards & Ethics
Last updated: 2026-06-29
These standards govern what we publish and how. They complement "How we verify" and "Trust" and bind both the AI pipeline and the human editors who handle high-risk stories.
Sourcing & verification
We attribute claims to their sources and prefer facts corroborated by more than one independent source. Each confirmed claim is checked against the cited source text where available; claims we cannot verify are labeled accordingly rather than presented as confirmed. Confidence is shown per article and per claim.
Corrections & retractions
Errors are corrected openly and logged on the article. Serious cases are retracted with a reader notice. This is the same for every story, however it was published. To report an error or ask for a right of reply, see the Corrections page or write to corrections@newsmesis.example. Correction and retraction notices propagate to the relevant surfaces.
Sensitive & high-risk stories
High-risk topics always wait for a human editor. They are named individuals, minors, graphic content, market-moving price or trading claims, elections, active investigations, sanctions and war, defamation risk, medical claims, terror, self-harm, sexual crime, and stories that need a right of reply. A human editor reviews source rights, completes a standards and legal review, and records the right-of-reply status before such a story is published. The automated lane cannot publish these stories. The system blocks publication until these steps are done. On the tech desk, funding rounds, valuations, revenue and pricing do not by themselves hold a story for review.
AI disclosure & independence
Articles are AI-assisted, and we say so openly. The automated newsroom can publish a story without a human editor when every gate passes. The gates are: each confirmed claim is checked against its source text, at least two independent origins support the story, no high-risk topic is flagged for human review, and rights to the sources are cleared. Several outlets that repeat one wire report count as one origin. Editors can also approve and publish a story by hand.
Our judgments are independent of source, funding, and political interest. Concerns: corrections@newsmesis.example.