Standard

These are the rules this publication holds itself to. They are published so they can be held against us. If you find a piece that breaks one, that is a correction request and it will be treated as one.

The record

1. Every substantive claim carries a tag. An untagged factual claim about a living person is not published, in any format.
2. The question is stated at the top. How a question is framed decides what the answer looks like, so the framing is made visible rather than buried. Where an argument has more than one live framing, the framings are covered rather than one being chosen.
3. Silence is reported, never filled. Where the record does not answer, we say the record does not answer. No manufactured rebuttals and no manufactured accusations.
4. Sources that could not be retrieved are listed anyway, with the reason.
5. Two independent sources are required for anything not traceable to an official record, or it is published as an open question.

The assessment

6. The record is frozen before the assessment is written. Later additions carry a dated, visible revision note.
7. The assessment introduces no new facts. Everything in it resolves to the record above it.
8. It states what would change its mind. Without that, it is a position rather than an analysis.
9. It states the strongest opposing reading first, in our own words, before answering it.
10. We never claim to be unbiased. We claim no position on the contested question, and we claim that the work is auditable. Those are checkable.

People

11. Private individuals are treated more carefully than public figures, and every name is treated as private unless there is reason to think otherwise.
12. Claims are aggregated, posters are not named. We report what is circulating and where. We do not name the private individual who originated or amplified it.
13. Right of reply before publication. Anyone who is the subject of a critical piece gets a real opportunity to respond, and the request is documented.
14. No implication by arrangement. A conclusion is stated in the assessment or it is not implied in the record. "Just asking questions" is not a technique used here.

Publishing

15. Attribution survives every restatement. What the body says, the headline, thumbnail, video and social post say too. Attribution is not dropped to make something fit.
16. Nothing is published that could be mistaken for the real thing it depicts. No mock documents, no simulated filings, no fabricated screenshots, no dramatized reconstructions. If it looks like evidence, it is evidence.
17. Corrections are appended, never disappeared. Nothing is quietly edited or removed after a complaint.
18. What we take from other people's work is facts, short attributed quotations, and our own notes. A raw extraction may contain the facts a source reports, quotations shorter than a paragraph with the speaker and the source named, and our notes on what the source does and does not establish. It may not contain an article's text beyond that, any transcript derived from a broadcaster's captions, or anything obtained past a paywall. Every extraction links to the original so the source, not our summary of it, is the thing you check.
19. A record about a private individual is published unmonetized. No advertising, no paywall, no sponsor.

Also true

We are not a party to anything covered here and take no payment from any party. Sponsorship, where it exists, is disclosed above the content and never involves the sponsor in reporting, editing or choosing the subject.

This is journalism, not advice. Nothing here is legal, medical or financial advice.