Editorial Standards & Ethics
The point of this page
These are the working rules of INCLUDED NEWS: what our team must do before a story is published, how we behave while reporting, and what you are entitled to hold us to afterwards. We wrote them before launch, on purpose, so that our standards would shape our archive rather than apologise for it. They bind everything we publish, on every desk, from a breaking world story to a travel feature. Where we fall short, our Corrections Policy takes over, and you can invoke it at support@includednews.com.
Accuracy before speed
We cover breaking news, and breaking news punishes hesitation. Even so, the rule here is fixed: we publish when we can stand behind a fact, not when a competitor does. In practice that means:
- every factual claim is verified against a source we can name to ourselves, and wherever possible to you;
- claims we cannot yet verify are either omitted or explicitly attributed and flagged as unconfirmed;
- developing stories are labeled as developing, and substantive revisions are timestamped;
- numbers are checked against the primary document, not against another outlet’s summary of it.
Being second and right beats being first and wrong. A wrong report can travel for years; a correction rarely catches it.
Sourcing
Our sourcing ladder is conventional and strict. Primary sources first: official statements, court and regulatory filings, published research, company disclosures, on the record participants and direct data. Established wire services and reputable outlets next, always credited and linked when we rely on their reporting. Social media posts, forwarded messages and screenshots are leads to verify, never sources on their own. Anonymous sourcing is used only when the information matters, cannot be obtained on the record, and the source’s position to know has been established; an editor must know the source’s identity, and we describe the source as precisely as protection allows. We do not pay for information, and we tell readers when material comes from an interested party.
Headlines and framing
The headline is the only part of a story most people read, so it carries the same accuracy burden as the body. Our rules: a headline must be supported by the story beneath it; it must not state as fact what the story attributes as claim; question mark headlines are not a licence to imply what we cannot report; and thumbnails and social captions must meet the same standard. If a headline overstates the story, that is an error, and the Corrections Policy applies to it.
News and opinion stay separate
News reports what happened. Analysis explains what it means. Opinion argues what should follow. We keep the three visibly distinct: anything that is not straight news reporting is labeled, and opinion never masquerades as a news headline. Our news coverage does not take political sides, endorse candidates or campaign for outcomes. Where a story involves genuine controversy, we represent the significant positions fairly and let named facts, not adjectives, do the arguing.
Independence and conflicts
Editorial decisions on this site are made by editors, full stop. No advertiser, affiliate partner or other commercial interest reviews, approves or influences a story before publication, and our Ownership & Funding page documents where the money comes from. Team members must disclose to the editor any financial or personal interest in a subject they cover and must step away from stories where the conflict is real. We do not accept payment, gifts of more than trivial value, or free products in exchange for coverage; where a review depends on access or a loaned product, the article says so.
Fairness and the right of reply
When our reporting makes a significant critical claim about a person or organisation, we contact them for comment before publication whenever it is practicable, and we report their response or their silence. Refusing to comment does not kill a well sourced story, but the attempt to hear them is not optional. If someone we covered believes we were unfair, the path is support@includednews.com, and complaints are read by an editor, not filtered by the author of the piece.
People, harm and privacy
News involves real people on their worst days, and clicks do not license cruelty. We name private individuals only when the news value requires it; we take particular care with children, victims of crime and people in crisis; we follow established press guidance in reporting suicide and avoid gratuitous detail about method; and we do not publish gore or suffering as spectacle. Public figures accept scrutiny of their public roles, not open season on their families.
Images, video and generative tools
Photographs and video are checked for origin and context before use, because the commonest visual lie online is a real image attached to the wrong event. Editing is limited to standard adjustments that do not alter meaning. If we ever use a generative tool to create an illustration, it is labeled as an illustration and never presented as a photograph of a real event. Automated tools of any kind may assist our workflow, but a human editor is responsible for every word and image we publish, and machine output is never published unverified.
Plagiarism and attribution
Plagiarism ends careers here on the first offence. We write our own copy, we credit outlets whose reporting we build on, we link to primary documents so you can bypass us entirely, and quotation marks mean the words between them were actually said. Fabrication of any element of a story, however small, is treated the same way.
Enforcement
Standards without enforcement are decoration. Internally, breaches of this page are treated as the most serious professional failure on the team. Externally, every reader is an enforcement mechanism: if you believe a story broke these rules, say so at support@includednews.com, citing the rule and the story. We would rather be corrected by a reader today than embarrassed by the archive in five years, and this page will be revised, publicly, as our corrections log teaches us where it is weakest.
