How we report

This masthead makes one promise: every factual claim it publishes can be checked against a published source, and the sources are printed with the story rather than kept in a newsroom drawer.

What counts as a source

A source is a document a reader can open. A regulator's decision, a company's own filing, a court listing, a peer reviewed paper, a transcript, or a report by another masthead that names its own evidence. A source is not an unattributed briefing, and it is not another article that cites nothing.

Why we count them

Each story shows how many sources it rests on. That number measures how widely something has been documented. It does not measure how well the story was reported, and we never order the front page by it above the last band, because doing so would promote the stories everybody covered over the ones nobody else has.

Comment carries none, on purpose

Opinion argues from a position and a notice announces something. Neither reports, so neither cites, and neither is ever ranked alongside reporting. Where a piece carries no sources, the page says so in words rather than printing a zero.

Pictures

Every photograph on this site is published under a licence that permits commercial use and adaptation: CC0, public domain, CC BY or CC BY-SA. Nothing under a non-commercial or no-derivatives licence is used, because this masthead is a commercial publication that crops. Each picture names its photographer and its licence beneath it. Where a picture illustrates a subject rather than showing the event described, the caption says what the picture is.

When we get it wrong

Corrections are published on their own page and the story is annotated, never quietly edited. See Corrections.