Editorial Standards & Ethics
The rules this newspaper works to, written plainly enough to be held to.
1. The rule above the others
A headline may not out-run its story.
That rule has not changed since 1994. What changed on 9 August 2026 is where the qualification goes.
Until then we put it in the headline itself, which produced sentences like "Nine Of Eleven Surveyed Buildings Have Openings Below Modern Grade. Eight Have Documented Reasons." Every word of that is defensible. It is also fifteen words long, contains its own rebuttal, and — a reader survey found — left 71 per cent of respondents unable to say what the story was about.
A headline that nobody finishes is not a cautious headline. It is an unread one, and an unread accurate story loses the argument to a read inaccurate one every single time.
So: the headline states the finding. The standfirst directly beneath it carries the qualification, at 1.32rem, above the fold, before the byline. The two are written together, by the same person, and neither is signed off without the other.
1a. The public editor's veto
Because that change moves risk onto the headline, it comes with a check. The public editor may strike any headline she judges to have out-run its story, without appeal, before or after publication. She does not report to the editor and cannot be overruled.
She has not yet had to use it; when she does, the entry will be in the corrections archive under Standards. Both are in the corrections archive.
2. Sourcing
Every reported story carries a Sources & Method box, printed at the foot of the piece, listing every person we spoke to, the capacity in which they spoke, when, and by what means. Where a source is unnamed in the copy, the box says why they are unnamed and confirms that an editor knows who they are. We do not print "sources say." We do not print "reports suggest." We do not print "it is understood."
A single source is not a story. Two sources who learned it from each other are one source.
2a. The refusal ratio
Where we approach more than three people for comment, the story prints how many were approached, how many declined, and how many did not reply. "Did not respond to requests for comment" covers everything from one unanswered email to forty refusals and tells a reader nothing about which. (Added 8 August 2026 at a reader's request.)
2b. One object is not a story
A story resting on a single document or artefact must cite at least one comparison object, or state in the body that no comparison was obtained and why. (Added 9 August 2026 after we spent three years and fourteen stories on one tablet without requesting four comparison objects whose catalogue numbers we held. See the Null Result of 9 August.)
2c. Our own back numbers are not corroboration
This newspaper's earlier reporting may appear in a sources box only under the words our own earlier reporting. The phrase "as this newspaper has previously established" is banned. (Added 7 August 2026 at the public editor's insistence.)
3. What we could not confirm
The same box lists the claims we chased and failed to stand up. This is not a hedge. It is the part of a story most likely to be useful to the next reporter, and the part most outlets throw away.
3a. Measurements
No measurement is reported as a measurement unless it was taken on two independent instruments, at least one of which the reporter did not choose. Where that is impossible the story says so in the paragraph where the number appears, in the same size type. (Added 4 June 2026 after we published a signal that was an artefact of our own reporter's software. See the retraction.)
4. Documents
We cite no document whose route to us we cannot describe in a sentence. Every document is catalogued in The Vault with a provenance statement, a custody note, and an honest account of any gap in the chain. Contested documents are labelled contested wherever they are cited — not once, at the bottom, in small type, but every time.
4a. What we refused
The Vault lists documents we were offered and declined, with the reason. A newspaper that shows you only its good documents is showing you a curated hand. It also lists, where we know of one, the document we should have read and did not.
5. Fact and opinion
Reporting and argument are made by different people in different rooms. The opinion editor reports to the publisher, not to the editor-in-chief, receives no advance notice of news stories, and attends no news conference. No reporter writes opinion. No columnist edits reporting.
On the page, argument is typeset differently, carries a coloured label in the same size as the kicker, and opens with a banner that says what it is. If you cannot tell whether you are reading news or opinion, we have failed, and it is a design failure as much as an editorial one.
5a. How we know the wall works
We test it. In our 2026 reader survey, 1,904 respondents were shown four pieces from this site with the labels removed and asked to sort them into reporting and argument. They got 96.1 per cent right, against 71.4 per cent in the same test in 2024, before clause 5 was rewritten to specify the label's size, colour and position. The 2024 figure is why the clause was rewritten. Both figures are published on the newsroom metrics page and the next test is in 2028.
6. Right of reply
Anyone criticised by name is contacted before publication, told the substance of the criticism in writing, and given a stated period to answer. Their answer runs unedited, at any length, on the story itself. We do not respond underneath it. See Right of Reply.
7. Corrections
We do not silently edit. Every substantive change to a published story is logged in the corrections archive with the date, the error, its cause, and what changed. Corrections are never removed and never paywalled. Where an error was systemic rather than individual, we say what we changed in the process, not only in the copy.
The managing editor re-reads every correction ninety days after it is issued to check whether the underlying practice actually changed.
8. Inconvenient facts
This newspaper reports on a world its readers largely believe in. That is exactly why we run The Null Result — a standing series in which we investigate a widely held claim and report that we could not substantiate it. These run on the front page. An outlet that only confirms its readers is an outlet with customers, not readers.
9. Money
We take no money from anyone we cover. We run no programmatic advertising, no sponsored content, no affiliate links, and no native advertising. Our full income is published to the percentage point at Ownership & Funding, including the twenty-two per cent of it we cannot trace, which we treat as a conflict of interest and disclose on every story it might touch.
10. Language
Straight news carries no loaded adjectives, no emotional framing, and no unattributed characterisation. A person is not "shadowy" unless someone we name has called them shadowy on the record. Verbs of attribution are "said." "Admitted," "conceded," and "revealed" are judgements and belong on the opinion pages.
10a. Headlines
The writer of a headline must initial that they have read the piece in full. (Added 2 July 2026 after a headline that out-ran its story stood for forty minutes.)
10b. What a headline may not do
It may not use a word the story does not use. It may not attribute a motive. It may not put a number in the headline that does not appear in the first six paragraphs. And it may not ask a question, because a question is a claim wearing a hat. (Added 9 August 2026 with the change to clause 1.)
11. Anonymity
We publish nothing under a house byline. Every piece has a person's name on it and that person has a page with their record on it. If a reporter will not put their name on a story, the story does not run.
11a. How we compare
Every reported story of substance carries a How Others Covered This box listing rival outlets' versions, what they had that we did not, and what each left out — including us. The line describing what a story of ours omitted is written by the public editor, not by the story's reporter, because a reporter knows why every cut was justified. This is the most-complained-about rule inside this building and has been in force since 2021.
12. Corrections to these standards
This page has been revised nine times since 1994 — four times before 2026 and five times this year, all three at the instigation of a reader or the public editor rather than the newsroom. Each revision is logged in the corrections archive under the heading Standards, and each new clause above carries the date it was added and what went wrong to cause it.
A standards page with no dates on it is a statement of intent. A standards page with dates on it is a scar chart.