How we report, and what we will not do

Accuracy comes before speed

We would rather be second and right. Nothing is published because a competitor has it; a story runs when it is verified, and if that means we miss it, we miss it. Where a fact is contested, we say who contests it rather than picking the version that reads better.

Sourcing

• We name sources by default. Anonymity is granted when identification would expose someone to a real risk — legal, professional or physical — and the story explains, in the story, why it was granted.
• A single anonymous source is not enough to make a factual allegation about a named person or institution. We look for a second source, a document, or a record.
• We do not pay sources for information, and we do not let a source approve copy. We will read back a direct quotation for accuracy on request.
• Documents obtained under right-to-information laws are described as such, and we say when a request went unanswered.

Right of reply

Before publishing a claim that reflects badly on a person or organisation, we put the substance of it to them and allow a reasonable time to respond. If they decline or do not reply, the story says so. “Did not respond to a request for comment” means we actually asked, and we record when and how many times.

Conflicts of interest

Contributors disclose to the editor any financial, family or professional interest in what they are covering, and are reassigned where the interest is material. We accept no travel, accommodation or hospitality from the subjects of our reporting. Where a trip is funded by a third party and we judge the story still worth doing, the funding is disclosed in the piece.

Images

Photographs are not staged, and are not altered beyond cropping and ordinary tonal adjustment. Composite or illustrative images are labelled. We do not use AI-generated imagery to depict events, people or places that exist — a picture of a thing that did not happen is not an illustration, it is a fabrication.

Artificial intelligence

We use AI in exactly one place, and it is disclosed wherever it appears:

• Article summaries. The “Summarise this story” button on an article generates a three-point TL;DR from the text of that article using Google Gemini. When the text you are reading was machine-written, the panel says AI-generated summary. When an editor wrote it, the panel says so instead.

Everything else is a commitment about what we do not do:

• No article, headline, standfirst or caption on this site is written by a language model. Reporting is done by people.
• We do not use AI to generate quotations, sources, statistics, or images of real events.
• A generated summary is derived only from the article it sits above. It is not given outside information and cannot add facts the piece does not contain — but it is a machine reduction of someone’s reporting, and it can flatten nuance or misplace emphasis. It is offered as a convenience, never as a substitute. The reporting is the story.
• If we ever use AI for anything else — translation, transcription, research assistance — this page will say so before it happens, not after.

Corrections

We correct openly and promptly. The mechanism, and what you can expect from us when you report an error, is set out in full in our corrections policy.

Independence from commercial interests

We carry no advertising at present. If we ever do, advertising will be visually distinct from editorial, no advertiser will receive advance sight of coverage, and no commercial relationship will influence whether a story runs. Sponsored material, if it ever appears, will be labelled as such in a way you cannot miss.

Holding us to this

If you believe we have fallen short of anything on this page, write to editor@tbb.news and say which commitment and which story. We will reply.