This is what is published, what a human signs off before it publishes, and what will not be said.
These standards are enforced by the pipeline rather than held as an intention. Each one below states what happens when it is not met, because a rule with no stated failure is a wish.
The corroboration floor
A fact is written from a Grade A document, or from two independent outlets together with one Grade A or public-domain source. Every register that is read declares its grade and its licence in the source register, and a register whose licence is missing does not load.
Where neither threshold is met the item is still published, and the claim carries the label "reported by X, not independently confirmed", where X is the named outlet. That label is a field on the claim rather than a phrase a writer chooses, and it renders identically on every channel.
Independence is computed rather than assumed. Two outlets are independent when they share no publisher group, no byline and no near-duplicate hash from the wire-copy detector, so two titles inside one group count as one outlet.
The three confidence labels
| Label | Condition | How it reads |
|---|---|---|
| Documented | A Grade A origin document exists and every claim cites it. | No qualifier, and the document is cited. |
| Corroborated | Two independent outlets and one Grade A or public-domain source. | No qualifier, and all three are cited. |
| Single-source | Neither threshold is met. | Reported by X, not independently confirmed, carried on the claim itself and on every channel. |
Numbers, and armed conflict
A number comes from the statistics agency and never from an article. A numeric claim citing only an outlet is rejected when it is written, so it is never published and never has to be corrected.
A claim made by a government or an army in armed conflict is always attributed to the body that made it, whatever its grade. A sentence carrying such a claim without an attribution clause fails the linter and is not stored.
What a human signs off
One editor for each region signs off the day's national items and every flagged local category, every day. The approval is a row in a queue with a name and a time on it, not a habit.
- School ratings.
- Crime.
- Court items.
- Any item naming a private individual.
- A licensing decision naming a person.
- Any item carrying the not-confirmed label.
An item in one of those categories cannot publish on any channel without an approval row.
An item held past its own story window expires rather than publishing late, and the expiry is recorded against the item.
Naming a person
A private individual is named only where a Grade A document names them, and the item states which document. A holder of public office is named in relation to their official function. A private individual is never named from a Grade B source, and never from a Grade C source at all.
The rule is a linter that combines the person type in the entity graph with the grade of the citation, so an item that breaks it is refused rather than reviewed.
Crime, courts and school ratings
- Crime is reported as police.uk statistics for an area. It is never an allegation about a person or about an address, and no item names a suspect.
- Court reporting comes from the official list or from the judgment, contemporaneously, in the standard fair and accurate framing. Active proceedings receive no comment, no context and no backstory beyond the charge as listed, because of contempt of court.
- A school rating states the Ofsted judgement with its date and its inspection reference, and never characterises it. The publishable form is: rated Requires Improvement at its inspection of 14 March 2026. Any adjective about the school is not publishable.
Every finding is a statement about a record that is held, cited, with the document one tap away. Where a finding turns out to be wrong it is corrected in public, and every correction is in the corrections log.
Advertising, and money
There is no advertising at launch. No payment, licence or partnership changes an item, changes its order in a brief, or changes whether it appears at all, and nobody can buy the absence of an item about themselves.
A standard that cannot be tested is not a standard, and each of these is tested before it is trusted.