Our sources policy

This policy sets out where the facts in a PQR News article come from and how we credit them. It exists so that our central promise — to show our sources — is a rule rather than a slogan.

The hierarchy of primary sources

When we establish a fact, we reach for the most direct evidence available. In rough order of preference, we rely on:

• Legislation and regulation — the text of laws, statutory instruments and regulatory rules as enacted;
• Official filings — documents lodged with courts, regulators, registries and public bodies;
• Court judgments — the reasoning and orders of the court, in full, rather than summaries of them;
• Official statistics — data published by statistical agencies and public authorities, read with their methodology notes;
• Transcripts and official records — of hearings, debates, proceedings and announcements;
• Company reports and disclosures — annual reports, accounts and formal statements;
• Academic and peer-reviewed research — read in the original, with attention to what it does and does not claim;
• First-hand interviews — with people who have direct knowledge of the matter at hand.

Where sources conflict, we say so and explain which we find more reliable and why.

How we treat aggregated and secondary reporting

Other publications’ reporting is valuable, and sometimes it is where a story starts. But secondary reporting is a lead, not a fact. Where another outlet has established something we cannot yet verify from a primary source, we credit that outlet explicitly, by name, and we make clear that the claim rests on their reporting rather than on our own examination of the underlying evidence. We do not launder another organisation’s scoop into an unattributed assertion of our own.

Our citation commitment

We commit to citing the evidence for our factual claims. In practice this means naming the source, and linking to it wherever a stable public link exists, so that a reader can go to the same document we used and see for themselves. Where a source is not public — for example, a document shared with us in confidence — we describe it as fully as we responsibly can without compromising it or the people involved.

Anonymity and confidential sources

We prefer named sources. Where we grant anonymity, we do so only for good reason — typically because a source would face a real risk by speaking on the record — and we take responsibility for assessing their reliability. Granting anonymity does not lower our standard of proof; it raises the burden on us to corroborate.