Editorial standards

These standards govern everything PQR News publishes. They are not aspirations; they are the rules our work is checked against before it goes live. The aim is simple: a reader should be able to trust what we assert, and to verify it independently.

Sourcing: primary sources first

We work from primary sources wherever they exist. A primary source is the original record of a fact — the legislation itself, the court judgment, the regulatory filing, the official statistic, the transcript, the company report, the peer-reviewed paper. Secondary reporting can point us toward a story, but we do not treat another outlet’s account as sufficient evidence for a claim of fact. We go to the document.

Where a primary source is unavailable, we say so, we explain what the best available source is, and we describe its limitations rather than presenting it as more solid than it is.

Every factual claim is traceable

Each material claim of fact in a PQR News article is tied to a source that a reader can locate. In practice that means named sources, linked documents, and specific references rather than vague attributions. If a sentence asserts something a reasonable reader might doubt or want to check, it should be possible to follow that sentence back to its origin.

Separation of news, analysis, opinion and sponsored content

We keep four things clearly apart, and we label them:

• News and reporting establishes facts.
• Analysis interprets established facts and draws conclusions; it is always marked as analysis.
• Opinion, where we publish it, is the argued view of a named author and is labelled as opinion.
• Sponsored content, if it ever appears, is clearly identified as such, visually and in text, and is never presented as editorial. Sponsorship has no influence over our journalism.

Blurring these categories misleads readers, so we treat mislabelling as a serious error.

Accurate dates and versioning

Time matters to meaning. We date our articles accurately, we distinguish publication date from the date of any later update, and where a piece is materially changed we note what changed and when. For durable reference pieces, the version you are reading should reflect the current state of the facts, with earlier states acknowledged rather than quietly overwritten.

Language and fairness

We write in plain, precise language. We avoid overstatement, we distinguish what is established from what is contested, and we represent the positions of the people and organisations we write about fairly and in context. Where someone is criticised or subject to significant claims, we seek their response and reflect it.

The pre-publish gate

Nothing is published until it has passed a pre-publish check. Before an article goes live, an editor confirms that every factual claim is sourced and traceable, that the correct format label is applied, that dates are accurate, that any right of reply has been sought where required, and that the piece does not assert more than the evidence supports. If a claim cannot clear that gate, it is cut or the piece waits. We would rather be slower and right.