Methodology
Editorial standards, sourcing, the evidence scale and how images are made.
Sources
We build each story on primary sources wherever they exist: legislation, court records, regulatory filings, official statements, research papers, datasets and the documents the story is about. Secondary sources, such as other news reports and analysis, add context.
Every published story lists its primary and secondary sources separately, with links to the originals, so you can read them for yourself.
Evidence labels
Each story carries an evidence label that describes how well established its central claims are:
- Established
- Multiple primary sources agree.
- Emerging
- Early evidence; may change.
- Contested
- Credible sources disagree.
- Preliminary
- Single source, not yet corroborated.
Editorial review
An editor reviews every story, its sources and its images before it is published. Nothing is published automatically.
Images
Photographs and other images carry their credit and reuse licence. Some images are AI-generated illustrations made with xAI’s Grok; an editor checks each one before it is used, and every AI-generated image is labelled as such.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, we correct it. See Corrections for how corrections work and how to report an error.