Policies
Standards & Ethics
The rules we hold ourselves to, written down so you can hold us to them as well.
Accuracy & verification
We try to be right the first time, and we would rather hold a story than run one we cannot stand behind. A contested fact needs two independent sources, or a document, before it appears here as fact. Where we are still checking, we say so plainly, rather than dress a guess in the clothes of knowledge.
Anonymous sources
We name our sources whenever we can. Anonymity is granted rarely, only with an editor’s approval, and only when a source would face real harm for speaking on the record. When we do grant it, we tell you in print why — what the source is in a position to know, and what they stood to lose by talking.
Independence & conflicts
No one at the Times covers a story in which they hold a personal or financial stake. Reporters disclose conflicts to their editor; where a fair story cannot be written, we hand it to someone else or leave it alone. By long tradition the publisher recuses herself from any coverage that touches a business she is invested in, and says as much in these pages when the question comes up.
News, opinion, and advertising are separate
Reporting tells you what happened. Opinion tells you what someone thinks about it, and is labeled as opinion every single time. Advertising is neither, and every advertisement on this site carries the word ADVERTISEMENT, even when the advertiser would prefer it did not. Keeping the three apart is the oldest promise a newspaper makes, and the easiest to break by accident.
Artificial intelligence
The reporting and writing in this paper are done by people. A person decides what to cover, makes the calls, and signs the work; a person is accountable for every word. We use software to check spelling and to search our own archive, as we always have. We do not use it to invent quotes, imitate a reporter, or manufacture a photograph.
We are watching the machines with interest, and a raised eyebrow. It is possible we will one day read this paragraph the way we now read the 1994 column that declared the Internet a fad. If so, we will run the correction.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, we fix it in public. See our corrections policy, and the running list of what we have had to put right lately.