Code of Ethics

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Telling the truth

• Be honest, accurate, truthful, and fair. Do not distort or fabricate facts, imagery, sound, or data.

• Provide accurate context for all reporting.

• Seek out diverse voices that can contribute important perspectives on the subject you’re writing.

• Ensure that sources are reliable. To the maximum extent possible, make clear to your audience who and what your sources are, what motivations your sources may have and any conditions people have set for giving you information. When unsure of information, leave it out or make clear it has not been corroborated.

• Correct errors quickly, completely, and visibly. Make it easy for your audience to bring errors to your attention.

• If a report includes criticism of people or organizations, give them the opportunity to respond.

• Clearly distinguish fact from opinion in all content.

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Conflicts of interest

• Avoid any conflict of interest that undermines your ability to report fairly. Disclose to your audience any unavoidable conflicts or other situational factors that may validly affect their judgment of your credibility.

• Do not allow people to make you dishonestly skew your reporting. Do not offer to skew your reporting under any circumstances.

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Community

• Respect your audience and those you write about. Consider how your work and its permanence may affect the subjects of your reporting, your community and ­­ since the Internet knows no boundaries ­­ the larger world.

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Professional Conduct

• Don’t plagiarize or violate copyrights.

• Keep promises to sources, readers, and the community.

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Nature of Your Journalism

• We want our news coverage to be fact-based, without expression of opinions, but reporters are encouraged to provide commentary in related blog posts or columns, being transparent about their opinions.

• Our reporters may express personal opinions in their own accounts on social networks.

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Concealing Identity

• We have a blanket ban on undercover reporting in the belief that deception is never appropriate in newsgathering, and other ways can always be found to get the story.

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Confidential Sources

• We will disclose to readers or viewers the reasons for granting confidentiality, such as fear for the source’s safety or job, when we use unnamed sources.

• We recognize that many sources cannot talk to us freely. We grant confidentiality if we think the source has a good reason. We will use information and quotes from unnamed sources we consider reliable.

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Children: Coverage, Images, and Interviews​

• We consider granting confidentiality if we’re covering a story about a sensitive issue that could cause a child to be stereotyped, judged unfairly, or put in harm’s way, even if the child doesn’t request it.

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Interviewing

• Our organization will provide interviewees with transcripts of interviews in advance of publication but does not permit them to revise their statements.

• Our organization will provide interview subjects with a general idea of our questions in advance.

• When reporting on an interview, we do not require our staff to state the type of interview (i.e., whether it was in person, by telephone, video, Skype, or email.)

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Sources: Reliability and Attribution

• We refrain from quoting sources who have a conflict of interest relating to the story (e.g., a scientist who conducted a study about a drug's effectiveness when the manufacturer funded the study). These sources may be used for background information, but their voices should not be included in stories.

• We disclose how sources In “ordinary people” stories were identified (e.g. through Twitter).

• We use links, if available, for source attribution in online stories.

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Accuracy​

• We should not publish rumors or other information we have not verified.

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Balance and Fairness

• To ensure fairness, we believe in covering not only the most powerful voices on an issue but also those who are not normally heard (e.g. in election coverage, mainstream, and non-mainstream candidates).

• We will refrain from presenting multiple points of view if one perspective on an issue has been credibly established as fact. In other words, we will avoid “false balance.”

• In breaking news situations, we will wait to publish or air a story until comments from key sides of an issue have been gathered.

• In breaking news situations, we will attempt to gather comments from key sides of an issue; if comments are not immediately available, we will publish or air the story without them, make clear that we were unable to get some comment and update our story as needed.

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Online Commenting

• We believe that all public commentary is worthwhile, and we do not edit or change online comments in any fashion.

• We have a system that permits individuals to “flag” comments for potential problems, and we review those “flagged” comments in a systematic and timely fashion.

• We will access and review the identity of a registered commenter only when subpoenaed by law enforcement.

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Quotations

• We will clean up random utterances such as pauses, “um” or “you know” unless they materially alter the meaning.

• We will use only full and complete quotes or paraphrases. (“I will go to war, you know, that’s a decision that has to be considered, but only if necessary,” the president said.)

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Plagiarism and Attribution

• When we are using someone else’s exact words, we should use quotation marks and attribution.

• Attribution should be as specific as possible, including the name of the author and publication or organization of the source we are quoting.

• We should always cite news releases if they are our sources and should quote them if using their exact words.

• When we use substantial material from our archives or from an author’s previous work in a current story, we should note that the material has been published before.

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Corrections

• If a mistake is made in a social media post, we will delete the original post and publish a corrected version with an indication that the new post is a correction.

• We will show all changes that have been made to online stories.

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Removing Archived Work

• We will update a story in our archives, including the headline, if the story would damage someone’s reputation and is outdated.

• We will note when the post was updated.

• We will correct any errors we learn of in our archived content and note the corrections.

• We will consider exceptions to our policy in extreme cases, such as abuse or danger to someone’s personal safety.

• We will delete inaccurate social media posts but acknowledge the deletions in subsequent posts.

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Diversity​

• We encourage staffers to seek diverse sources, both in specific stories and in routine beat coverage.

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Hate Speech

• We consider the perspectives of those offended by hateful expressions when making publication decisions.

• We support local, national or international laws to combat hate speech.

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Mental Health and Suicide

• We will cover mental health and suicide as broad public health issues as consistently as we cover other health matters.

• We will not describe a suicide attempt as “successful” or “unsuccessful.”

• We will not detail specific means of suicide in news stories or obituaries.

• We will not use sensational headlines on stories about suicide.

• We will not use graphic images on stories about suicide.

• We will include contact information for resources for people in mental health crises. (e.g. “The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the United States is available 24 hours a day at 800-273-8255.)

• We will not include the method used in suicide.

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Privacy

• We respect individuals' right to privacy and do not use the content we discover online from private individuals without receiving their permission.

• We believe interviewing bystanders of traumatic events is voyeurism and unlikely to add relevant material to articles or programs. We generally will not conduct interviews "in the heat of the moment" because people under stress may not be aware of the consequences of talking to us.

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Race and Gender

• We will Identify transgender people by the gender they express publicly.

• We will use plural references to avoid gender-specific pronouns when possible.

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Audio

• Audio cuts of newsmakers may be edited to remove insignificant stumbles.

• We do not consider it necessary to identify person-in-the-street speakers by name.

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Interactives

• We will organize and internally link our interactives in a way that users entering and navigating in different ways will be able to grasp the essential points of the story.

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Photo and Video

• When documenting private or traumatic moments, we will seek permission from subjects before shooting photos or video.

• We will use drones to capture images in public areas only.

• We do not need to label a photo or video if it is clearly posed (e.g. an award-winner holding up a trophy).

• We will edit or manipulate images only if doing so doesn’t affect the news content of the image or the meaning viewers will make from it.

• We will obscure or pixellate images only when the intent is to protect the identity of someone in the image or to protect viewers from gory or graphic material.

• We will verify photos or videos from social media before using them.

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User-Generated Content

• If we cannot find the rights-holder in an urgent situation and use the UGC, we will make continued efforts afterward to locate and reach an agreement with the rights-holder.

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Clickbait and Metrics

• We are encouraged to write clever, creative headlines and social media posts that will entice readers to click on our stories, but headlines will not make promises that our stories don’t deliver.

• We will accurately reflect the content of related stories in headlines and social media posts.

• We may aggressively court audiences who would be interested in our content, but we will not try to deceive people in headlines, social media posts, or marketing.

• We will use metric considerations as one of a number of factors in determining what we cover and how we place stories.

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