Editorial standards

Editorial decisions are made by the newsroom. Advertisers, sponsors and commercial partners have no input into which stories we pursue, what those stories conclude, or when they publish. No advertiser receives advance notice of coverage, and no commercial relationship confers the right to review, approve or suppress a story.

The one exception is content that is itself commercial, which we do not present as reporting at all. See the sponsored content policy.

We prefer primary sources: filings, rule proposals, transcripts, fund letters, court records and data published by the institution in question. Where we rely on a secondary source, we name it in the story.

A factual claim about a company's conduct or condition requires either a document or two independent sources. We do not publish a material allegation on the strength of a single interested party.

Companies routinely publish performance statistics that no third party can check — internal success rates, average improvements, customer outcomes. We do not repeat these as fact.

When such a figure is relevant, we attribute it explicitly to the company and state that it is unverified. Readers should be able to tell, from the sentence itself, whether a number comes from an audited filing or from a marketing page.

We grant anonymity when a source faces a credible professional or legal risk and the information is materially in the public interest. An editor knows the identity of every anonymous source before publication.

Where we use an anonymous source, we describe their position precisely enough for readers to weigh their vantage point, and we say why anonymity was granted. We do not grant it for routine commentary or to allow a source to attack a competitor.

Before publishing a story that makes a critical claim about a named company or person, we put the substance of it to them and allow a reasonable opportunity to respond. If they decline or do not reply, the story says so.

Staff do not trade securities they cover, do not accept payment, gifts or travel from companies they report on, and disclose to the standards editor any personal or financial relationship that touches their beat.

Where the publication itself has a relationship with a company in the news — including our affiliation with HL Hunt Financial — that relationship is disclosed inside every article where the company appears, not only on this page.

We do not publish AI-generated articles. AI tools may be used for research support, transcription and copy-editing suggestions, but every published sentence is written or rewritten and checked by a named person, and a human editor is accountable for it.

Illustrative photography on this site is machine-generated and is used only where an image is decorative or conceptual. Such images never depict a real, identifiable person or event as though it were documentary evidence.

Nothing we publish is investment, legal, tax or accounting advice. We describe what companies and regulators are doing; we do not tell readers what to buy, sell or hold, and we do not assess whether any product is suitable for an individual reader.

We correct errors of fact openly and keep a record of what changed. The corrections policy explains the process and how to report a mistake. Complaints about a breach of these standards can be sent to the standards editor at corrections@fincrunch.example.