Editorial Standards & Ethics
These are the rules the desk runs on. They are written down because an unwritten standard is only a preference, and a preference bends at seven on a Friday when a big film has opened and everyone else already has a number. Most of this has cost us something. Last updated: August 2026.
Accuracy comes before being first
A claim publishes when we can say where it came from and why it holds, not when three larger sites have it. Names, designations, figures, dates, scorelines and box-office numbers are checked against a source first, and the writer notes in the file which source that was.
On a developing story the temptation is to publish the version going around and repair it later. We publish the smaller thing instead: what is confirmed, who confirmed it, and what is still unknown, said in the text. If a paragraph is doing work the reporting has not done, it comes out. The steps are on our fact-checking policy.
Attribution, and the people close to somebody
Every factual claim we did not establish ourselves is attributed in the sentence carrying it. Most arguments on this desk are about that rule. A collections figure never runs as a bare number with a rupee sign. It runs with the name of whoever supplied it, the distributor, the production house or a trade account, and if we cannot name them it does not run.
Anonymity is granted, not assumed. It is available when going on the record would cost a person their job or their access. A section editor approves each use and the managing editor is told, and the desk knows who the person is even when readers do not. One anonymous source cannot carry a disputed claim by itself.
We also say what the source wants, because a person close to the player is a job description rather than a disclosure. Where a rift story surfaces a month before a contract conversation, the piece says the source has an interest in how that player is seen, or admits we could not establish their interest.
Putting the claims to the person first
Anyone who is the subject of critical coverage is put to the specifics before publication, in enough detail to answer and with enough time to do it. A day is normal. An hour is possible on something moving fast. If we could not reach them, the piece says so and says how we tried.
Their answer goes into the story rather than underneath it, and a denial is reported as a denial instead of parked in the last paragraph. If a publicist comes back afterwards with something substantive, we add it and date the addition. A right of reply is not copy approval, and copy approval is not for sale.
News, analysis, opinion, and copy somebody paid for
Reporting carries no label, because reporting is the default here. Analysis is tagged as analysis and means a writer with a beat drawing a conclusion from reported facts, with the facts shown so you can disagree with the conclusion. Opinion carries an argument and the name of whoever is making it. Reviews say what we watched or tested, and in what conditions.
Commercial content is labelled at the top of the page, in the same size as the type around the headline, permanently, and it never carries a reporter’s byline. It stays out of everything we call our reporting, and the terms sit on our advertising page. A label a reader can miss is not a label.
The firewall between the desk and the sales side
The commercial side does not sit in the list meeting, does not see stories before publication, and cannot ask for one. Editors are not told which advertiser is booked in which week. That is a design choice rather than a moral achievement. A rule is easier to keep when you lack what you would need to break it.
An advertiser cannot buy adjacency to praise, cannot keep its name away from critical coverage of itself, and cannot preview or veto a line. When a brand that advertises with us becomes the story, it runs without warning them and discloses the relationship. Spend has been pulled over coverage here. The piece stayed as filed.
Gifts, holdings, junkets and politics
Staff do not hold shares in companies on their beat. A review unit goes back when the loan ends, and if a brand will not take a handset back we do not accept it. Gifts beyond a token are returned or given away. We pay for our own travel. Where a set visit is only reachable on the organiser’s ticket, we go if the story justifies it, disclose the arrangement in the piece, and agree nothing about coverage beforehand.
Junket access has been withdrawn from us for filing something a studio disliked. That is a running cost of the rule, not a surprise. Nobody here campaigns for, donates to, holds office in, or writes copy for a party or a candidate, and nobody signs public petitions on subjects they cover. Freelance contributors declare publicity and brand work before they file.
Plagiarism and invention
Copying another outlet’s words or reporting without credit ends a working relationship here. So does inventing a quote, a source, a document or a detail, and so does filing from a place you were not standing in. Neither is a first offence to be coached through, because the only thing this site sells is whether the sentence can be relied on.
Where somebody else broke a story we are following, we credit them by name and link to them. We do not launder a scoop into a rewrite with the credit in the ninth paragraph. Work of our own that failed these tests is corrected or replaced with a note explaining why, under our corrections policy.
What we use AI for, and what we do not
We use these tools, and we would rather describe the use than keep a policy on honesty we do not follow ourselves. On this desk they transcribe interviews, suggest search queries, tidy notes into something an editor can read, and throw up headline options an editor then rewrites.
No article is generated by a model and published as our reporting. No quote reaches a story from a transcription tool without a human checking it against the audio, because those tools mishear Indian names and cricket terms with great confidence. No image or video here is synthetic unless the caption says so. Where a tool did more than the work above, the piece says so.
Accountability does not move. A named person commissioned, wrote and edited every sentence we publish, and a named person answers for it. A model cannot be corrected, cannot be sacked, and has no idea what it does not know.
Who ends up getting quoted
A newsroom’s sourcing habits show up in its contacts list. Ours get audited on purpose, because the default on Indian film, cricket and technology desks is a small circle of the same publicists, the same trade voices and the same metro analysts, nearly all of them male.
We look for the exhibitor in a single-screen town and not only the chain, the state association official and not only the board, the woman who runs the department rather than the man who usually speaks for it, and films in languages the national desks file under regional. We do not always manage it. When a piece quotes four people who sound like each other, the desk treats that as a reporting failure.
Bylines, and where to write if we broke one of these
Every story carries a named author who is reachable through the desk. Where a piece is desk-written from wires or an official filing, it says that instead of borrowing somebody’s name. Where a byline is held back for a contributor’s safety, an editor answers for the work in their place.
Complaints go to support@cover365.in with the headline in the subject line. Errors of fact are handled through our corrections policy. If we have broken a rule on this page, name the rule. It makes the reply faster, and harder for us to be vague back.
