Editorial Standards & Ethics

Rules, not intentions

What follows is how THUNDER TIGER actually operates, set down in specific terms so that readers have something concrete to measure us against. Good intentions are unfalsifiable and therefore useless as a promise. Rules can be broken visibly, which is the point of publishing them.

They apply identically across all ten desks. Whether the subject is a coup, a quarterly filing, a firmware update, a clinical trial, a transfer, a film release, a diet claim, an airline strike, a recall or a patch, the requirements for accuracy, sourcing and fairness do not move. Freelance contributors are bound by them too, and are told so before they begin rather than after something has gone wrong.

Verification comes before speed

Nothing goes out unless we can stand it up. Each fact should trace back to a document, an official record, something we observed directly or a source we can characterise for the reader, and the article should make clear which of those it rests on. Where verification failed, the material is either dropped or carried with the word unverified attached to it, in the open.

Arriving first is worth something and we do not pretend otherwise. Arriving right is worth more. When the two collide, the story sits until the checking catches up. The mechanics are described on our fact-checking policy page.

Nobody outside this newsroom has a say

Studios, publishers, manufacturers, clubs, governing bodies, governments, parties, campaigns and advertisers have no influence over what we cover or the angle we take. Banner inventory is filled programmatically, advertiser identities play no part in planning, and no person outside the newsroom reads an article before publication.

Money never buys coverage, silence, a link inserted or a link taken out. Gifts beyond token value from anybody we write about are declined. Reporting travel is paid for out of our own pocket. In the rare case where a story genuinely depended on an organisation’s cooperation to happen at all, we tell readers that in the piece and let them factor it in. Our ownership and funding page shows the finances behind all of this.

Naming sources, and the narrow case for not naming them

Names go in the story whenever putting them there is possible. A quoted person is described by role as well as by name, so a reader can judge what standing the words carry. A document relied on is identified specifically enough to be looked up: the court and the case, the period a filing covers, the reference a regulator assigned, the journal and the title.

Withholding a name requires three things at once: the information has to matter, it has to be unobtainable on the record, and the person has to face a genuine risk from being identified. An editor knows the identity and signs off the arrangement before anything runs. The article then tells readers why the name is absent and what puts that person in a position to know. We do not extend anonymity to somebody who wants to attack another party without answering for it, and we do not extend it to a press officer who simply prefers to brief an announcement without a name attached.

Answering back before publication, not after

Anyone we criticise hears about it first. That means being told specifically what is alleged and being given a realistic period in which to respond, not a message sent an hour before the deadline. Whatever comes back is reported accurately and placed where readers will actually encounter it. A refusal to comment is reported as a refusal. Where we could not make contact, we say what we attempted and over how long.

None of this means treating every position as equally supported. Where the evidence contradicts a claim, we report that it does. Handing equal space to an assertion nothing supports produces a false impression, which is simply inaccuracy arranged to look even handed.

Reporting on harm

A general newsroom regularly writes about people on the worst day of their lives, and the default settings matter. Names of the dead wait until families have been informed, wherever the timing is within our control. Images of the dying and the dead are not used for effect. The bereaved are approached once, and a refusal ends it. Early casualty counts are labelled provisional and carry whoever issued them. Violence is described accurately without turning its perpetrators into the celebrity they were hoping for.

Where a story touches children, victims of crime, medical information or people with no public role, identification starts from no. Somebody has to argue it up to yes, with reasons written down, rather than nobody thinking to ask.

Loans, access and embargoes

Anything supplied so that we can review it is disclosed in the review: the phone, the car, the game code, the screening, the hotel room, the ticket to the event. We say how long we had it and under what conditions we used it. A loan buys a test, never a conclusion. Conditions requiring favourable treatment, pre-publication approval or the avoidance of a subject are refused, and so is the access attached to them.

Embargoes govern timing and nothing further. We keep one once agreed, and we agree only where the terms arrived in advance rather than being announced at the door. An embargo has no power over what we write, whom we approach about it, or whether we publish something we established independently before any briefing took place. Where the condition is that the briefing itself must go unmentioned, we do not attend.

Interests, labels and original work

Business writers and editors hold no positions in the securities or tokens they cover and declare their holdings internally. Sports writers do not bet on what they cover. Nothing learned in reporting is traded on or passed to anybody who might trade on it, and no article is timed or shaped around a position anybody holds. Every contributor declares interests that touch a story, including past employment, family ties, advisory roles, political activity and business relationships, and hands the story to somebody else.

Reporting and argument are labelled distinctly and kept apart. A headline has to be carried by the text below it, may not imply a conclusion the reporting did not reach, and may not state as settled what the article merely attributes. Captions must describe what the picture actually is, with file images, stock, renderings, screenshots and illustrations identified. News photographs are not manipulated beyond cropping and exposure, and synthetic images are never presented as photographs of real people or real events. Other people’s work is credited to them, and rewriting somebody’s exclusive does not make it ours. Readers who think we have broken any of this should write to support@thundertiger-europe.com; an editor outside the story reads the complaint and answers in writing, and the log described in our corrections policy is what tells us when this page needs changing.