Standards & ethics
These are the rules we publish under. They are enforced as gates in our publishing system, not as aspirations, a story that fails them does not build.
1. Everything traces to a document
Every factual sentence we publish must map to a primary source: a public record, a document, a dataset, or a named person on the record. Another outlet's paraphrase, a Facebook group, and “people are saying” are not sources. They are leads, and leads either become documents or they die.
2. Charged is not guilty
When someone has been arrested and not convicted, we write that they were charged with or are accused of something, we name the charging document and the agency, and we say plainly that a charge is an accusation. We do not write that a person did something a court has not found they did.
And we publish the outcome. Every case we report gets tracked to disposition, and we publish what happened, dropped, reduced, acquitted, convicted, at the prominence of the original story. If you were named here and your case has resolved, write to corrections@stjohnstattler.org.
3. We write about public figures, not private people
This is the firmest line we draw. We name and scrutinize public figures — people who hold or seek public office, senior public employees acting in that role, and people who have voluntarily stepped into a live public controversy. We do not make adverse claims about private individuals by name.
There is a legal reason and a human one. Legally, a public official suing us must prove we knew something was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was; a private individual only has to prove we were careless. Nearly every local outlet that loses a libel case loses it to a private individual. We decline to enter that category.
The human reason matters more. Being named in a news story is permanent in a way that a court docket is not. A person who was accused and never charged, or charged and then cleared, cannot get that name off the internet. So we are careful with names by default, and our publishing system mechanically refuses to build a story that names a private individual adversely.
3b. We usually do not name people who get arrested
Almost everyone arrested in this county is a private individual, and their name is the least useful part of the story. So by default, we don't print it. We report the charge, the agency, where and when, and what the pattern looks like across the county.
We make an exception when the person is a public figure, or when there is a specific public consequence — their official position is involved, or there is a genuine public-safety reason. That decision is written down and signed off by the publisher, not made casually on deadline.
If we do name someone, rule 2 above still applies and we still follow the case and publish the outcome.
4. Names we never print, in any circumstance
Separately from all of the above, these are categorical and have no exception:
- Juveniles accused of crimes
- Victims of sexual offenses
- People who called 911, and parties to a domestic-violence injunction
- Anyone whose only role in the record is as a witness
- Any person's home address, full date of birth, or Social Security number
And where we do write about a private individual, in a feature, or because they asked us to, we describe what the record documents them doing, never their character.
5. We ask before we publish
Anyone we characterize adversely gets a written request for comment, with a deadline, before the story runs, and the story tells you we asked and what they said, including “did not respond.” A story with no documented request for comment is blocked by our own system.
6. Opinion is labeled and grounded
Columns are labeled. Opinion must be built on facts we show you in the same piece. We do not write insinuation, no “something is clearly going on here.” If we can prove it, we print it and source it. If we cannot, we do not hint.
7. No synthetic reality
No AI-generated or altered images of real people, places, or events. Photographs are real and credited; illustrations are labeled. No invented quotes, no recreated scenes, no claiming to have been in a room we were not in.
8. Corrections are permanent
Corrections run at the top of the story, dated, saying what was wrong and what is right. Nothing gets silently deleted, and every correction lives forever on the corrections page.
9. We pay our own way
The Tattler pays for every meal it reviews and accepts no comped tickets, travel, or gifts. Any conflict of interest that could reasonably affect a story is disclosed inside that story.
10. Comment policy
Comments are read by a person before they post. We publish disagreement, including sharp disagreement with us. We remove:
- Accusations that a named person committed a crime
- Anyone's address, phone number, workplace, or vehicle
- Threats, targeted harassment, and slurs
- Anything naming a juvenile
We do not edit the text of a comment, we approve it or we do not. Every removal is logged with a reason. If yours was removed and you want to know why, ask: editor@stjohnstattler.org.