Editorial Standards

Editorial Standards

Last updated 1 November 2026.

Herald Express publishes news that is researched and drafted with the help of AI and checked by automated systems. This page sets out the rules those systems enforce, what they cannot guarantee, and how to tell us when we get something wrong. The step-by-step process is described in our methodology.

What you can expect from every article

• Evidence first. Every factual statement must come from source material that our research system retrieved for that story. Nothing about a current event may be taken from a language model’s memory.
• Quotations are verbatim. A direct quotation is published only if its exact words appear in the retrieved sources. Otherwise it is paraphrased with attribution, or left out.
• Figures and dates are checked. Numbers, percentages, amounts of money and years are compared with the retrieved sources. An unsupported figure blocks publication.
• Attribution is explicit. We say who said or reported something in the sentence where it appears. Where a distinctive fact depends on another outlet’s reporting, we name that outlet and link to it.
• Fact, claim and analysis are kept apart. Allegations are attributed, disputed claims are labelled as disputed, and analysis is identified as analysis. Predictions are never presented as facts.
• Sensitive subjects need corroboration. Stories involving conflict, casualties, elections, criminal allegations, health and similar subjects are not published unless at least two independent outlets, or a primary source, support them.
• No partisanship. We do not endorse parties or candidates.
• Illustrations are illustrations. Featured images are AI-generated editorial illustrations. They are not presented as photographs of real events.

How articles are produced

Articles are produced and published by an automated newsroom. They are not read line by line by a human editor before publication. People set and revise the rules above, audit samples of the system’s output, and handle correction requests.

What these checks cannot do

Automated verification catches many kinds of error but not all of them. The sources themselves can be wrong, and the system can misread, oversimplify or omit context. We rely on readers as well as on our checks.

Corrections

If you believe an article contains an error, please tell us through our corrections page or contact form, with the article address and the evidence. Our approach to corrections is set out on the corrections page.

Related policies

AI transparency · Source policy · Editorial code · About Herald Express