Ocean State Stories strives to adhere to the highest professional and ethical standards of journalism and will strive to adhere to the following editorial policies on:
Artificial Intelligence: All articles will be authored by human beings. Artificial Intelligence will not be used to draft or write stories.
Fairness and Independence: Articles will present news based on independent reporting while giving subjects of news stories the opportunity to respond on their own behalf. All reporting and editorial decision-making will be done independent of outside influences, including donors, philanthropic organizations and other funders.
Payment for coverage: Ocean State Stories will not accept any form of payment in exchange for coverage.
Editorial bias: News articles will present stories without bias or political intent, providing a balanced view of events without giving undue credence to unsubstantiated claims.
Opinion labeling: Opinions and editorials will be clearly labeled as such across all platforms.
Discretion: Authors will use judgment in assessing whether the revelation of information may do harm or create undue security hazard to an individual. (For example, publishing the name of a sex-crime victim.)
Fact checking: Claims and reports will be fact-checked for veracity before publication.
Context: reports will provide context for the reader to understand the facts and claims presented in a story.
Sourcing: Ocean State Stories will use credible primary sources and rely on multiple credible sources whenever possible.
Links: References to publicly available sources of data, information, studies, reports, or visual information will be clearly linked in stories whenever possible.
Disclosure of conflicts of interest: Ocean State Stories authors will attempt to avoid any conflicts of interest—whether real or perceived, and disclose any that are unavoidable. All will avoid special treatment of donors, sponsors, advertisers, and the like.
Authorship: Articles shall be written independently by Ocean State Stories journalists. Articles written by the subject(s) must be clearly noted as first person “narratives” or features.
Corrections:
Ocean State Stories will correct all factual errors in its content, promptly and prominently. Readers are encouraged to contact the member when they find a possible mistake. The corrections process is based on New York Times protocol, as follows:
First, we will determine if it made an error. We will then contact the reporters and editors involved and, if a correction is warranted, adjust the article and add the correction.
Even when Ocean State Stories catches a mistake mere seconds after publishing, we will still acknowledge it with a correction. There is no five-second rule.
Corrections will appear in any and all editions (print and digital) or platforms (X, Instagram, Facebook) that carried the error.
For obvious typos, we correct the error without appending a correction.