How we report

Everything we publish is built from three things that are recorded differently and never collapsed into one field.

• Facts are source-backed observations or records: an interview, a document, a published statement, something our reporter saw.
• Judgments are assessments, ours or a model’s, stored with the model, version and confidence where those exist.
• Decisions are explicit outcomes, made by a named person or by a stated policy, of what we do next.

When you read a Stratawire story you can tell which is which: original reporting is labelled Original reporting, and the sources behind a story are listed with it.

Interviews are recorded with the participant’s consent, and what ends up in quotation marks is checked against that recording before publication. Filler words may be removed for readability; words are never changed.

Translated quotations are checked against the original language, and material uncertainty is flagged rather than guessed.

We never invent interviews, quotations, firsthand observation or access. AI never creates a person’s words. It can transcribe and translate what a person actually said, and nothing more.

Real reporters work with AI staff. AI assists research, transcription, translation, drafting and checking. A named person decides what is published; AI cannot publish.

For material AI work we record the provider and model used, and we list every AI job with its model and provider on the newsroom page. Our decision model, Jev, advises on judgment calls such as source sufficiency and review priority. It is not a writer and not an oracle, and its output is advice, never an edit.

We do not use AI images. Synthetic imagery, audio or video would be labelled for exactly what it is and never presented as a photograph, recording or footage of a real event.

Real media carries its provenance: who captured or supplied it, on what basis we may use it, and what was done to it. Where we have no photo with rights, we use a graphic labelled “Graphic: The Stratawire”, never a picture passed off as a photo.

When we get something wrong, we fix it prominently and record the fix. Corrections are auditable, not quietly overwritten: the record says what was wrong and what changed, and the count appears in the ledger on this page.

To request a correction, use the contact page and name the story and the specific claim. Accuracy complaints are treated as reporting work, not as public-relations work.

Commercial relationships, personal connections and any interest that could bear on a story are disclosed, and where a conflict is material the person steps back from the piece.

No commercial relationship buys coverage. The separation rules for partner content below apply to every arrangement, without exception.

We may check factual claims (names, titles, figures, technical detail) with the people we interviewed. Checking is verification, not approval: interviewees do not see copy before publication, do not sign off stories and cannot veto what we write.

Partner and sponsored material is published in its own clearly labelled lane: a “Partner content” label, its own visual treatment, and placement apart from newsroom reporting.

Partners have no influence over editorial coverage, and partner content is never presented as reporting, interviews or original observation. Newsletter and sector-briefing sponsorship is stated within the item it supports. The formats and the full rules are on the advertising page.