Ethics & Standards

Conflicts of interest

Anyone who writes or edits for us discloses financial interests, employment history and personal relationships that could reasonably affect their coverage. Where a conflict is material, the person does not cover the subject. Where it is minor but real, it is disclosed in the article.

This applies to holdings in companies we cover, paid advisory work, and close relationships with people in a story.

Gifts, travel and hospitality

We do not accept gifts, paid travel, accommodation or event hospitality from companies we cover in exchange for coverage. Where attending an event is necessary and the organiser covers a cost, we disclose it in the resulting article.

Review units and trial access are returned or paid for, and disclosed.

Advertising and sponsorship

Commercial partners buy audience attention, not editorial outcomes. They do not receive advance sight of editorial articles, cannot request changes to them, and cannot buy their removal.

Sponsored content is labelled, styled differently, and carries the sponsor name instead of a staff byline. If you can mistake it for our own reporting, we have failed and we want to hear about it.

Sources

We prefer named sources. Anonymity is granted when someone faces a real professional or legal risk and the information matters, not because it makes a quote easier to obtain. When we grant it, we say why in the article and we keep the commitment.

We do not pay sources for information.

Attribution and plagiarism

Work that originates elsewhere is credited and linked. We do not reproduce another outlet reporting as our own, and we do not rewrite a story from a single source without saying where it came from.

Subjects of coverage

Where an article makes a significant critical claim about an identifiable company or person, we give them a fair opportunity to respond before publication, and we publish the substance of that response.

Privacy and public interest

Private individuals are not public figures. We publish personal information only where there is a genuine public interest that outweighs the intrusion, and we are prepared to explain that judgement.

AI and automation

Our use of AI tools, and the limits we place on it, are set out in theeditorial policy. The ethical principle behind those limits is simple: a reader should never be misled about whether a human verified what they are reading.

Raising a concern

If you believe we have fallen short of any of this, write toinfo@geniuscreative.us. Factual errors are handled through corrections.