The rules we hold ourselves to

If we are not confident it is true, we do not publish it.

Every factual claim in a story is checked by the reporter and, for investigations and any piece making an allegation, by a second person who was not involved in the reporting. Where a number comes from a model rather than a record, we say so in the sentence that uses it.

We do not publish transfer rumours, aggregated claims from other outlets, or “reports suggest” copy. If another publication has something we cannot confirm, we either verify it ourselves and credit them, or we leave it alone.

Named wherever possible, counted and characterised when not.

Anonymity is granted when a source faces a real professional or personal risk, and only with an editor’s approval. We then tell readers how many sources there are and what access they had — “three people with direct knowledge of the negotiation” rather than “sources”.

We do not pay for interviews or information. We accept normal press access, and we declare travel or accommodation paid by a club, federation or sponsor at the foot of the piece.

At the top of the piece, dated, saying what changed.

A correction is added to the head of the article, never the bottom, and never silently. It states the date, what was wrong and what the correct fact is. The original wording stays visible in the note where doing so is clearer for the reader.

Typographical fixes inside twenty minutes of publication are not logged. Anything that changes meaning is. Every correction from the last twelve months is listed publicly, below.

Never written by the newsroom, always labelled, never in a newsletter.

Paid articles carry a PAID CONTENT lockup at the top of the piece and in every card that links to it, including search results. They are written by the advertiser or by our commercial studio — never by a journalist who reports on that sector, and never with a reporter byline.

Sponsored pieces are excluded from Most Read, do not appear in any newsletter, and are removed from feeds after thirty days while keeping a permanent URL.

No published sentence is written by a machine.

Every word we publish is written and edited by a named person. We do not use generative tools to draft articles, headlines, standfirsts, captions or newsletter copy, and we do not publish AI-generated images or video of real events.

We do use software for tasks where the output is checked in full by a journalist: transcribing our own interview recordings, translating a quote which is then verified by a speaker of that language, searching document sets, and building statistical models whose method we publish. Where a model produces a figure that appears in a story, the story says which model and what it was trained on.

Declared in writing, and on the page when it matters.

Staff declare club memberships, season tickets, shareholdings in sports businesses, family working in the industry, and any paid outside work. Declarations are held by the editor-in-chief and reviewed annually; the ones that could affect coverage are disclosed in the piece itself.

Nobody covers a club they hold a financial interest in or have worked for in the previous three years. Journalists do not bet on any sport we cover, and do not appear in advertising. Gifts above a token value are refused or donated, with a note in the register.