Editorial standards

The framework every article we publish must meet — grounded in the law of England and Wales and the standards of the regulated UK press.

1. Accuracy

• We take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including in headlines, which must be supported by the body of the article they sit above.
• Fact is distinguished from comment, conjecture and claim. Where a matter is contested, we say who is asserting what.
• Where a story rests on a single source, that is made evident through the attribution on the article; corroboration from independent sources is sought and reflected wherever it exists.
• Significant inaccuracies are corrected promptly and with due prominence under our published corrections procedure, and the correction is recorded in our public log.

2. Crime and court reporting

Crime coverage carries the greatest capacity for harm and receives our strictest handling, in line with the law of England and Wales.

• Presumption of innocence. A person who has been arrested, or charged, is not guilty of anything. Our reporting states allegations as allegations, and articles about unresolved criminal matters carry an explicit note that no guilt should be inferred from an arrest, allegation or charge.
• Contempt of Court Act 1981. Once proceedings are active — in general, from arrest or charge — we confine reporting to information that does not create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to a fair trial. We do not publish previous convictions, purported confessions, or evidential speculation about an active case, and court coverage is limited to fair, accurate and contemporaneous reports of what occurs in open court.
• Reporting restrictions. We comply with statutory and court-ordered reporting restrictions, including orders protecting the identity of defendants, witnesses and others, and we err on the side of caution where the position is unclear.
• Defamation Act 2013. Our reporting is grounded in verifiable fact, honest opinion clearly presented as such, and publication on matters of public interest, with sources identified so that the basis of every statement can be examined.

3. Protected identities

• Victims of sexual offences have automatic lifetime anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992. We do not publish their names or any detail likely to identify them, at any stage, regardless of what other publications may do.
• Children and young people. We do not identify anyone under 18 who is a victim, witness or defendant in criminal proceedings, or otherwise in a context that could cause them harm, and we take particular care that combinations of details do not identify a child indirectly.
• Jigsaw identification. Where anonymity applies, we consider what our coverage reveals in combination with information already public, and withhold details accordingly.

4. Privacy, grief and vulnerability

• Everyone is entitled to respect for their private and family life. Intrusion into private matters requires a genuine public interest, which we are prepared to explain.
• In cases involving grief or shock — deaths, serious injuries, inquests — publication is handled with restraint and sympathy, and we do not add colour that the facts do not support.
• Coverage touching on suicide avoids detail of method, in line with recognised media guidance, and includes signposting to sources of support.

5. Discrimination

• We do not publish prejudicial or pejorative reference to a person’s race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or age.
• Such characteristics are mentioned only where they are genuinely relevant to the story, and their relevance would survive being questioned.

6. Sources and attribution

• Every article lists and links the sources on which it is based. Readers should never have to guess where our information came from.
• We do not present other publishers’ work as our own. Reporting derived from another outlet is attributed to it, is substantially rewritten rather than reproduced, and is confined to short attributed reference where the material is not ours to retell.
• Official and primary sources — courts, police, fire and rescue, the council, government data services — are preferred over secondary reporting wherever they are available.
• We honour commitments of confidentiality given to sources.

7. Automation and artificial intelligence

Rochdale Daily uses automated systems to gather source material and artificial intelligence to assist in drafting articles. That process is governed, not merely supervised:

• Drafting works only from identified source material. Content that introduces facts unsupported by the sources fails validation and is not published.
• The legal safeguards on this page — contempt, anonymity, presumption of innocence, discrimination — are implemented as hard rules within the publishing system itself, in addition to editorial oversight.
• A human editor holds final authority: setting the rules, reviewing output, correcting, locking and removing content. Legal and editorial responsibility for every article rests with the editor.
• We describe this method openly on our About page because we believe readers are entitled to know how their news is produced.

8. Advertising and editorial separation

• Advertising and sponsorship are always visibly labelled as such and are never presented as news.
• Advertisers and sponsors have no influence over editorial content and no advance sight of it.
• We do not publish job advertisements, property or classified listings, or promotional announcements as editorial content.

9. Regulation and complaints

Rochdale Daily is not currently a member of IPSO or Impress, the UK press regulators; as an independent publication we operate our own published complaints scheme and keep membership of an approved regulator under active review as the publication grows. Our standards are written to meet the substance of the Editors’ Code of Practice that governs the regulated UK press, and we hold ourselves to it whether or not a regulator is watching.

Anyone affected by our journalism can use our corrections and complaints procedure, which includes a right of reply for anyone directly referenced in coverage.

Version 1.0 — July 2026. These standards are reviewed at least annually and whenever the law or our methods change.