Editorial standards

Every article ends with the material it was built from — central bank statements, company filings and results, official statistics, court and rulemaking dockets. That list is not decoration: if a claim in the body is not traceable to something in it, the claim does not belong in the article.

We prefer primary documents to coverage of documents. Where we rely on another outlet's reporting for a fact we could not confirm ourselves, we say which outlet and do not present it as our own.

There is a difference between a figure that has been audited or published by a statistical agency and a figure a company has asserted about itself. We mark it. Company-reported metrics are introduced as company-reported, and self-reported performance claims — score improvements, satisfaction rates, success percentages — are described as unverified when we have no way to test them.

Rates and market data across the site are last published values, not live quotes, and are dated wherever they appear.

We do not invent sources, quotes, people or events. We do not publish composite or illustrative quotes presented as real ones. Where an image is an illustration rather than a photograph of the subject, the credit says so.

We do not write about a company's prospects as investment advice. Nothing on this site is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, or to enter any credit or financial product.

When an article makes a specific critical claim about a named company, we put it to that company before publication where circumstances allow, and record a refusal to comment rather than omitting it. A later substantive response is added to the article as an update, with the update time shown.

Advertisers, sponsors and affiliated companies have no input into independent coverage, and no commercial relationship suppresses a story. Content that is sponsored or affiliated is labelled above its own headline and handled differently at a technical level too — see the advertising and sponsored content disclosure policy for exactly what that involves.

Staff do not accept payment, equity, gifts or travel from companies they cover. Anyone with a financial interest in a subject does not write about it, and the interest is disclosed to the editor in chief.

We correct errors of fact promptly and visibly rather than editing them out quietly. The process, including how to request a correction, is set out in the corrections policy.

Wall Street Ledger does not publish articles generated by an AI system and passed off as reported work. Where such tools are used internally — for example to search documents or transcribe audio — a human journalist remains responsible for verifying every fact that reaches the page, and accountability for what publishes sits with the named editor, never with a tool.

The editor in chief has final sign-off on all coverage and owns this policy. The standards and corrections editor reviews disclosure labels before publication and maintains the corrections log. Both roles are listed on the masthead.