Editorial charter

Editorial independence

Editorial decisions are made by the newsroom alone. Nobody outside it — advertiser, partner, shareholder or subject of an article — decides what we publish, hold back or withdraw.

Editorial responsibility rests with Taipei Times, who answers for what appears on this site.

Where Taipei Times has an interest in a subject we are reporting on, that interest is stated in the article rather than left for the reader to discover.

How we source and verify

We publish what we can stand behind. Before a claim of fact appears here, it is traced to a source we can identify.

• Named sources are preferred. A source is granted anonymity only when the information matters and naming them would expose them to real harm; the reason is stated in the article.
• Documents, figures and quotations are checked against the original rather than against another outlet reporting them.
• Material from an agency, a partner or a press release is labelled as such and never presented as our own reporting.
• A claim we could not verify is either left out or published with what we do and do not know about it stated plainly.

Reporting, analysis and opinion

Reporting sets out what happened. Analysis explains what it means. Opinion argues a position. They are labelled so a reader can tell which they are reading.

An opinion piece carries the name of its author and is not presented as the position of the publication unless it says so.

Corrections and right of reply

We correct mistakes, and we do it in the open.

• Write to the address shown on the contact page with the article and what is wrong in it. We check every report we receive.
• A factual error is corrected in the article itself. Where the correction is substantive, a note at the foot of the article says what was changed and when.
• An article is not silently deleted to make a mistake disappear. If a piece is withdrawn, the page says that it was withdrawn and why.
• A person or organisation criticised in an article may reply. A reply of reasonable length is published with the article or alongside it.

Funding and commercial content

taiwantimesnow.com is funded by Taipei Times. Advertising, sponsorship and affiliate arrangements pay for the work.

Commercial content — sponsored articles, partner posts, advertorial — is labelled at the top of the page, before the reader has spent time on it. It is never made to look like an article the newsroom wrote.

An advertiser buys space. It does not buy coverage, favourable treatment, or the removal of a story.

Sensitive material and people

We weigh the public interest against the harm publication can do — to a source, to a private person, to someone accused of something not yet proven.

Private details of a person who is not a public figure are published only when the story cannot be told without them. Images of victims, children and the recently bereaved are handled with the same restraint.

Complaints

If you believe we have fallen short of this charter, write to the address shown on the contact page setting out the article and the problem. Complaints are answered, and a complaint that is upheld leads to a correction on the article itself.

The full contact details of the publisher are on the contact page.

Legal notice

Publisher

Taipei Times