At News Brief Nigeria, we uphold the highest ethical standards in our journalism. The following editorial standards reflect core principles and practices we expect from our journalists.
These guidelines foster accuracy, impartiality and fairness across our reporting. We take seriously our role to produce journalism that informs, empowers and equips citizens.
Our team is trained on applying these standards to all journalistic decisions – from story selection and reporting to editing, fact-checking and final presentation. We rely on both our journalists and the public to uphold vital standards of integrity.
1. Representation and Inclusion
News Brief Nigeria is committed to ensuring diversity and inclusion in our newsroom and coverage. We value diversity of identities, experiences, perspectives, and ideas.
Our newsroom recruitment and staffing will aim to achieve diversity across gender, ethnic background, religion, age, sexual orientation, disability status, socioeconomic status, and other dimensions.
Our coverage will represent the full diversity of communities in the stories we report, sources we quote, and people we feature. We will emphasize inclusion of groups that have been marginalized, underrepresented or misrepresented in the media.
2. Journalistic Principles
News Brief Nigeria adheres to the highest ethical standards in journalism. We commit to practices such as:
- Accuracy – thoroughly verifying facts, providing context, correcting errors promptly and clearly.
- Integrity – avoiding conflicts of interest, maintaining independence from influences we cover.
- Fairness – representing diverse perspectives and giving subjects a chance to respond.
- Accountability – being transparent about our reporting and editorial processes.
- Minimizing harm – acting sensitively with vulnerable subjects and considering consequences of reporting.
We have zero tolerance for plagiarism, fabrication, source manipulation or other breaches of journalistic ethics.
3. Prohibited Content
News Brief Nigeria will not publish content that promotes hate or violence against groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or other protected characteristics.
We do not allow personal attacks against private individuals or organizations in our reporting or audience comments. Any bullying, abusive or threatening speech against public figures should be made with consideration and minimized harm.
4. Content Warnings
For the safety and security of our audiences, News Brief Nigeria does not publish content that:
- Depicts or encourages, advocates, self-harm, harm others, suicide or criminal activities
- Reveals sensitive personal or contact information without consent
- Contains obscene or pornographic material, graphic sexual text, image, audio, videos, or games
- Contains non-consensual sexual themes or promote a sexual act in exchange for compensation, child sexual abuse and adult themes within family content
- Promotes/advocates illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others
While we acknowledge the newsworthiness of some sensitive content, we will use appropriate warnings and age-restrictions for distressing or graphic reporting.
5. Intellectual Property
News Brief Nigeria respects intellectual property rights and follows all applicable copyright laws. We only use text, images, videos and other media with permission or legal exceptions. We give full credit to creators and cite sources appropriately.
When republishing content from other sources, we follow fair use principles, use only portions relevant to reporting, and link back to original sources.
6. Accuracy and Fact Checking
Ensuring accuracy is core to our journalism. We have rigorous processes for verifying and substantiating all key facts, claims, statistics and other information reported in our stories prior to publication.
We seek multiple, authoritative sources for all assertions made without clear evidence. We apply extra scrutiny to verifying content from unnamed sources, user-generated content, press releases and information from partisan or advocacy sources.
7. Confidential Sources
We minimize the use of unnamed/confidential sources in our reporting. When we do grant anonymity, we ask sources to identify themselves to our journalists and disclose their motivation for confidentiality.
We independently corroborate all key information provided by confidential sources prior to publication. Granting anonymity is an editor-level decision made with careful deliberation on whether it serves an essential public interest.
8. Setting the Record Straight
We acknowledge and promptly correct all substantive errors of fact across all our publishing platforms and media. Minor typos and omissions may be corrected without an official notice.
Corrections are clearly labeled as such and include an explanation of the error and measures taken to prevent recurrence. Subjects of reporting are given the opportunity to request corrections on factually incorrect representations.
9. Accountability to the Public
News Brief Nigeria values accountability, engagement and responsiveness with our readers, viewers, listeners and followers. We welcome feedback from the public that helps us improve and uphold the highest standards of journalism.
While News Brief Nigeria reserves discretion on what action, if any, to take based on feedback we receive, we are committed to transparency about our journalism practices, policies and decision-making:
- We will provide thoughtful explanations about our journalistic processes and principles when appropriate.
- We will take feedback about inaccuracies seriously and correct all substantive factual errors promptly, clearly and transparently.
- Subjects of our reporting will have opportunities to request corrections or respond to potentially contested portrayals.
Those wishing to dispute our journalism should point to demonstrable inaccuracies or lack of fairness, not just objections or disagreement. Our intent is to report truthfully, not please all perspectives.
We are open to engaging in constructive public dialogues and forums about standards in journalism and how we can enhance our service to society.
By maintaining openness, honesty and accountability about our work, we aim to build trust with the communities we serve. Our goal is journalism that informs, inspires and equips citizens to participate in democracy – and we rely on the public to hold us to these ideals.
We do not make changes to published reporting solely based on objections or disagreement from affected individuals or entities. However, we do correct demonstrable errors of fact. Those wishing to dispute our journalism should point to specific inaccuracies that can be investigated and verified using evidence.
10. Advertising Guidelines
News Brief Nigeria clearly separates news and editorial content from advertising. We maintain a distinct separation between our business and editorial functions. Our news coverage is never influenced by advertising considerations.
We only run ads that meet our standards on legality, decency, honesty and diversity. We reserve the right to reject or remove any ads that could damage our reputation or mislead consumers. Political and issue-based ads must comply with applicable laws on disclosure, registration and fact-checking.