Anonymous sources - Circa avoids anonymous sourcing when citing secondary news reports. If we have our own sources who wish to remain anonymous, our Editor-In-Chief must sign off on using an anonymous source and this will be used in rare cases when the information is in the public interest and we cannot obtain the information through alternate means. Having trouble getting someone to go on the record? This may help.

Seek primary sources above all - We should seek to gather information from primary sources ourselves to ensure the reliability of this information. Secondary sources can often turn out unreliable, especially when they cite anonymous sources. Use source documents, track down primary subjects if possible. Never use IMDB, Wikipedia, or other sites that use crowdsourcing for information.

Citing secondary sources - When we rely on the reporting of other news organizations, we cite them clearly in our stories. We should seek multiple sources if something is not exclusive and add those multiple sources to our citations. We should avoid relying on a single source and in cases where nobody else is reporting it aside from that source, we should follow up on that information ourselves to confirm independently. If the organization is the exclusive report, we link directly in the point.

Press releases, reports, studies and surveys - Avoid quoting directly from press releases, they should be used for your information only. If you must quote a press release, make it clear that your information comes from a press release. This goes for reports, studies, surveys, etc. We should always say “the report claims...” and insist on trying to find a second source to back up those claims. We should be skeptical about the conclusions they make and seek to make sure we're not referencing studies, reports and surveys that are not well respected and rigorously conducted.

Editor’s notes - When we’re seeing multiple unverified reports widely circulated, we can help provide more context, clarity and transparency through our editors notes to explain that the reports are still unverified and why we’re holding back on making it part of our main story. The editor’s note can show we’re on top of what’s developing without putting that information on the same level as our verified points. More on Editor's Notes here.

Be a skeptic - Question everything you’re putting into your story. If you’re unsure how reliable it is, follow up and check primary sources. Doubt is always encouraged.

Corrections - We want to be very transparent when we make corrections, so much so that we push an alert to followers of the story to let them know we’ve made the correction.

Wide breaking alerts - We have to use our editorial judgement to decide what we deem worthy of a wide breaking alert. We have a very high bar for what is worth pushing widely as opposed to other news organizations that push a lot of marketing, polls, or minor news as alerts. Consider our audience and if the majority of our users would find this alert worthwhile or if it only matters to a subset of our audience. If it caters to a subset, those readers will likely get the alert through the “follow” function already and won’t need a wide breaking alert.

Editing and review - Two sets of eyes review everything we publish. Each new story and every new update to an existing story is reviewed by at least one editor and again reviewed a second time after publishing. We are checking for two sources for anything we cite, that we are fair and impartial in our reports, that we have a clear and flowing narrative throughout the points, that there are no spelling or grammatical errors and that we are accurate in what we've reported.