Ethical guidelines

NMPolitics.net is a news organization and community that aims to be fair, accurate and transparent. Our ethical guidelines are intended to build integrity. We don’t believe any journalist can be unbiased, but we can be fair even when we have opinions. These guidelines help us accomplish that.

Factual reporting

NMPolitics.net will never knowingly publish material that is inaccurate. While we may make mistakes, we will correct them. For more information, read this site’s policy on corrections, clarifications and retractions.

No plagiarizing

NMPolitics.net will avoid plagiarism and respect the copyrights on people’s work. When we quote others’ work, we will cite the source and, if possible, link to it.

Unnamed sources

We acknowledge the credibility that comes from quoting named sources and documents. We’ll lean on such sources when possible, which is almost always. In rare circumstances, given the sensitive nature of politics and other factors, there’s no way to report the truth without unnamed sources. We may occasionally quote unnamed sources in two ways:

  • If we’ve spoken with a number of people to get a sense of what’s going on, we may report the feelings or thoughts of a group without naming names.
  • If there is a critical piece of information we can’t obtain except through quoting an unnamed source, we will do so, but only after exhausting other methods of attempting to get the information. NMPolitics.net will only quote people we trust as unnamed sources. If we aren’t certain the information is accurate, we will hold off until we can verify it with at least one other source.

Community engagement

NMPolitics.net is a community and we want you to engage! We welcome commentary submissions and discussions on articles as long as they are factual and meet the other criteria of this site’s commentary and comments policy.

Financial contributors

As our financial contributor policy states, advertisers and donors get no greater access than anyone else: They can share their concerns, and their concerns will be heard. We also disclose information about all donors and advertisers.

Disclosures

One of the most important things those involved in the formation of public policy must do is disclose potential conflicts. That applies especially to public officials, but should also apply to journalists. NMPolitics.net makes such disclosures here.