Editorial Standards

Mission and coverage priorities

NSEM tells Ghana's most important news stories with the same rigour, restraint, and verification standard the world's reference newsrooms apply to their own coverage.

Our editorial mission is to bring the BBC / Reuters / Al Jazeera reporting standard to Ghanaian news — original first-hand reporting, verified before publication, written in plain language, and corrected in the open when we get something wrong.

Coverage priorities: politics and governance, business and markets, security and policing, public health, sport, culture, and the daily life of Ghana's regions. We do not publish rumour, "alleged" reports without a named on-record source, or wire copy without independent verification.

We measure our work against the Gold-Standard Test: would this story stand up if it were filed by BBC, CNN, or Al Jazeera under their bylines? If not, we do not publish it.

Ethics policy

Independence, accuracy, fairness, and accountability.

Independence: NSEM is editorially independent of advertisers, political parties, government bodies, and commercial sponsors. No advertiser is granted editorial pre-review. No story is killed at the request of a financial sponsor.

Accuracy: every factual claim must be verifiable from at least one named source or first-hand reporting evidence. Quotes are reproduced verbatim, in context, and attributed by name and role.

Fairness: subjects of critical coverage are given the right of reply before publication unless doing so would compromise an investigation. Right-of-reply attempts are documented in the article when the response is declined or unanswered.

Accountability: every published piece carries the NSEM Newsroom byline, a published timestamp, and a permanent corrections record (see #corrections). We do not delete published stories; corrections, retractions, and updates are issued transparently.

Verification and fact-checking process

Every claim verified before publication, and the verification record kept on file.

Five-Finger gate: before publication, every story must pass five checks — (1) source named and authority confirmed; (2) on-record quote captured; (3) supporting evidence retained; (4) right of reply attempted where applicable; (5) editor sign-off documented.

Verified ≠ Confirmed: NSEM treats "verified" as a higher bar than "confirmed". A claim that has been confirmed by a single source is still "alleged" until a second independent line of verification is captured. Self-disavowals — for example, a public figure claiming an account was compromised after a controversial post — cannot self-certify; they remain disputed until an independent line of evidence is captured.

Visual evidence: photos and video used in reporting are checked for source provenance, recency, and authenticity. AI-generated, deepfaked, or manipulated visuals are not published; archival imagery is captioned with its original source and date.

Corrections and clarifications

Corrections are issued in the open, dated, and recorded in a permanent public register.

Corrections register: every correction, clarification, and retraction is logged at /corrections with the date, the reason, the substance of the correction, and the editor who issued it. The register is publicly browsable and chronologically searchable.

On-page banner: when a story is the subject of an active correction event, a coloured banner appears on the article itself directing readers to the correction record. The banner stays until the case is closed (resolved or retracted).

Retraction policy: we do not delete the underlying story. A retracted story is left in place with a prominent retraction banner explaining what was wrong, when it was retracted, and what the correct understanding is — so the public record stays intact.

Contact: report a factual error to [email protected] or via the form on the contact page.

Unnamed sources policy

We prefer named sources. Where anonymity is necessary, we tell readers why.

NSEM prefers named, on-record sources for every reported claim. When a source must be anonymous to protect their safety, employment, or legal standing, we identify the role and reason for anonymity in the body of the story — for example, "a senior official at the Ministry of Finance, who is not authorised to speak to the press".

Anonymous claims that cannot be independently corroborated by at least one additional source or first-hand evidence are not published.

We never grant anonymity to launder political attacks, settle commercial scores, or speculate on matters of fact. An anonymous source is a means of protecting a real informant from real harm — not a device for floating unverified claims.

Ownership and funding

NSEM is published by GlueArrow Inc., a Delaware-incorporated media verification company that operates GlueArrow's broadcast monitoring and network publishing infrastructure.

NSEM is editorially independent from its parent ownership. Editorial decisions — what to cover, what to publish, when to correct, when to retract — sit exclusively with the NSEM Newsroom and the Editor-in-Chief. Parent organisation involvement is limited to operational support (infrastructure, finance, legal, distribution).

Funding: NSEM is funded by GlueArrow's media-verification commercial operations, by sponsored advertisement spaces clearly labelled as such on every page, and by enterprise distribution licences sold to partner broadcasters. No funding source has editorial influence.

Conflicts of interest: when a story touches on a commercial partner, an advertiser, or the parent group itself, that relationship is disclosed in the body of the story.

Diversity and staffing

Coverage that reflects the country we cover.

NSEM aims for a newsroom that reflects Ghana's regional, linguistic, and demographic diversity, and for coverage that does the same. Beat assignments deliberately span north and south, urban and rural, English and local-language sources.

We publish a regular staffing report at /about#staffing showing the composition of the newsroom and the regions and beats covered.

Actionable feedback

How to raise a factual error, a fairness concern, or a story idea.

Factual errors: write to [email protected] or use the form on the contact page. Every correction request receives a response within 48 hours and, when valid, a published correction within the same window.

Fairness concerns: write to [email protected]. Concerns about the framing, omission, or balance of a story are reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and, when material, addressed via the corrections register.

Story ideas and tips: write to [email protected]. We protect the identity of every tipster and do not share submission contents externally.