Editorial Standards

Evidence First

• Every material assertion is stored with its exact source, supporting excerpt or page, retrieval timestamp, source date, factual status, and corroboration.
• We separate established facts, allegations, subject responses, and editorial inference. An official allegation remains an allegation.
• Names, numbers, dates, addresses, jurisdictions, case status, image rights, and links are verified against original documents. OCR and AI extraction are checked against the source — machines misread documents.

What We Never Do

• Invent gossip, quotations, incidents, sources, credentials, or audience numbers.
• Publish unsupported personal gossip, speculative accusations, or misleading implications.
• Use synthetic imagery as evidence of a real incident. Conceptual illustrations are labeled.
• Target humor at victims. Absurd situations and powerful actors are fair game.
• Build personal dossiers on ordinary residents, or publish personal contact details, minor identities, or victim identifiers.

Mugshots & Arrest Records

• Presumed innocent, in print, every time. Every mugshot card and story carries the line: arrested is not convicted; charges are as booked and may be changed or dropped. An arrest is not a conviction.
• Official records only. Booking photos and facts come from the county's own public records — the Miami-Dade Corrections inmate search and the Broward Sheriff's Office arrest search. Aggregator sites are never used as sources.
• Adults only. No minors are ever published — a booking without a verified adult age cannot enter our system. Sealed and expunged records are never published.
• Victims are never identified. In domestic-violence and other sensitive cases we report the charge and the record facts only — no victim names, no identifying detail, no graphic detail beyond what the charge requires, and no humor at a victim's expense, ever.
• Facts, not cruelty. Captions and stories are factual only — every sentence traceable to the record. The energy of the feature lives in which stories we pick and how the headline is crafted, never in mockery or speculation.
• Removal is free and fast. Anyone pictured may have their mugshot removed on written request, honored within 10 days, at no charge — Florida law prohibits charging for mugshot removal, and we never charge. See the Mugshot Removal Policy.
• Outcomes get published. Dismissals, dropped charges, acquittals, and expungements are added prominently to the original story on request or on the desk's own follow-up.

Restaurant Inspections — Shut Down Last Night

• Quoted, never embellished. Findings in a Shut Down story are the inspector's own words, quoted verbatim from the official Florida DBPR inspection report. Violation counts are the report's counts. We never paraphrase a finding into something worse, and we never invent one.
• An inspection is a snapshot. Every story says so, in print: conditions on the day of the visit are not a grade of a restaurant on any other day. The outcome we report — closure ordered, standards failed, follow-up required — is the outcome as recorded, nothing added.
• The business is invited to respond before publication, and any response is published with the story, in full, in the business's own words.
• Re-inspections get published too. When a re-inspection pass or reopening is recorded, the original story gets a dated update note — the fix is part of the story, never a quiet edit.

The Check — Reader Receipts

• Verified before crowned. A reader's receipt is a tip until the desk cross-checks it against the business's actual published menu prices — and the menu source is recorded on the story. A receipt that cannot be cross-checked does not run.
• Redaction is mandatory. Before anything publishes, the desk prepares a redacted copy covering card numbers and digits, full names, server names and IDs, and any code that identifies a person — and signs a redaction attestation in our publishing system. No attestation, no publication. The original submission photo is stored privately and is never published.
• Credit is minimal. Submitters are credited by first name or pseudonym only. Contact details a reader gives us for verification are never published.
• The business responds in full. Every Check story invites the business to respond, and any response runs with the story, unedited except for length-irrelevant formatting.

The Biggest Score

• Dollar values come from records, period. The amount in a Score story appears in the official record itself — an arrest affidavit, a police report, or a court filing — and the editor who enters it attests to that in our publishing system. Never a reporter's estimate, never a victim's social post, never a rounded number. If the record carries no value, there is no Score that day — an empty slot beats an inflated one.
• Charges are reported exactly as booked, the innocence line rides every Score surface, and case outcomes are added to the story as they resolve.

The Human Gate

Automation discovers and drafts; humans decide. Initial stories and any allegation about an identifiable person or business require a recorded human editor approval before publication — enforced in our publishing system, not just in this document. Anonymous tips can trigger reporting but can never become published articles by themselves.

Responses & Follow-Ups

We seek relevant subject responses with a meaningful deadline and record the outcome. Published stories are followed: dismissals, acquittals, settlements, license reinstatements, and reopenings are added prominently, with a visible version and correction history.

Independence

Sponsors never buy coverage, story removal, or favorable treatment. Sponsor conflicts are flagged to the editor before agreements are signed.