Editorial and Ethics

The mission of Qom as a whole is simple: To present honest, credible, and relevant information to the public about events that affect their interests and that allow them to make better informed decisions.

Editorial policy is more than making decisions about the use of words or order of stories. Rather it should be understood as the process of treating a public audience as members of a community joined by common interests, not just consumers of material information. This reinforces the idea that whatever information is released as news must clearly and materially benefit those interests common to the public community. In short that editorial policy is shaped by the aim of serving the public interest, irrespective of whether it is popular. This is what distinguishes editorial policy from consumer or public relations.

The job of the editorial room is to speak truth to power where necessary and convey information to the public as required. While news should always be timely it must also adhere to the highest evidentiary standards. Our principle at Qom is that it is better to be late and right than first and wrong. Evidence is documentary or physical information that is verifiable and can be referred to as needed.

A claim is publishable as fact when it meets one of these, and not before:

• Two independent credible sources, neither of whom learned it from the other; or
• One source of record plus documentary evidence — a document, a dataset, a filing, a recording, a photograph whose provenance has been established; or
• Direct observation by a QOM journalist, identified as such in the story.

• Nothing publishes on the strength of “everyone knows this.” Nothing publishes because a competitor has published it; another outlet’s report is a lead, never a source.
• Different formats carry different evidence. A price claim in Qeemat Check is proved against a record; a claim made in an interview is proved by the recording of it being said, which is a different thing from the claim being true and the piece must make that distinction visible. Every format needs proof of some kind. No format is exempt. Every published item has an editor of record who owns its verification and whose name is retrievable internally for as long as the item exists.
• Status is always visible. Every claim in a moving story carries one of: Confirmed, Developing, or Unverified. A reader should never have to infer which they are reading.
• Sourcing is shown. Where a source can be named, it is named. Where it cannot, the story says what kind of source it is and why they cannot be named. “Sources said” without either is not acceptable copy.
• As a public facing company, Qom has a responsibility to protect the privacy and identities of persons and entities that may be identified in the news with regard to criminal, civil or other personal crimes. In this regard it will not name the alleged victims or perpetrators of personal, grievous, sexual or financial crimes until and unless that information is available in the public domain through the concerned authorities and even then, with discretion and concern regarding the sensitivity and personal safety or wellbeing of the individuals or groups named therein.

Qom is an independent digital news media outlet and will not allow its integrity to be compromised on issues regarding the choice and quality of content via external pressure, threats, or internal lobbying. Independence is not a claim made once. It is a discipline applied against every party that could compromise it, including the people who founded and fund QOM. In practice this means the following:

• Owners and investors get no editorial preview, no advance warning of unflattering coverage of themselves or their other interests, and no veto.
• Government and political parties get the same standard of proof, the same right of reply, and the same corrections process as anyone else. No access is extended for softer coverage, and no coverage is softened for continued access. If access is withdrawn as a consequence of accurate reporting, that withdrawal is itself reported.
• Advertisers and commercial partners are structurally separated from editorial. No sponsor, past or prospective, learns of a story before publication. Commercial staff do not attend editorial meetings and editorial staff do not attend pitches. Revenue categories QOM refuses entirely are listed in the Governance Instrument, Section 7.
• Family, friends and personal relationships of anyone at QOM, including the founder, receive no special treatment in either direction. Conflicts are disclosed, not managed quietly.
• Pressure — legal threats, informal warnings, withdrawal of access, reputational attack — is logged in the pressure log the day it occurs, and disclosed publicly unless disclosure would create a specific danger to an identifiable person.
• Where disclosure is withheld, the reason is recorded and reviewed by the Editorial Standards Panel. QOM does not treat resisting pressure as heroism. It treats it as ordinary, expected work.

An independence breach is any of the following:

• An attempt by an owner, investor, executive or commercial party to see, delay, alter or spike a story; an offer or acceptance of favourable coverage in exchange for access, money or advantage.
• A decision not to run a story for a reason not permitted by the Constitution. Any employee may report a breach directly to the Editorial Standards Panel, bypassing all management. Reporting in good faith is protected: it may not be a factor in any disciplinary, pay, promotion or termination decision, and any suggestion that it was is itself a reportable breach.
• Every substantiated breach is published on QOM’s own channels within seven days, stating what happened and what was done about it, including when the person who did it is the founder.

QOM commits to converting its independence from a personal undertaking into a legal one, at the earlier of:

• the admission of any external shareholder; or
• the company reaching fifty employees; or
• 31 December 2029.

At that point QOM will adopt a structure in which editorial independence cannot be removed by whoever owns the company — a trust holding a blocking interest, a dual class arrangement, a foundation, or an equivalent — and will publish the instrument. Until that conversion happens, this section is the honest measure of how much of QOM’s independence is structural and how much is a promise. QOM will not describe itself, in any external material, as structurally independent before that conversion is complete.

The Editor in Chief may be removed only:

• For a defined cause: dishonesty, a material breach of the Constitution, gross negligence, incapacity, or a criminal conviction relevant to the role; and
• By written decision stating the cause; and with not less than thirty days’ notice, or payment in lieu of the same period; and
• with public disclosure within seven days of the fact of removal and the category of cause.

The Editor in Chief may not be removed, and their terms may not be varied, in response to the content of coverage. Any removal not accompanied by the disclosure above is, on its face, a breach of this instrument. These protections are published externally.

Every newsroom that lasts long enough publishes something wrong. QOM’s test is not whether this happens. It is how QOM behaves in the hour after it is discovered.

Technically: the correction is prominent, not buried. It explains what was wrong, and why it was wrong, not only what the new version says. It stays in the permanent log after the news cycle moves on.

Morally: QOM does not treat a correction as a threat to its credibility. It treats concealing one as the actual threat. People affected by a wrong story — named, accused, misquoted, misrepresented — are owed a direct and specific acknowledgement, not a general statement. Where QOM’s error caused real harm, the correction says so plainly, without the passive voice institutions reach for to avoid saying who did what. An institution is not damaged by being wrong sometimes. It is damaged by how honestly it behaves when it is.

Corrections are published, not buried. QOM maintains a visible, permanent corrections log with its own address, linked from every page. A story that turns out to be wrong is not deleted and not quietly edited. It is corrected, on the record, in the open, with the original error visible and the time of both the error and the correction shown.

Four levels, all logged:

Correction rate and time-to-correction are tracked as quality metrics and reported to the Editorial Standards Panel quarterly. A falling correction rate is not automatically good news; it may mean the newsroom has stopped looking.