For expanded versions of the below policies and guidelines, contact Executive Editor Ron Judd at ronjudd@casadiadaily.com.
News Mission Statement and ethics guidelines
We at the Cascadia Daily News know that trust is earned.
As a new publication, we enter a field that has changed more rapidly in the past 25 years than in all of journalism’s previous history. At a time when anyone can be a publisher of “news,” what distinguishes professional communicators from amateurs are the values and ethics that guide their work.
That’s why we’re making public our News Mission Statement and ethics guidelines. Our complete guidelines, issued to all newspaper staff, are available upon request. They include specific recommendations on how staff members should be transparent in their work and avoid actual, or appearances of, conflicts of interest.
But guidelines are only as effective as the journalists who live by them. And what’s important to you, our community, is the work we produce. We know you’re making a commitment to us by subscribing, reading and viewing our work. So, in turn, we’re making a commitment to you.
We promise the following:
We will remember that we are members of the community we cover.
The Cascadia Daily News is locally owned, edited and managed. Decisions are made not by hedge fund managers, but by our owner and staff in downtown Bellingham, Washington. Our home is on State Street, not Wall Street.
We treat our readers, users, sources and the people we cover with respect. In every story we produce we ask these questions: Why does this matter to our audience? What is the impact on ordinary people?
Everything we publish will be based in reality.
Unfortunately, misinformation, disinformation, lies and organized propaganda have become commonplace in U.S. politics and media. Intentional deception has no place in the Cascadia Daily News. It’s our job to keep such material from entering the public information stream, no matter its source. When misinformation is presented as fact by newsmakers so prominent that its dissemination is unavoidable, our reporting will make this distinction clear.
As Julie Pace, the executive editor of The Associated Press, observed: “Being a fact-based news organization does not mean that everybody on every side of an issue gets equal hearing, gets equal voice. In certain cases, the facts are just really clear, and we want to make sure that we are amplifying the facts and not muddying the facts.”
We are committed to reporting the truth.
In a highly charged political environment, “truth” increasingly is in the eyes of the beholder. Cascadia Daily News is keenly aware of the challenges this presents to journalists. We pledge to employ all our journalistic, investigative and fact-checking skills to produce transparent, contextual news coverage that is fair to competing interests.
However, we reject the idea that truth is always found somewhere in the middle, between two competing positions. Our reporting will assess clashing claims of truth and report the findings to readers. As the late media writer Steve Buttry observed, reporting that presents lies equally with truth is hardly different from lying.
We are unapologetically pro-democracy.
As The Washington Post’s motto says, “democracy dies in darkness.” Conversely, a free press dies when democracy dies. The Cascadia Daily News follows the proud, historic mission of an unfettered U.S. press in exposing those who would subjugate Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties for their own political purposes.
We make editorial decisions independently and will be transparent in explaining our policies and decisions.
All editorial decisions are made by the executive editor and staff with no interference by our ownership and with no special treatment for our advertisers, donors or other special interests. And just as we are making these ethics guidelines public, so, too, will we regularly explain our thinking behind editorial decisions. Transparency, we believe, is critical to trust.
Readers who feel we have failed to live up to these commitments are encouraged to contact Executive Editor Ron Judd at ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com.
Reporting of crime
CDN’s coverage of crime is guided by two important, but often-competing, objectives. We strive to:
- Provide necessary public information about crimes, both for public-safety considerations in breaking-news and ongoing accountability of our justice system.
- Protect the legal rights of accused individuals who are implicated in, and/or arrested for, crimes.
Because these goals sometimes are contradictory, decisions about inclusion of certain facts, and wording within crime stories, are made carefully, on a case-by-case basis. Some aspects of our policies differ from other news organizations.
CDN’s general policy is to avoid naming suspects arrested in connection with a crime until formal charges are filed. Some exceptions exist. These include public-safety concerns when a suspect is at large (or in custody and still suspected of broader crimes) and prominence of an arrested suspect.
We appreciate information provided to us, and the public, by law enforcement. Because they often are the only initial source, we strive to carefully attribute all initial reports of details of a crime to arresting agencies providing that information at the time of arrests.
However, CDN may delay publishing some initial detailed police descriptions of evidence of crimes until these assertions are established in official charging documents. Such allegations sometimes prove prejudicial, or related to offenses for which a suspect is never actually charged.
We also take appropriate actions to avoid racial stereotyping. For all those reasons, we judiciously consider using images of suspects provided by police of arrested suspects.
CDN also maintains a log of all named crime suspects to ensure that disposition of their cases is reported, no matter how long after an arrest that might occur.
If you believe these principles have been violated by our reporting, contact Executive Editor Ron Judd at ronjudd@casadiadaily.com.
Social media policy
Our goal for social media forums is simple: Provide a space for constructive, respectful discussions about issues arising from the material we publish. We ask readers and even lurkers to consider the golden rule: Treat others with the respect you’d expect for yourself. Be civil, and stick to the topic raised in the original post, or ideas from other posters. In other words, don’t be a common garden-variety troll. Keep the space respectful, and when you see others who aren’t, please let us know, with an email to newstips@cascadiadaily.com, or a note on the post itself that tags us via @cascadiadaily.
Here are some actions we have seen regularly that we do not condone on our social channels:
- Popping off about perceived facts/slant/content based on a reading of a headline, having clearly not read the story in question.
- Steering any conversation about nonpolitical topics to politics — or veering wildly off the subject in general.
- Piping up on every single thread with an irrelevant retort, such as: “They’re all Communists.” (Unless it’s a piece about Lenin, and they are actually all communists.)
- Launching personal ad hominem attacks against a poster with no semblance of an attempt to argue merits of their post.
- Profanity, obscenity or slurs, of any kind, anywhere.
- Engaging in “whataboutism” or perpetuating disproven conspiracy theories.
- Abusive language that clearly nods toward, or explicitly states, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic or other hateful intent.
- Advocating or threatening violence or harm.
- Regularly posting solely to disparage CDN or one of its commenters.
- Posting documents, materials or links to sites that have not been vetted by CDN for legitimacy, or posting links to sites that don’t meet our journalistic standards. This includes documents, communications and other materials related to a story CDN is independently reporting, but cannot verify. (Our reporters would be happy to view those privately!)
- “Doxxing” or otherwise violating privacy of another individual by posting their personal information.
- Using comments to promote your own business or specific cause.
- Other oafish behavior not yet seen nor imagined.
CDN reserves the right to delete comments that violate those standards, and in extreme instances, block users permanently. We also, of course, reserve the right to disallow comment threads entirely on some stories likely to provoke the above behaviors — or close and delete comment threads after clear evidence of the same. It’s not our first choice, but sometimes necessary.