Editorial standards

Westline is a British centre-right digital newsroom covering the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. These are the rules it holds itself to.

News is news

Headlines are plain and say what happened. Opinion is labelled analysis or comment and is never mixed into a news story.

Sources

Every factual claim has a source the writer has opened, and the source is listed at the foot of the story. Primary records come first: Hansard, government and parliamentary papers, official statistics, court judgments and the polling companies’ own tables. When another outlet broke a story, we say so and credit it.

Quotes

Quotes are word for word and come from a primary record or from a named outlet that we credit. We never tidy or invent a quote.

Polls

We give the polling company, the fieldwork dates and the sample, and we use members of the British Polling Council. A single poll is never described as a surge.

Fairness

Every party is held to the same standard, including the ones our readers tend to vote for. Analysis may argue, but it states the strongest case for the other side fairly before it rejects it.

Pictures

News stories use real, licensed photographs, credited. Analysis uses Westline’s own illustrations, captioned as illustrations.

Corrections

When we get something wrong we correct it at the top of the story, with the date and time, and say what changed. We do not change a published story silently.