STANDARDS
The rules every story on Lapok is held to.
A public covenant between 18,400+ journalists, four external auditors, and the 4.2 million readers who expect what we publish to be true, sourced, and human-written. No exceptions, no asterisks, no machine text.
A PUBLIC CHARTER
A public charter, written by editors and signed by members.
This document sets the editorial, ethical, and operational rules every story published on Lapok is held to. It was drafted in 2021 by the founding editors — former bureau chiefs at Reuters and AFP — and is now revised quarterly by the standards committee, a rotating panel of twelve working journalists elected by the membership. Every revision is published as a dated changelog with the names of the editors who proposed and approved each line. There is no secret version. If a rule is in force, it lives here, in full, in plain language, and in nine translations.
The charter covers four domains: human editorial review (who reads your draft, and how), sourcing and attribution (what counts as evidence, and how it is named), the prohibition on AI-generated content (what our detectors look for, and what happens when a piece is flagged), and the external audit regime that keeps the whole system honest. It is 38 pages long, footnoted to source, and updated every March, June, September, and December. The current revision is 11.4.
FOUR PILLARS
How we enforce it, in four steps.
One hundred percent of submissions pass through human review before they are published. The four pillars below describe the mechanism behind that promise — the editorial gate, the authorship test, the institutional certification, and the external audit.
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01
PILLAR ONE
Human editorial review, on every submission.
Every piece is read by at least one staff editor and, for investigative and feature work, a second senior editor with subject-matter standing. Editorial review covers accuracy, sourcing, framing, harm, and legal exposure. Median turnaround is 14 hours for short news, 72 hours for long-form features. Substantive edits are sent back to the writer for sign-off; we never publish over a writer's stated objection.
- Two-editor minimum for investigations
- Writer sign-off on every change
- Right-of-reply within 24 hours
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02
PILLAR TWO
No AI-generated content. None. Audited quarterly.
Lapok prohibits AI-generated text, AI-generated images, and AI-translated reporting. Every submission is screened by a hybrid detection pipeline (commercial classifier plus human spot-check) and a random 5% sample is audited by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia every quarter. Findings are published in full, including any failed cases. Members found in violation are suspended, and the piece is retracted with a public correction.
- Zero tolerance, audited externally
- Detection results published quarterly
- Retraction, not quiet deletion
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03
PILLAR THREE
Certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative.
Lapok is certified to ISO/TS 23019 by the Journalism Trust Initiative, the international standard for newsroom transparency. The certification covers our editorial structure, sourcing policies, conflict-of-interest disclosures, and correction procedures, and is renewed annually by an independent assessor. Members of the public can request our full JTI dossier and the assessor's findings.
- ISO/TS 23019 certified
- Annual renewal by external assessor
- Dossier open on request
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04
PILLAR FOUR
Quarterly audit by the Tow Center.
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University audits a randomized sample of our published stories every quarter against six indicators: source attribution, conflict-of-interest disclosure, correction speed, AI-screen findings, retraction handling, and reader complaint resolution. Their full report — methods, sample, and findings — is published on this page each quarter. We commission the audit; we do not edit it.
- Independent, commissioned, public
- Six indicators, scored transparently
- Reports archived since 2022
EXTERNAL VALIDATION
Audited by the bodies that audit the press.
We did not write our own credibility. We invited four institutions to inspect ours, and we publish what they find.
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JTI
Journalism Trust Initiative
ISO/TS 23019 · Renewed annually
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TP
The Trust Project
Newsroom transparency indicators
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TC
Tow Center Audit
Quarterly, since Q2 2022
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96
Press Freedom Index
96/100 · Highest in commercial publishing
The standards are not a fence to keep writers in. They are the ground that lets readers trust what we publish. If a rule is annoying, we argue about it at the quarterly revision. But we do not edit it in private, and we do not drop it for a headline.
THE FULL DOCUMENT
Read the standards.
Then write to them.
The full 38-page charter is available below in nine languages. Every journalist who publishes on Lapok signs it. Every reader can read it.
No PDF link is published. The current text lives only on this page and is version-stamped. The previous ten revisions are archived in the footer of every edition.