Ethics Policy
Shore News Network adheres to a strict ethics policy when it comes to our news. Our news is never guided by anything but facts and truth.
- Fairness and Sourcing: SNN strives to credit and reveal sources and ensure fairness and accuracy in our reporting.
- Anonymous Sources: Anonymous sources may only be used to protect the source from retribution, criminal or political. Although we sometimes use anonymous sources, we maintain detailed records of conversations and interactions with those sources and we do make those records available to law enforcement if/when called upon.
- Use of Quotes: Quotes are never to be altered. Quotes may be truncated, but the use of “…” is mandatory to inform the user that the quote is truncated.
- Originality: News stories that rely on press releases and/or quoting other news sources will be identified as such and clearly within the article.
- Fictitious names and events: We do allow our writers to produce satire and/or fiction pieces, however, those pieces must clearly be labeled as such at the beginning of the article. All fiction writings are strictly reviewed by the editorial staff and few make the cut.
- Errors & Corrections: If you feel a news story has an error and is in need of a correction, please email news@shorenewsnetwork.com and allow us up to 48 hours to review and correct.
- Blogging: Occasionally we allow guest bloggers. Such blogging must clearly be labeled as “Guest Blogger” or with the blogger’s name in the byline.
- Press Releases: Press releases must be labeled clearly as such and tagged as “Press Release” in our CMS system.
- Advertorials: Advertorials must be labeled clearly as such and tagged as “Press Release” or “Advertorial”
- Opinions: We rarely allow opinion pieces and letters to the editor stating opinions, in fact, almost never. If we allow an opinion it must clearly be labeled as “Your News & Opinions”.
- Gifts: All gifts received by SNN are passed on to our readers in the form of online contest giveaways. No exceptions.
- Comps: We do not allow any of our employees or writers to be “comped” or receive special treatment in any way by a subject of a news article, food review, business review, etc.
- Credentials: All staff members must be properly credential by the NJPA and must identify themselves as working for SNN at any public or private event if they are gathering news.
A.I. Policy
Shore News Network adheres to a strict ethics policy when it comes to our news. Our news is never guided by anything but facts and truth. Shore News Network embraces artificial intelligence, setting the following guidelines for our writers and editors for the use of A.I. in our reporting.
- A.I. is authorized for grammar and spell-checking news headlines and articles, however a human final review is required on all articles.
- A.I. is authorized for fact checking news articles. A.I. fact checking should be verified with a human review of the A.I. fact check before publishing.
- A.I. is sometimes authorized for photos under the following conditions:
- Satire
- Strange and Weird News
- For comedic effect
- For emphasis when a purchasable or staff taken photo is not available
- ALL A.I. photos must clearly be labeled as A.I. with caption and citing the A.I. photo generation platform used to create the A.I. photo. A.I. photos may not be used to misrepresent an event or news article topic.
- Editors are allowed to use A.I. tools to create options for headlines by inputting their headline into the A.I. and generating several recommended headline alternatives. Human review is required on all A.I. assisted headlines.
- A.I. is authorized for audio dictation and speech to text. Human review of A.I. assisted Speech to Text is required.
- A.I. is authorized to fix audio dictation grammar, spelling and sentence structure, but not to change the premise or statements made during the dictation.