Editorial Standards

Our Mission and Audience

UK JournoHub exists to give every UK journalist — staff or freelance, national or hyperlocal, new entrant or veteran — free access to reliable, up-to-date professional resources. We cover ethics codes, media law, freelance rates, FOI guidance, mental health support, and practical tools.

Our primary audience is working journalists in England and Wales, with supplementary coverage of Scottish and Northern Irish frameworks where the law differs materially. We are not a news outlet; we are a reference and guidance platform. We do not break news, conduct investigations, or publish opinion columns. Everything we produce is intended to help journalists do their jobs more effectively and ethically.

This distinction matters for how we apply editorial standards. We are not publishing journalism about third parties; we are documenting the rules, rates, and resources that govern the profession. Accuracy, currency, and clarity are therefore our primary obligations.

Editorial Values

Every page on UK JournoHub is produced against three core editorial values:

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  Accuracy first: We do not publish content we cannot verify. Where figures are estimates or ranges (as is inherent with freelance rate data), we say so explicitly. Where law is unsettled or jurisdiction-specific, we flag that too. We would rather publish nothing than publish something misleading.
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  Plain English: Our audience are professional communicators, but they are not all lawyers or regulators. We write in plain, accessible English, defining legal terms where we use them and avoiding jargon that obscures meaning. We follow the NUJ plain-English tradition.
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  Jurisdictional caution: UK law is not uniform. Scottish defamation law, FOI law, and contempt law differ from those in England and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own legislative framework. We flag jurisdictional differences prominently and do not present English law as applying UK-wide unless it does.

Sourcing Standards

We follow a strict primary-source-first policy. Every factual claim on UK JournoHub should be traceable to an authoritative source. Our preferred source hierarchy is:

1. Primary legislation — Acts of Parliament as published on legislation.gov.uk
2. Statutory codes and guidance— Ofcom broadcasting codes, ICO guidance, MoJ statutory guidance, and equivalent
3. Regulator publications— NUJ Code of Conduct, IPSO Editors’ Code, IMPRESS Standards Code, ICO guidance
4. Official government sources— GOV.UK, Crown Prosecution Service, Ministry of Justice, DCMS
5. Case law— BAILII, official court judgment transcripts
6. Peer-reviewed or professional journalism research— where no primary source exists for a factual claim

We do not treat forum posts, social media, or anonymous sources as primary sources. Where we rely on secondary or crowdsourced data (as in our freelance rate guides), we say so and indicate the degree of uncertainty. See our Sources & Methodology page for full detail.

Identifying Ourselves

UK JournoHub is an independent professional resource for UK journalists. We are not affiliated with any union, regulator, government body, or media corporation. We do not represent the NUJ, IPSO, IMPRESS, Ofcom, or any other organisation whose content we summarise.

Our editorial team draws on backgrounds in national newspapers, regional media, broadcast journalism, digital publishing, and media law. We do not publish bylines on individual pages, but we are contactable and accountable.

For editorial concerns, please email hello@ukjournohub.com. We respond to editorial queries within five working days.

Update Cadence

We operate a rolling review schedule. Each page carries a “Last reviewed” and “Next review due” date. These are not cosmetic: they trigger an active review by an editor.

Reviewer Process

Every page on UK JournoHub goes through a pre-publication checklist before it goes live. Our review process for substantive content includes:

• 1.Drafting against primary sources. The editor responsible checks every factual claim against the cited source, not a secondary summary of it.
• 2.Jurisdictional check. Does any claim inadvertently apply English law to Scotland or Northern Ireland? Are cross-border differences flagged?
• 3.Disclaimer check. Is it clear this is information, not legal advice? Are any illustrative figures labelled as such?
• 4.Link verification. Do all external links resolve to the correct source? Are citations linking to the version of legislation in force at the stated date?
• 5.Review-date stamping.The “Last reviewed” date is set only after the review is complete, not before.

Errors and Corrections

We take errors seriously. When we get something wrong — whether a misquoted statute, an outdated rate figure, or a broken link to a regulator’s code — we correct it promptly and transparently.

Our corrections process is tiered by severity and is set out in full on our Corrections Policy page. In summary: minor errors are fixed silently, significant factual errors are noted with a visible correction notice, and material misrepresentations receive a prominent correction statement.

We align with the spirit of IPSO and NUJ standards for corrections, even though as a reference site rather than a news publication we are not within either body’s regulatory scope.

Contact for Editorial Concerns

If you believe any content on UK JournoHub is inaccurate, misleading, out of date, or in breach of these editorial standards, please tell us. We genuinely welcome scrutiny from the profession we serve.

• Email: hello@ukjournohub.com
• Contact form: ukjournohub.com/contact
• Corrections: ukjournohub.com/corrections