Integrity Policy

The Massachusetts Times · Published by The Massachusetts Times Company · massachusettstimes.us/policies/integrity · Effective October 16, 2026

This policy is the conduct floor beneath everything The Massachusetts Times publishes. It binds everyone who reports, writes, edits, or publishes under this masthead, and every sentence here is kept today.

1. Fabrication

1.1. Nothing in our pages is invented. No invented quotes, no composite characters, no imagined scenes written as witnessed, no events improved in the telling.

1.2. No synthetic persons and no fictional bylines, by any hand or any system. Every byline names who answers for the work, and every person in our pages exists.

1.3. Fabrication is the one offense this institution treats as unforgivable in its pages: the work is retracted under the withdrawal article of the Archive and Permanence Terms, the retraction is entered in the public corrections ledger, and the relationship with whoever fabricated ends, as the Contributor Terms state.

2. Plagiarism

2.1. Another's expression is never presented as ours. Quotation is marked, borrowing is credited, and another outlet's original reporting is named and linked under the Attribution Policy.

2.2. Plagiarism discovered in our pages is corrected in daylight — the correction names the true source — with the same stated consequences as Section 1.3 for whoever passed the work off.

3. Conflicts

3.1. Coverage decisions serve the record, never any interest of ours — financial, personal, or institutional.

3.2. An interest that could reasonably color a work is disclosed, and where disclosure is not cure enough, the conflicted hand steps away from the decision. The full law — holdings, relationships, outside work, self-coverage — is the Conflicts of Interest Policy.

4. Gifts and Favors

4.1. Nothing of value is accepted from the subjects of our coverage, and access is never bought from us with hospitality. The full law — thresholds, travel, events, and political activity — is the Gifts, Travel and Political Activity Policy.

5. Honesty of Method

5.1. We do not deceive to gather, as the Journalism Policy states; we do not doctor what we gathered, as the Provenance and Imagery Policies state; and we do not launder either act through a tool, as the Automation Policy states. A dishonest method poisons an honest fact.

5.2. Honest error is not an integrity offense. It is the ordinary cost of the work, and it is handled — openly, quickly, without shame — by the Correction Terms.

6. How Violations Are Handled

6.1. An integrity accusation is verified before it is acted on, with the same discipline the Correction Terms demand of a correction: evidence, not volume, decides.

6.2. A verified violation is corrected in the record in daylight — never quietly — and the masthead answers for it publicly. What readers are owed is not a perfect institution but one that cannot hide from its own pages.

7. The Record of This Policy

7.1. This policy is kept in dated versions at its address, so the conduct floor beneath any work can always be checked against the work's date.

This policy is one of the Policies this publication keeps.