Standards & corrections

These are the rules I hold myself to. They're the same standard I hold the institutions I write about to: show your sources, mark your confidence, and correct your mistakes in the open.

1. Everything is sourced

Every factual claim traces to a primary public record (an agency filing, a court or regulatory document, a disclosure database, an official statement) that you can open and read yourself. Where I rely on someone else's reporting, I say so and link it. The data behind the numbers is published, not just summarized, so anyone can re-run the math.

2. Confidence is always marked

No claim is left ambiguous about how solid it is. Each carries one of:

confirmed verified against a primary record reported from credible secondary sources analysis my inference from the facts, labeled as such open not yet verified, a watch item

3. Lawful activity is not wrongdoing

Campaign contributions, lobbying, corporate ownership, hiring former officials: these are lawful and disclosed by design. I report them as facts where they're relevant to the public interest. I do not assert, and I ask readers not to infer, a quid pro quo, improper influence, or a causal link to any outcome. A disclosed payment is a fact to note, not proof of anything.

4. People are identified carefully

Records that share a name are not assumed to be the same person. Identity is confirmed with corroborating detail (employer, city, first name), look-alikes are excluded, and the exclusions are published. Ordinary private individuals (for example, rank-and-file employees who appear in a donation database) are reported only in aggregate, never named, to protect their privacy. Public figures, named executives, and the entities themselves are identified.

5. The cause of an event under investigation is never stated as fact

Where an official investigation is open, I report what is known and what is claimed by each party, and explicitly mark the cause as undetermined.

6. Corrections

Found something wrong? Tell me and I'll fix it. Use the contact form with the page, the specific claim, and the correct information or source. I aim to respond within a few days. Substantive corrections are made visibly: the page notes what changed and when, rather than quietly editing the record. A running changelog is kept for the living documents.

7. Right of reply

Anyone named or implicated is invited to respond, and I'll publish the response alongside the work. For the current project, that invitation is open here: Boyle Heights: respond.

8. Independence & license

This is independent, self-funded community transparency work, not client work and not done on anyone's behalf. It's published by Sero Uno and released under CC BY 4.0: republish it freely, with credit. The underlying primary-source records are public. None of this is legal advice.