Fact-Checking Policy
The discipline, stated once
At TIMES OF CANNABIS, verification means one thing: primary sources. A claim is checked when we have read the document the claim rests on, not when we have found someone else repeating it. This page describes how that discipline is applied across the three kinds of material our beat runs on, which are legislative texts, company statements, and research findings, and what happens when verification fails.
Legislation and regulation
Cannabis policy coverage fails most often at the gap between what a law is reported to say and what its text says. Our rules close that gap:
- Before we characterize a bill, statute, regulation, or ruling, we read its actual text from the official source: the legislature’s own records, the official gazette or register, the regulator’s published rules, the court’s published opinion.
- We distinguish, every time, between introduced, passed, signed, and in force. A bill that passed one chamber has not become law, and a signed law with a delayed effective date has not changed anyone’s life yet. Collapsing those stages is the most common error in cannabis journalism, and our stories name the stage explicitly.
- Jurisdiction is stated precisely. A rule that binds one state, province, or country binds that one, and we say which, rather than letting a headline imply more.
- Where national and regional law conflict, as they often do on this subject, we report the conflict instead of flattening it.
Company statements
The cannabis industry communicates in press releases, and press releases are advocacy. Our approach:
- A company claim is attributed as a claim until verified. Announced is our word for things companies say will happen; it is not our word for things that happened.
- Where a company is publicly traded, we check claims against its filings with securities regulators, which carry legal consequences for falsity in a way that marketing copy does not. Where the two diverge, the filing wins and the divergence may itself be the story.
- Numbers get arithmetic. Market-size projections, revenue figures, and growth claims are checked for internal consistency and against independent data where it exists, and projections are labeled as projections.
- Partnerships, licenses, and approvals claimed by a company are confirmed with the counterparty or the issuing authority when they are material to a story.
Research findings
- The source for a study is the study: the published paper, or where a paper is not yet peer reviewed, the preprint, labeled as such. University press offices and wire summaries are leads, not sources.
- We verify that the reported result appears in the paper, at the magnitude stated, in the population studied. What a study found in cells or rodents is never described in terms that imply results in people.
- Sample size, study design, funding, and stated limitations travel with the finding into our article, as required by our editorial standards.
- Retractions and corrections to research we have covered are themselves covered, and the original article receives an update note.
The process on every story
The writer verifies while writing, keeping a record of the source for every factual assertion. Before publication a second member of the team walks the story’s claims against that record, with particular attention to numbers, names, legal status statements, and anything a reader might act on. Stories in sensitive categories, including medical findings, product safety, and allegations about named companies or people, are not published on a single pair of eyes. When speed and verification collide, verification wins; on this beat a wrong story travels faster than its correction ever will.
What we do with uncertainty
Some things cannot be verified by deadline. Our options, in order of preference: wait; publish what is verified and state plainly what is not yet known; or, where the unverified claim is itself the news, report the existence of the claim with its provenance and the checks still outstanding. What we do not do is launder uncertainty through phrases like reports suggest or it is understood. Attribution is specific or the claim stays out.
When we get it wrong anyway
No process catches everything. Errors that survive this one are repaired under our corrections policy, visibly and promptly, and significant failures trigger a review of the process itself. Readers who spot an error, or who want the source behind any factual claim we publish, can write to support@timesofcannabis.com; pointing to our sources is part of the service, not a favor.
