Editorial Standards & Ethics

Why a football newsroom needs written rules

Football is covered in a loud room. Clubs publish statements written to shape a narrative, agents brief to move a market, and an unsourced claim about a signing can circle the world before anyone has asked which body would have to register it. FOOTBALL INSTANT draws the obvious conclusion: a beat this noisy needs standards that are written down, specific and enforceable by the people who read us. These are ours. Where we break them, our corrections policy is the remedy and support@futbolalinstante.com is the complaints desk.

Accuracy comes first

We publish what we have verified. Every fact should trace back to a document, an official record, or a source identified by name or role, and the story should make clear which. A claim we could not verify is dropped or described as unverified, in that word. When speed and certainty pull in opposite directions, and they pull hardest on the last day of a window, the story waits. The verification steps for each kind of material are in our fact-checking policy.

Independence from clubs, competitions and agents

This is the centre of the document, and it is short because it has no exceptions.

FOOTBALL INSTANT is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by FIFA, UEFA, any confederation, any national association, any league or any club, and we belong to no programme that places conditions on coverage.
Nobody who writes or edits here takes undisclosed payment, gifts of value, hospitality, travel, equity or any other consideration from a club, a league, a federation, an agency, a player or a sponsor. No sum is small enough to be harmless.
Nobody here works for, advises or holds a financial interest in a club, an agency or a player, and anyone with a personal connection to a story’s subject stays away from it. Connections are declared to an editor before the work begins.
Advertisers buy space and nothing more. Advertising is filled through a network, the identity of advertisers plays no part in editorial planning, and no advertiser sees a story before publication. Sponsored content is labelled so that it cannot pass for news, and sponsors get no say, no preview and no protection. The detail is on our ownership and funding page.
Nobody here bets on football or accepts anything from a betting company. Our disclaimer states what this site is not, and this rule is how we keep it true.

Sourcing, attribution and agents

The document beats the description of it. We read the club statement, the league communication, the competition regulation, the disciplinary decision and the filed accounts before characterising any of them, and we name them so that readers can look for themselves. A quoted person is identified along with the capacity in which they spoke. Vague attributions with nothing behind them do not appear here.

Agents, intermediaries and club communications staff are legitimate sources with obvious interests. When a briefing shapes a story, the story says the information came from a party connected to the player, the club or the deal, and what that party stands to gain. We do not present a client’s availability as a club’s intention, we do not repeat a valuation supplied by the seller as though it were a market price, and we do not run a story timed to move a negotiation without saying that its timing is part of the news.

Anonymity is granted only when the information matters, cannot be had on the record, and naming the source would expose them to real harm, a test that employees of clubs, leagues and agencies frequently meet. An editor must know the source and approve the arrangement, and the story says why the source is unnamed and how they know what they describe. Anonymity is never cover for attacking a person or a club without accountability, and never a service to a communications department briefing its own announcement.

Transfers, rumours and the language we use

On this beat the label is part of the fact.

Interest, talks, an agreement in principle, agreed personal terms, a medical and a completed registration are different stages, and each is named for what it is. Only a move registered with the competent body and announced by the clubs is reported as complete.
A rumour is called a rumour and carries what we know of its origin. Repetition never promotes it to fact, and the number of places repeating it is not evidence.
Fees are reported with their structure where we know it: guaranteed sum, add-ons and the conditions attached, sell-on percentage, payment schedule and currency. Where only a range exists, the range is published as a range.
Contract terms are reported only from the club announcement, the registration record or a document we have seen. Salaries are not published from hearsay.
Deadline day is when these rules matter most. Nothing is upgraded because a deadline is approaching.

Accreditation, embargoes and hospitality

An embargo is an agreement about when, never about what. We keep the embargoes we accept, and we accept them only on terms agreed in writing beforehand. No embargo limits what we may ask or whether we may report something learned independently before a briefing. Briefings offered on condition that their existence stays secret are refused, and so is any access offered on condition that coverage is favourable or that a subject is avoided. Accreditation to a match or a tournament buys entry and nothing else. Where a competition, club or organiser pays for travel or accommodation and we cannot avoid it, the story says who paid. Where we cannot report freely, we say that too.

Fairness, players and images

Anyone criticised in a story is given a real opportunity to respond before publication, with enough detail and enough time, and the response is reported fairly and prominently. If someone declines to comment, the story says so; if we could not reach them, it says what we tried. Fairness is not false balance: a claim that a published regulation contradicts is reported as contradicted. Headlines may not outrun their stories or assert as fact something the story merely attributes. Injuries and medical matters are reported only from official club statements or from the person concerned, never from speculation about a diagnosis. Family members, children and private lives are not our beat. Abuse directed at players and officials is reported as news where it is news, and never amplified for traffic. Photographs are captioned with the match and date, images generated or altered by software are never presented as photographs of real events, and we manufacture nothing.

Automation, plagiarism and accountability

Where software assists with research or production, responsibility stays human: nothing is published without editorial review, verification remains tied to primary sources, and every word is answered for by the masthead rather than by a tool. Match data is checked against the official record before it appears, not trusted because a feed produced it. Reporting that began elsewhere is credited to its origin, and rewording someone else’s exclusive does not make it ours. Readers who believe we have broken these standards can write to support@futbolalinstante.com. Complaints are read and answered in writing by an editor who had no part in the story, and when the correction log or a complaint shows that a rule needs changing, the change is made on this page.