Methodology.
How we source, verify, and write.
Sourcing
Every factual claim in an article points to a source the reader can verify. Primary documents, court filings, financial reports, sworn testimony, internal church publications, are cited where they exist. Secondary reporting is cited when it carries information the primary record does not.
Where two sources contradict, both are cited and the discrepancy is noted in the article body. We do not pick the more flattering one and bury the other.
Archives
Every web source we cite is archived to the Wayback Machine and archive.today at the time of publication. The archive URL is stored alongside the live URL, so the record holds when source pages go down, get rewritten, or quietly disappear. This applies to church-affiliated sites, news reports, and our own pages.
Opinion is labeled
Where editors are stating opinion rather than fact, the paragraph is marked as opinion in the callout itself. We try not to mix the two in the same sentence. The reader should always know which mode they are reading in.
Corrections
When something we wrote is wrong, the correction goes on the page itself, at the top, dated, with the prior wording preserved underneath, and on a running corrections log. We do not silently re-edit articles. A typo fix does not count as a correction; a factual change does.
Names and anonymity
Sources are named unless we have a stated reason, usually safety, sometimes a pending legal matter, to anonymize. Where we anonymize, we say so in the article and we say what category of person the source is (e.g. former staff at a named organization, between specified years). Anonymous sources are corroborated against documents or a second source before publication.
Voice
Articles are written in journalistic third person. The site does not address the reader as if it knows their circumstances, and it does not assume the reader is either a current or former member. The founder of the Unification Church is referred to by name where the historical record uses it; honorifics are not used editorially.
What is out of scope
Personal counseling, legal advice, and mental-health advice are out of scope. The Resources section links to organizations that do that work. Editors do not respond to private requests for advice, and email sent to the site is not confidential unless we have explicitly arranged otherwise.