Editorial Policy

What this policy is

This is the working rulebook of the Peoples Feed newsroom, published in full so that readers, sources and the people we write about can hold us to it. It is not a statement of intent. Every rule here is applied to every article before publication, and an article that fails one of them is held, rewritten or dropped.

Peoples Feed is published by Incunation Global, a sole proprietorship based in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Our Editor is Dr. Mayank Raj. Our ownership and funding are disclosed in full on the Ownership and Funding page.

The four principles everything else sits on

• Accuracy. A claim is published only after it has been traced to a document we opened. We do not reconstruct anyone’s career from memory, and we do not round a number to make a sentence read better.
• Fairness. If we report a criticism, an allegation or a contradicting number, the person or institution gets a real chance to answer, before publication, and their answer sits in the same section as the claim.
• Transparency. We name our sources in the text and link the original document, not somebody else’s story about it. Where we cannot name a source, we say why.
• Accountability. When we get something wrong we correct it on the page, date the change and log it publicly. See the Public Corrections Policy.

Editorial independence

Editorial decisions at Peoples Feed are taken by the editorial team alone. The owner in his commercial capacity, advertisers, sponsors, subjects, sources and readers do not decide, approve or pre-review our news coverage.

Step one: the six gates

Before a word is written, every idea is scored against six gates. The result is recorded internally for every commissioned piece.

Gate 0: the Impact Gate

Has a named person changed what happens to other people, in a way we can point at? Not “is this person important”. Not “is this inspiring”. Did something measurably change for somebody else because of what this person did. If Gate 0 fails, the idea is dropped, whatever it scores on the rest.

Passes: a district collector’s order that moved 1,400 families onto piped water in nine months. A surgeon who completed a first-of-its-kind procedure, on a date, at a named hospital. A vice chancellor whose rule change altered the admission path for 40,000 students.

Fails: a person appointed to a role who has not yet done anything. A person who spoke at a conference. A person who received an award for unspecified contributions.

There is one exception, and it is our most valuable shape. A national story passes Gate 0 the moment a named human being is attached to it, because attaching that person is the reporting. “India cut malaria cases” is not our story. “Dr [Name], who runs the district malaria cell in [District], cut cases from X to Y between 2019 and 2026” is.

Gate 1: the Name Gate

Is there a real, named, identifiable person we can put in the headline, with their correct current designation? “A young officer”, “doctors in Bihar” and “an NGO” all fail.

Gate 2: the Verb Gate

Did that person do something specific, on a date, that was not true last month? Ordered, operated, launched, published, was appointed, resigned, completed, filed, trained 900 people. “Is working towards”, “is passionate about” and “continues to inspire” all fail.

Gate 3: the Evidence Gate

Is there one specific number, order number, citation, filing or document that a reader cannot get from a press release or a social media post? The gazette notification number, the DoPT order, the paper with a DOI, the Padma citation text, the hospital’s own count. “Several initiatives” and “widely recognised” fail.

Gate 4: the Reader Gate

Can we name, in one line, the exact reader who should send this to somebody, and why? “This is inspiring for everyone” fails.

Gate 5: the Source Gate

Can we link three or more primary documents: the order, the notification, the citation, the paper, the judgment, the annual report, the official biography page? A LinkedIn profile and another news site’s story fail.

A five-of-five idea is written. A four-of-five idea is written with the gap noted. A three-of-five idea is written only if the gaps are Gates 4 and 5. Below that it is not a story, and we say so and move on.

Step two: the four shapes

The profile is the shape this publication exists for: one named person, one verified body of work, one thing they changed, told through documents and numbers. A profile with no source independent of the subject is a press release, and we do not publish it.

Sourcing standards

The primary-source rule

We link the original document, never another news site’s version of it. The PIB release, not the story about the PIB release. The gazette notification, not the summary of it. Every article carries at least three primary sources, and every number in the text has its source named in the sentence or the sentence next to it.

Our source ranking, best first

1. Government or institutional documents. DoPT and state gazette orders, PIB releases, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha questions and replies, padmaawards.gov.in, gallantryawards.gov.in, court judgments on the eCourts and Supreme Court portals, UGC and AICTE notifications, National Medical Commission registers, ICMR, DRDO, ISRO and CSIR releases, university notifications, RTI replies, CAG reports, NITI Aayog data.
2. The institution’s own page for that person. The ministry profile, the university faculty page, the hospital department page, the official biography.
3. Peer-reviewed or officially published work. The journal article with a DOI, the book with an ISBN, the report with a number.
4. Established media. The Hindu, Indian Express, Business Standard, Mint, Reuters, PTI, Down To Earth, Frontline, Scroll, The Print, Times of India, Doordarshan and All India Radio.
5. Industry bodies and public datasets. data.gov.in, NFHS, UDISE+, AISHE, NCRB, Census, WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF.

Sources we will not cite as fact

Medium, Substack unless the author is the subject, personal blogs, Quora, Reddit, ResearchGate posts, content farms, AI-written aggregator sites, unattributed listicles, “top 10 inspiring people” pages, awards from vanity award mills, and social media posts by people who were not participants in the event.

A post by the person themselves, their ministry, their university or their unit is that party speaking on the record and is citable, attributed precisely and with the date. We screenshot it, because posts get deleted.

Wikipedia is not a source. It is an index of sources. We open its citation, verify the citation and cite that.

Preprints are not peer reviewed. If we cite arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv or SSRN, we write “a preprint, not yet peer reviewed” the first time it appears.

We never write “reported” or “sources say” without naming who. If we cannot verify a fact about a living person, it is left out. We do not estimate, guess or round a career.

Writing about living people

Almost everything we publish names a living person. These rules are not style preferences.

• Every biographical claim is traced to a document we opened. Where they studied, what they hold, what they won, what they said, how long they served, what rank they hold.
• An allegation is never stated as a fact. An FIR is not a conviction. A charge sheet is not a conviction. A notice is not a finding. We write “the agency filed a charge sheet on [date] alleging X”, we name the stage of the process and we name the document. A denial goes in the same section as the allegation, not at the bottom.
• No private life without public interest. Family, children, marriage, health, finances, religion, caste, sexual orientation and personal beliefs stay out unless they are demonstrably part of the public act being reported, and then only the part that is.
• Children are protected. We do not name, photograph or make identifiable anyone under 18 in a story about wrongdoing, crime, a medical case, an examination failure or a family dispute.
• No caste, religion or region as a descriptor, in the headline, the body or the alt text, unless it is the literal subject of the reported act, and then in the official wording, attributed.
• We do not publish a living person’s private contact details. No personal phone number, home address, private email, vehicle number or residential location. A published official office address and official email are allowed.
• Praise must be attributed or measured. We may write that a Padma Shri citation described her work in certain words, because that is a document. We may write that she has operated on 4,200 patients since 2011 according to the hospital’s annual report, because that is a number. We may not write that she is a legend, because that is us, and we are not the story.
• We never fabricate a quote, not even a plausible one. Every quotation is copied from a source we opened, with the date and place it was said. If there is no quote, there is no quote.
• If a person has died we say so, with the date, verified twice, against an official statement, a government condolence release or two independent established outlets. Never against social media alone.

The right of reply

If an article contains any of the following, the person or institution is given a real chance to respond before publication:

• An allegation, an inquiry, a notice, an FIR, a charge sheet, a suspension, a transfer described as punitive or a resignation described as forced.
• A criticism of their professional conduct or competence.
• A number that contradicts a number they have published.
• A claim made about them by a third party.

What counts as asking: a written request to the official email address on the institution’s own website, or its published press contact, listing the specific claims, with a stated deadline of at least 24 hours for a news story and at least 72 hours for a profile or an investigation.

What we publish:

• If they replied, we quote the reply in the same section as the claim.
• If they declined, we write that they declined to comment.
• If they did not reply, we write that Peoples Feed wrote to the office on a stated date with a list of these findings, that there was no response by the time of publication, and that the article will be updated if one arrives.
• If we did not ask, we do not publish the claim. It is removed, or the article is held until we have asked.

A positive story does not need a right of reply, but it does need a fact check. If we are stating what somebody achieved and the only source is that person, we say so in the text.

Anonymous and unnamed sources

Named sources are the default. We use an unnamed source only when all four of these are true:

1. The information is of clear public interest and cannot reasonably be obtained on the record.
2. The source has direct knowledge, not second-hand knowledge.
3. The Editor knows the identity of the source and has approved the use in writing.
4. The claim is corroborated by a document or by a second independent source.

When we use one, we describe the source as precisely as we can without identifying them, and we say why they are not named: for example, “an officer in the department, who asked not to be named because they are not authorised to speak to the press”. We never write “sources say” with nothing attached. We do not use anonymous sources to carry praise or attacks on a named individual’s character. We protect the identity of a source who has been promised confidentiality, and that promise is not broken.

Opinion, analysis and reporting are kept apart

• Reporting carries no view of ours. Where we are describing rather than reporting, the sentence says so.
• Analysis is labelled as analysis and is written by a named member of the newsroom, with the evidence shown in the piece.
• Opinion is labelled as opinion, carries the author’s name and a one-line description of who they are, and states the views of the author, not of Peoples Feed. Peoples Feed does not endorse candidates or parties.
• Sponsored content is labelled as sponsored at the top of the page, before the headline, and in the URL slug where the platform allows it. It is never written by the reporter who covers that beat and is never presented as a Peoples Feed news story. See Advertise With Us.

Use of artificial intelligence

We use AI tools inside our workflow. We are specific about where.

What AI is used for: research assistance and finding candidate documents, transcription of recorded interviews, first-pass structure and drafting support, grammar and language checks, headline and metadata options, alt text drafts, and formatting.

What AI is never used for:

• AI output is never published without human verification. Every article on Peoples Feed is read, fact-checked and approved by a named human editor before it goes live.
• AI is never treated as a source. A claim that exists only in a model’s output does not exist for us. Every fact is traced back to a document a human opened.
• AI never decides what we cover, whose name goes in a headline or how an allegation is characterised.
• AI does not get a byline. Every byline on this site belongs to a real person who is accountable for the article.
• We do not publish AI-generated photographs of real people, and we do not use AI to alter a photograph of a real person in any way that changes what it shows. Illustrations that are AI-assisted are labelled.
• We do not paste confidential source material, unpublished documents or a source’s identifying details into any third-party AI tool.

Where AI research produced a lead, the lead is still verified from primary sources before it is written. Independent research has repeatedly found high error rates in AI attribution of news, which is exactly why nothing leaves this newsroom on a model’s word.

Images, headlines and metadata

• Every image is either licensed, openly licensed with the licence recorded, supplied with written permission, or created by us. We record the licence and the attribution for every file.
• Photographs of people are not manipulated beyond cropping, straightening and standard exposure correction.
• Headlines say what happened. We do not use clickbait constructions, and an allegation is never turned into a fact in a headline, a meta description, a caption or alt text.
• We change a published headline only for accuracy, and we note it.

Conflicts of interest

Members of the newsroom declare to the Editor any financial interest, family relationship, employment history, membership or political role that touches a story they are assigned. Where a conflict exists, the story is reassigned or the interest is disclosed in the article itself. Nobody covers an organisation they or an immediate family member work for. We do not accept gifts, paid travel, hospitality or fees from the people and institutions we cover. Where a story concerns Incunation Global or our sister publication StartupFeed.in, we disclose that in the article.

Plagiarism and credit

We do not copy text from other publications. Where another outlet broke a story and we are following it, we say so and link to them in the sentence. Quotes taken from another outlet’s interview are attributed to that outlet by name and date. Reproducing Peoples Feed material requires written permission from connect@peoplesfeed.in.

Corrections

Errors are corrected on the page, dated and logged publicly. We use a four-step ladder: typo, clarification, correction and retraction. We do not quietly delete or silently rewrite. Write to corrections@peoplesfeed.in. The full process, timelines and the public log are on the Public Corrections Policy page.

Complaints

If you believe we have breached this policy or the Code of Ethics under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, write to our Grievance Officer at grievance@peoplesfeed.in. We acknowledge within 24 hours and decide within 15 days. The three-tier process is set out on the Grievance Redressal page.

Related policies

• Fact-Checking Policy
• Public Corrections Policy
• Ownership and Funding
• Grievance Redressal
• DNPA Code of Ethics
• Disclaimer

Effective date: 11 September 2026
Last updated: 11 September 2026