How we report.
Forensic journalism is only credible when its sources can be checked. These are the rules our scripts pass through before recording.
§1Sourcing
Every factual claim about a living person ties to a primary source: a court filing, regulator finding, sworn testimony, or on-record public statement.
Acceptable primary sources: SEC EDGAR filings, SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs), DOJ deferred-prosecution agreements (DPAs), FTC complaints, FCA censures, BaFin orders, Companies House (UK) filings, PACER and CourtListener court dockets, congressional testimony transcripts, issuer 8-K disclosures, public press releases.
Short-seller reports — including those by Hindenburg Research, Muddy Waters, Kerrisdale, and Citron — are opinion. We may quote them. We label them "[opinion]" on screen and in the article. We never assert their conclusions in our own voice.
§2Public-figure framing
US executives of public companies are public figures under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (376 U.S. 254) and Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts (388 U.S. 130) for matters of their public conduct. We frame our coverage accordingly.
For UK-domiciled subjects, the public-figure shield is weaker. We currently restrict coverage of UK-domiciled living individuals to those named in published regulatory findings or court rulings.
§3Sub-judice
Pre-verdict criminal cases and active appeals are framed using "alleged", "charged with", "according to the indictment", or "per the DPA". We do not assert guilt in pre-verdict frames.
For settled cases — guilty pleas, signed DPAs, or final judgments — facts as established in the public record may be stated directly.
§4Fact-check protocol
Every claim in every script passes a two-model verification chain before recording. The drafting model writes the claim with a primary-source URL and quoted excerpt; a second model independently re-fetches the source and verifies the quote and locator.
Claims that fail verification are revised or removed before publication. Claims for which we cannot locate a primary source are not published.
§5AI disclosure
The Filings is AI-assisted, not AI-authored. The editorial signature, fact-check chain, and final approval at concept, script, and render stages are human.
Narration uses ElevenLabs voice synthesis. Per YouTube's "altered or synthetic content" policy effective 2025-07-15, every uploaded episode carries the synthetic-content metadata flag.
§6Corrections
Errors of fact are corrected in the article and noted in a dated correction notice at the bottom of the page.
Material errors — those affecting the central claim of an episode — also receive a correction acknowledged in the next episode's opening.
Send corrections to corrections@thefilings.tv with subject "[CORRECTION]" and the episode number.