Editorial standards

Where our facts come from

Every story is placed somewhere on a four-step ladder before it is written, and the bottom rung never runs.

• Official or documented. A studio, network, or talent announcement, an SEC filing, a court record, a named on-record interview, verified box-office reporting. We link it and state it plainly.
• Trade reporting. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline. Genuinely reported and usually right, but not infallible, and their exclusives are often placed by someone with an interest in placing them. We credit and link them in the first two paragraphs so you can weigh the source yourself.
• Single outlet, unconfirmed. Runs only when the article says so in the body, naming who reported it and stating that the studio has not commented and we have not confirmed it independently.
• Scoopers and social rumor. Anonymous insider accounts, unverified casting grids, leak aggregators. Not publishable here, even with a disclaimer, and even when everyone else is running it. These accounts survive on volume; being right occasionally is the business model, and repeating them is how a rumor becomes widely reported.

Leaks

We do not publish material taken from a hack, a breach, or a stolen screener. That covers plot details, scripts, unreleased footage, and internal documents, and it covers describing their contents as well as reproducing them. Someone else running it first does not change that.

Business information that is legitimately documented is different. A budget in a filing or a disclosure in litigation is fair game when it is on the record and newsworthy.

Spoilers

A spoiler never appears in a headline, in the story's summary, in a social post, or in the opening of a piece. Those are the places you cannot choose to avoid.

When a story cannot be told without one, the article says so before it tells it, and the spoiler sits below that warning. You should never learn how something ends because you read the first line of an article about it.

The people we write about

Everyone we cover is a person doing a job, and the job is the subject.

• The work is what gets criticized. A performance is fair to judge. A performer's body, face, age, weight, sexuality, health, or private relationships are never our material.
• No outing, in any framing. Not as speculation, not as celebration, not as reporting on someone else's speculation.
• Allegations are reported as documented. A filed suit, a formal charge, or an on-record account in a credible outlet. We use "alleged" accurately, link the record, and never imply a conclusion the record does not support.
• Death and illness are confirmed first. Through an official statement or the family. Never from a trending topic.
• Right of reply. If a piece is critical of a named individual's conduct, we approach them and say in the piece that we did.

Reviews and money

Reviews end in a recommendation rather than a number. A score compresses a judgment into a digit and starts an argument about the digit, when the useful answer is who this is for and who should skip it.

Screeners, festival access, and press events are disclosed in the piece. Affiliate links are disclosed at the top, before the first one appears. Sponsored content is labeled as sponsored and never as partner content or anything else designed to blur it.

Nobody buys coverage or a verdict here. That one is not negotiable.

Who owns this, and how it is paid for

Screen Chronicle is independently owned. There are no investors, no parent company, no grants, and no outside funding of any kind. No studio, network, or distributor has any stake in this publication, and nobody outside it has a claim on what it covers or what it concludes.

The money comes from affiliate commissions on store links, and that is the whole of it. No display advertising, no sponsored posts, no paid placements, and no arrangement anywhere in which coverage is the product being sold.

This is worth saying plainly, because who pays for a publication is a fair thing to ask before trusting one, and on a beat where access is currency it is the question that matters most. Ours is short: readers who choose to buy something through a link, and nobody else.

Who writes this

Screen Chronicle publishes in a collective voice, so there is no byline on a story. The publication stands behind all of them rather than splitting responsibility between names.

That puts the weight of trust on the publication, which is why this page is written this plainly. If we fall short of any of it, tell us at contact@screenchronicle.com and it becomes a correction rather than an argument.