Editorial standards

What we do

Bench Watch closes the gap between the courtroom and everyday life. We report on and explain cases from criminal trials and sentencings to civil rights litigation, death penalty cases and wrongful convictions, and the judges who decide them. We tie every story to the court record, show readers the documents behind it, and explain every legal term in everyday language the first time we use it.

Independence and conflicts of interest

By Racheal Blackmore LLC owns Bench Watch. If we ever take on a sponsor, we name it on our About page. Sponsors and advertisers have no say over what we cover or how.

Staff and contributors disclose any relationship with a party, lawyer, judge or organization involved in a case they cover. If the relationship is significant, someone else covers the case. When a disclosure is relevant to readers, it appears on the story.

We do not accept payment, gifts or favors from parties to cases we cover. We never charge anyone to change, remove or delay a story.

Our ethics

We follow the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent. Where this page is stricter than that code, this page governs.

Verification

• Every factual claim about what a person did comes from a court record, an official statement or an on-the-record source, and the story says which.
• We read the documents ourselves. We link to primary sources whenever we can, and list them at the end of each story and on each case page.
• When we rely on another outlet's reporting, we credit and link to it, and we do not repeat its allegations as our own findings.
• We check every story against these standards before we publish it.

The presumption of innocence

People charged with crimes are presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Until a conviction, we describe people as charged, accused or alleged, and we write “charged” only when a charging document exists. This applies to headlines, summaries, photo captions, newsletters and social media posts as much as to story text.

We use person-first language: “a person convicted of robbery,” not “a robber”; “a man held at the county jail,” not “an inmate.” We report acquittals, dismissals and overturned convictions as prominently as we reported the charges.

Right of reply

Before we publish a story that accuses someone of wrongdoing, we contact them or their lawyer and give them a fair chance to respond. The story reports their response, or that they did not respond, and how long we gave them.

People we do not name

We do not name or publish identifying details of:

• survivors of sexual assault, unless they choose to use their names on the record;
• minors who are victims, witnesses or defendants. When a minor's words are part of the public court record, said or read aloud in open court, such as testimony or a victim-impact statement, we may report them. We name the minor by first name only, and only if someone used that first name on the record. We may name a minor charged as an adult in full. An editor approves each case and records why it serves readers. The rule on survivors of sexual assault above always comes first;
• jurors, while a case is pending;
• confidential informants;
• relatives of a defendant or victim who are not themselves part of the case, unless they speak to us on the record.

When naming a defendant would identify a child victim, for example because the defendant is the child's parent or sibling, we withhold the defendant's name and the family relationship. We still report the case, the charges and the outcome. In our trackers, such a case appears with only the county and the words “name withheld to protect a child.” This rule protects living children. When a child victim has died, we may name a convicted defendant, but we never name the child or any surviving brothers or sisters.

An editor approves any exception, writes it down and keeps it on file.

Content notes

When our coverage involves violence, abuse, sexual violence, suicide or harm to children, we put a short, specific note at the top, before any images, with a way to get help right away.

Sealed, expunged and juvenile records

We do not publish, quote or link to records a court has sealed or expunged, or to juvenile records. If we learn that a court has sealed or expunged a case we covered, we review our coverage under our unpublishing policy.

Booking photos (mugshots)

We publish booking photos only of people who have been convicted, or of people police are looking for who pose a danger to the public. We do not use booking photos to illustrate arrests for minor offenses.

Images, video and AI

Every image on Bench Watch is our own, licensed from a news agency, openly licensed (such as Creative Commons), a public-domain government work, or part of a public court record, and we credit it. We do not take images from search results, social media or other publications. We do not alter photographs beyond standard cropping and exposure, and we never publish AI-generated images or audio that depict real people or events. See how we use AI tools.

News

News reports what happened, sourced and attributed. It does not contain the writer's opinion. Inside our news stories, Bench Watch Breakdowns explain legal terms and how the law works; they explain, they don't argue.

Anonymous sources

We prefer named sources. We grant anonymity only when the information is important, we can't get it on the record, and the source faces real risk if named. An editor must know the source's identity and approve. We say in the story why we granted the source anonymity. We do not let anonymous sources make personal attacks or accusations we cannot otherwise verify.

Legal review

Stories that make new accusations not already in a court record, rely on anonymous sources for allegations, or draw a legal threat get a second, line-by-line check against these standards before we publish them. When we can, we also ask for outside legal guidance.

What we cover, and diverse voices

We choose cases for their effect on people's rights and on how justice works, not for shock value. We seek out the perspectives of the people most affected by the courts, including defendants, victims and their families, and communities that are over-policed or under-protected, and we track whose cases we cover so our coverage does not repeat the biases we report on.

Sponsors and advertising

We label any sponsored content “Sponsored” above the headline, and people outside Bench Watch write it. We mark affiliate links. Sponsors never review stories before publication.

Corrections

We correct errors quickly and openly. See our corrections policy.

Questions about these standards

Email hello@bench-watch.org.