Editorial policy

How articles are made

IndiaFocal's articles are written by an automated editorial engine, not by a newsroom of reporters typing up their own copy. Articles reach the site by three routes, and they are not the same thing — so we describe them separately rather than as one blanket process.

English originals from the engine

The engine drafts the piece in English from cited, published sources — wire reports, government releases, and other published reporting — and publishes it with one of the three labels below. These articles are not translations of anything: there is no Hindi original, no translation disclosure, and no link across to Manthan.

The engine writes only from the sources it cites. That is not a promise that every claim in every article is correct — it's exactly why the automated claims-check exists, to catch statements that don't hold up against those sources, and why articles carry the labels below instead of one blanket promise.

Reproduced government text

Some articles are not written by the engine at all. Press Information Bureau releases and PRS Legislative Research bill summaries are primary government documents, published for reproduction, and we carry them as the government's own text rather than rewriting them into engine prose. These come only from that named list of official sources — nothing else is reproduced this way. Because no independent checking has been done on them, they carry the AI-generated · review pending label, and the article names its source.

Translations of Manthan's Hindi reporting

Some articles began as reporting published in Hindi on Manthan News and were translated into English by machine. Only these carry the translation disclosure, and only these link across to a Hindi original. See Translation below.

A fourth route — reporting written in English by IndiaFocal staff — is planned but not open yet. Nothing on the site today is staff-written reporting, and this page will say so plainly when that changes.

Translation

Some IndiaFocal articles began as Hindi-language reporting on Manthan News and were translated into English by machine, not by a human translator. Those articles — and only those — carry this line: “Translated from the Hindi original · translation AI-generated”. An article without that line was written in English from the start, or is reproduced government text; it was never translated, so there is nothing to disclose.

That disclosure means exactly what it says: the original reporting was done in Hindi, and what you're reading is an AI translation of it — not an independent piece of reporting written in English. Translated articles carry a link across to the Hindi original on Manthan News, so you can read the source version.

The three labels

Every article on IndiaFocal carries exactly one of three labels, and each label describes that one article only — never the site as a whole.

Editorially verified appears only when a human editor has read and approved the article in its original language, before or at the moment of publication. It is never applied by software. If you see this label, a person put it there. Editorial sign-off of that kind belongs to the staff-written lane, which is not open yet — so this label is rare on IndiaFocal today, and its absence on an article is not a mark against that article.

Claims checked against sources means an automated reviewer re-checked every factual claim in the article against real, cited sources. That is a genuine check — the claims have been verified — but no person read the article as a whole before it went out. This label is deliberately not the green Editorially verified seal, and the two should not be read as equivalent.

AI-generated · review pending is the default state: the article was written by the engine and published, and no review — human or automated — has happened yet.

We will never apply the green seal without a human editor's sign-off, and we will never describe automated review as editorial review. If an article doesn't carry Editorially verified, no one at IndiaFocal is claiming a person read it.

Images

Images work under the same rule as text: nothing is presented as something it isn't.

• An image the engine generated carries the caption “AI-generated illustration” wherever it appears.
• A stock or file photo used to illustrate a story it doesn't literally depict is captioned “Representative image”, with a photo credit where we have one.

Neither kind of image is presented as a photograph taken at the scene described in the article.

Corrections

If you find something wrong in an article — a fact, a name, a figure — tell us. Email corrections@indiafocal.com with the article link and what's wrong. Our policy is to fix the article itself once a correction is confirmed, and to note on it that a correction was made — not to quietly edit it and say nothing.