Editorial Policy

How SCV Daily Brief reports the news:

Primary sources only. Our articles are written from official public records and releases: city and county agencies, law enforcement alerts, school districts, and public utilities. We do not rewrite other news outlets’ stories. If a fact is not in a primary source, it does not go in our article.

Original writing. Every article is written in our own words from a verified fact sheet. Names, dates, times, addresses and figures are checked against the source before publishing, and every article carries a link to that source.

AI-assisted drafting, human standards. We use software, including AI tools, to monitor public sources and help draft articles. The rules those drafts must meet — factual accuracy, source attribution, and the standards on this page — are set by our publisher, and articles that do not meet them are not published.

Crime and public safety reporting. A person who is arrested is accused of a crime, not convicted of one, and we write it that way. We do not name minors in crime stories. Missing-person reports are followed up, and the article is updated when the person is located.

No scraped photos. We do not copy photographs from other publications or agency social media. Articles use our own graphics or none.

Corrections. When we get something wrong, we fix it visibly — the article is corrected and a correction note is added. See our Corrections page.

Independence. Coverage is not for sale. Advertisers and sponsors have no say in what we publish; sponsored placements are always labeled.