What guides us

Below is documentation on how our publication operates with guidelines on how we will use Artificial Intelligence, our style guide that demonstrates our deviations to the AP Style Guide (to come), our ethical framework and other documentation that we use to run internal affairs. If you have any concerns, or have any suggestions, we’d be happy to hear them to our email: thecaliforniacampus@gmail.com, with the subject line corresponding to the section you are reaching out about.

AI Guidelines

Created with the guidance of Poynter Institutes AI Ethics Guidebook Template

Last updated: March 19 2025

Generative artificial intelligence is the use of large language models to create something new, such as text, images, graphics and interactive media. Although generative AI has the potential to improve newsgathering, it also has the potential to harm journalists’ credibility and our unique relationship with our audience.

As we proceed, the following five core values will guide our work. These principles apply explicitly to the newsroom and throughout other non-news departments including creative content, social media, multimedia, and marketing materials.

At The California Campus we plan to explicitly follow these guidelines, however we intend to keep AI out of all public facing copy, and may use it for newsgathering purposes including transcriptions services, document analysis, and similar uses – though any deviations from those uses will be clearly noted.

Transparency - both internal and external.

Externally, as we use AI in our journalism, we will document and describe the tools with specificity. When AI tools influence audience-facing content, we will tell the audience in ways that both disclose and educate news consumers. We will work with editors and designers to create disclosures that are precise in language without being onerous to our audience.

This may be a short tagline, a caption or credit, or for something more substantial, an editor’s note. When appropriate, we will include the prompts that are fed into the model to generate the material.

A tagline or editor's note might look like this: (add in specific example.)

Our transparency works on multiple levels. Internally, it facilitates conversation and creativity. It will be clear to our peers and our bosses whenever we are using generative AI. This will facilitate collective learning and help us create applicable, transitory policies as the use of AI technologies evolve.

Externally, communication and disclosure ideally create opportunities to get feedback from the audience, as well as educate consumers. As journalists, part of our job is to empower the audience with news literacy skills. AI literacy – understanding how generative AI works, what benefits it brings to the information ecosystem and how to avoid AI-generated misinformation – is a newer subset of news literacy, and is one that is ever evolving and changing as the lines between human and machine continue to blur.

Accuracy and human verification - All information generated by AI requires human verification. Everything we publish will live up to our standards of verification. Increasingly in all of our work, it is important to be explicit about how we know facts are facts. This will be particularly important when using AI. For example, an editor should review prompts, and any other inputs used to generate a story or other material. And, everything should be replicable.

Audience service - Our work in AI should be guided by what will be useful to our audience as we serve them. We have made a promise to our audience to provide them with information that [fill in reference to newsroom’s basic mission statement].

Privacy and security - Our relationship with our audience is rooted in trust and respect. To that end, as we utilize AI to customize content or develop products that alter the way content is delivered, we will protect our audience’s data in accordance with our newsroom’s privacy policies. Most privacy policies forbid entering sensitive or identifying information about users, sources or even our own staff into any generative AI tools.

As technology advances and opportunities to customize content for users arise, we will be explicit about how your data is collected — in accordance with our organization’s privacy policy — and how it was used to personalize your experience.

Therefore, we will disclose any editorial content that has been created and distributed based on that personalization.

Exploration - With the four previous principles as our foundation, we will embrace exploration and experimentation. We should strive to invest in newsroom training — internal or external — so every staff member is knowledgeable in generative AI tools.

Tools to use, tools to avoid

• Encourage the use of programs whose uses are specified for transcriptions (like Otter AI), and Google Pinpoint. Often these programs have AI embedded into their services, and are permissible, however any specific use of AI, like ChatGPT will not be accepted in our newsroom, or any work that is submitted.

Entering our content: We forbid the entering of ANY and all of our content into any LLMs, or scraped for any training uses.

Editorial use:

Generative AI is generally permitted for the following purposes with very specific stipulations on when and how.

Research - We will not ask a publicly available large language model to research a topic. Due to the fact that it is fairly common for AI to “hallucinate” information, including facts, biographical information, and even newspaper citations.

Headline experimentation - Asking AI to generate headlines is a form of research. The same caveats apply. Also, be sure to put enough facts into the prompt that the headline is based on our journalism and not other reporting.

Summary paragraphs - Do not use AI to generate article summaries that appear at the top of our work. Our policy below is that we do not enter our content into any large language models, and we do not permit the use of our work for any LLM model training.

Searching and assembling data - You are permitted to use AI to search for information, mine public databases or assemble and calculate statistics that would be useful to our audience. Any data analysis should be checked by an editor and thoroughly fact checked and verified.

Visuals - Do not use any generative AI service to create illustrations for publication. All art will be photography, visuals and graphic designs by people.

Do not use AI to manipulate photos in any case. Visual journalists need to be aware of software updates to photo processing tools to ensure AI-enhancement is not/is being used according to our policies. Do not publish any reader submitted content without first verifying its authenticity and confirming no AI materials were used to create public facing copy.

Fact-checking

• We do not allow for the use of AI for independent fact-checking. Facts should be checked against multiple authoritative sources that have been created, edited or curated by human beings. A single source is generally not sufficient; information should be checked against multiple sources.

Social media use

Use of verbatim GPT content is not permitted on our social channels.

• The California Campus will regularly conduct content audits to ensure social copy/posts meet ethical guidelines and avoid any uses of AI generated materials. This will include any material that is reposted as partner content or sharing work from another publication.

Privacy and security

• No personal information from your staff or our readers should be entered into programs

• None of our intellectual property should be entered into a program, outside of what is outlined above.

• Any staff working with AI tools in our newsroom have a clear understanding of our organization’s privacy policy and AI guidelines.

Technology and AI

Our team is committed to understanding and staying up to date with all tools, software or companies we use or partner with. We will:

• Vet third-party vendors and their usage policies before testing any AI products or LLMs.

• We will ensure any product we use adheres to our own data and privacy policies.

• Perform comprehensive testing on all software and tools for reliability and accuracy before using them for any consumer-facing content.

• Ensure all software settings are correct, and in accordance with our policies, before using any LLM.

• Keep up-to-date on the latest software updates for products we do use.

• Provide best-practices, documentation or training for new tools to internal users.

Updates

March 19 2025:

A first draft of The California Campus AI guidelines was created, with certain portions highlighted internally for further discussion as this document continues to evolve as issues arise and conditions change.

Ethical Standards and Behavioral Guide at The California Campus

As an organization we are focused on providing high quality fact-driven trustworthy journalism to our readers. Throughout this guide, we will explain how ethics drive The California Campus as a whole from our editorial decisions, to the conduct of our writers and how we will handle interactions with all of our sources. If you have any suggestions, questions, or concerns, we’d be happy to hear from you, as we intend for this document to be “alive” and always in flux especially when new situations arise, something is too vague, or becomes obsolete in the early days of The California Campus.

Section 1: Editorial Independence, Responsibility and Overall Ethics

The editorial independence of The California Campus is our most important goal, and paramount to obtaining the trust of our readers and sources. By upholding our commitment to our readers, we must operate without external influences from colleges, students and others who may want to shape and impact our work as a publication.

At the start of The California Campus we have two current student journalists, who both have experience in many journalistic situations and who are committed to covering stories that are important to our readers, sparking open conversations and questions — even as America falls deeper into authoritarianism and the censorship of many ideas.

We ensure that stories dealing with topics that fall under news and especially investigations are written in a professional manner and in an unbiased way. No matter the situation we face, we will bring you fact based and truthful journalism in a time marred by mis-and-dis-information.

• The editorial team has the authority to make all decisions in terms of content to ensure there is no outside influence.

• Our journalists must avoid situations where personal and non-publication interests could influence any internal bias, or any influence from outside parties.

• We will make sure that all subjects in our news stories are covered fairly, treated with respect by our journalists and given ample time to respond to any allegations that are brought against them no matter your position.

• All of our work prior to publication will be checked for errors, including data used in publication, our quotes will be inspected for accuracy and any errors.

• Any errors that make it to published work will be fixed transparently and quickly addressed.

• Journalists at The California Campus must be ethical in their work. This includes no fabrications, plagiarism, or obtaining information in deceptive manners.

• No story should be written in a way that makes any of the context of our stories obscure. Additionally journalists are expected to avoid using phrases and words that take away from the intent of the story.

Section 2: Corrections, Retractions and Clarifications

As The California Campus defined in its previous section the trust of our readers is paramount and is a requirement for any publication wishing to maintain an open and transparent organization. Below we will lay out how we will address corrections, retractions and further clarifying our work if necessary after publication. For issues related to corrections, clarifications and retractions please reach out to Co-EIC Seamus Bozeman at sbozeman.tcc@gmail.com

• Any errors or omissions that are made in our stories will be corrected as soon as they’re brought to our attention.

• Both clarifications and corrections will be noted at the top of the story where it is necessary.

• Corrections will include what was previously incorrect so readers are clear where we made a mistake in our work. Ex: We misspelled Seamus Bozeman’s name, we originally wrote “Sheamus.” We apologize for the error.

• On the other hand clarifications will be made on their own and will not include what was clarified, and will include a timestamp when it was done. Ex: Article was published at 10:00 a.m., this story was updated at 12:00 p.m. to reflect a clarification that would make the article more understandable that was not caught in the pre-publication editing process. Feel free to reach out to us if you wish to see the exact spot where our clarification was made.

• We hope to never encounter a time when we have to retract a story, but in the case it does, we will immediately follow up on our rationale for the retraction in a separate story and will explain why the retraction was requested and a reflection from our editorial team on the story.

• We will not hold back at all when it comes to corrections, clarifications and retractions, so please reach out if anything is wrong or you feel something is especially unclear. We aim to be as transparent as a publication can be.

• Even with our goal of full transparency, we will not make corrections, or retractions under pressure from outside influence unless there is clear evidence of what was incorrect.

Section 3: The Ethics of Creative Work

At The California Campus we intend to not just be your typical newspaper, we want to also be hosts for creative work, and the expressiveness of the human mind beyond the confines of a news story, a feature, an opinion piece, or your usual lifestyle story. But within that there are still limits to what we can and cannot do as an ethical publication.

We will limit hateful views and violence within the creative work unless it has a specific and meaningful value, which will be determined by the editorial board. Any works that could be potentially triggering will be noted at the top of the writing, the audio or in the title of the artwork, so our readers and viewers can make that decision for themselves with the knowledge of conceivably provoking artwork or text.

These rules are not meant to be censorship, it only works to make sure that we have a safe space for everyone. If you have any concerns about what we’ve published, don’t hesitate to reach out. Feedback is essential for an open and transparent editorial operation, especially when it comes to our creative work.

We will accept no work with anything that is entirely AI generated. We may accept work that heavily modifies an AI creation, however a note, similar to the trigger notice is required so we ensure full transparency when AI is used. Despite the consideration of AI in creative work, any AI will be subject to an approval by the editorial board.

We have a full guide to our AI ethics that covers this subject in more depth.

Section 4: Sources

Sources are incredibly important to journalism, and here at The California Campus. In this section we will cover how we are going to interact with sources, set our ethical standards on no gifts, no monetary transactions or anything that could be viewed as a bribe, either externally or internally. At The California Campus we will ensure that we maintain professional relationships with our sources, and will not do anything to “cozy” up to the source, especially to get preferential treatment or getting information that we should not be privy to.

Below are some of the boundaries that we have when it comes to source protections and our own ethics, however it is important to make sure it's abundantly clear that we will not show any of our sources our stories before publication.

1. No gifts of any size

• Journalists at The California Campus will not accept any gifts, whether that is a small mug, special entrance to a paid event, any free travel or anything that could be seen as a bribe or preferential treatment. But we do accept invites to press events that are free, or that we pay to enter.

• We will also not be offering anything to our sources for tips or inside information, or anything in order to get ahead of any other publications.

2. No monetary transactions

1. Similar to the policy of giving gifts, we will not take any monetary transactions from our sources, or make any payments to our sources.

2. We will not ask, or allow for sources to buy us anything. We will always operate independently of anything that could bring any possibility of bias or giving extra weight to any of our sources in our stories.

3. Interactions with sources

1. The California Campus will keep all interactions with our sources respectful and non-conditional. We aim to keep all our intentions in full transparency with our sources.

2. We aim to make sure that our questions and our journalism accurately represents what the source has told us.

3. We do not edit the meaning of what our sources say, but will edit quotes for clarity and will add brackets if necessary to make it clear for our readers.

4. Anonymous sourcing

In a time when journalism has historically low levels of trust from the public, we are very clear on how we will use anonymous sources and the strict boundaries that we require to allow for this level of protection and secrecy. However, we understand the constantly changing dynamics of journalism and the need to protect certain groups under an increasingly authoritarian regime here in the U.S.

1. We will take steps to protect the identities of people who may be impacted by speaking on issues that may risk their safety from ICE or other governmental agencies. Some examples are students in the pro-Palestine movement, immigrants and other at risk groups.

2. We will protect sources speaking on sensitive college information, or other administrative issues that could risk their position, however they have to prove why the information should come from an “unnamed” source. We will not publish or take tips when we have no proof of the source's identity. See our about page on how to contact us securely.

3. All uses of anonymous sources will be scrutinized by the editorial team and discussed before being used in publicly facing copy, or before those protections are promised to a source.

4. We will always explain why our source is being protected for the sake of transparency and the trustworthiness of our work.

5. On and off the record

1. At The California Campus we are striving to maintain the highest standards of journalism possible, including when it comes to interviewing our sources and defining very clearly what’s on the record versus what’s off the record.

2. In the state where we operate – California – it is what is called a two party consent state, which mandates that both the source and the journalist have to be fully clear that the conversation is recorded, or not.

3. When in conversation, The California Campus and its journalists will ensure that it is mutually understood when information is going to be used as on the record or to be used as background and not directly attributed to the source.

4. We will not make any secret recordings of our sources, or interviews when it is mutually agreed that the forthcoming conversation is off the record. It is both illegal in California and unethical.

5. All written correspondence, whether over email or any other form of non-voice communications are on the record unless specifically noted by the source.

6. All documents provided to The California Campus are subject to the same rules as above. We will not use any documents in our stories without the written or recorded approval of our sources, unless it is obtained through public databases, The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the California Public Records Act (CPRA), or any form of public records request.

6. Source protections

1. Similar to our commitment to protect the identity of our anonymous sources, we will work hard to protect our sources that go on the record from scrutiny, law enforcement or anyone considering litigation for any reason.

Section 5: Republication and How We Vet Submissions

At The California Campus our goal is to work with other publications, republish their work and writers who wish to submit either creative projects. However, like everything published here, it will be subjected to its own rules and ethical standards.

• We will ensure that each article considered for publication from other student media organizations holds the same standards here at The California Campus.

• We will ensure that each story that is submitted by a writer not officially on staff at The California Campus is subject to the same standards and that there are no factual omissions, plagiarism, AI, or anything that could violate our ethical standards policies.

The California Campus created this standards page based off of a combination of publicly available ethics guides from LAist, The Pasadena City College Courier, The Society of Professional Journalists and the Public Media Code of Integrity. We thank them all for their in-depth guides on ethics in journalism and their hard work to ensure our profession stays true to its mission and away from the torrent of dis-and-misinformation and in the age of AI.