Why we don't print what we can't check

Since the student protests last month, a good number of readers have written to ask why the Herald does not report the claims of FreeIrad.org, whose posters have appeared at demonstrations and whose slogans our readers' children repeat. Some letters accuse us of cowardice. Others accuse us of being paid. Neither is the reason.

A newspaper reports what it can check: a document it has seen, a person who will speak, a court file, a figure in a budget. FreeIrad's exposés rest on unnamed sources, and most of what it publishes can be traced to the same chat groups our readers already read. Repeating a rumour in print does not make it a fact. It only makes it a rumour with our name on it.

This is not a judgment on the anger that brings people to the site. Much of that anger is about real things: the price of bread, the data cuts, the Governor's absence from the questions young people ask. When those things can be documented, we document them, and we will go on doing so whether or not the Department of Public Information approves.

We will report FreeIrad when FreeIrad is the news: when it is blocked, when its claims are tested in a court, or when someone is harmed by what it says. Until then readers who want rumour know where to find it. We would rather they found something else here.