How our publications are produced, reviewed and published

Scope. This policy applies to every title operated by The News Collective (UAE Media Licence No. 47033817), including FootballNews.ae, GolfNews.ae, DubaiGolfGuide.com, Dubaigolf.se, JobNews.ae and the news sections we power for partner brands. Individual titles may add stricter rules; none may apply looser ones.

1. What we are — and what we are not

The News Collective is a digital content promotion and marketing platform. Our primary role is to monitor, summarise, structure and highlight information that has already been published elsewhere, and to link readers to the original source so the original publisher receives the traffic and the credit.

• We do not operate a newsroom and do not employ reporters or correspondents.
• We do not conduct original investigative reporting or break exclusives.
• We do not claim ownership of third-party reporting we summarise.
• We do not publish content that is presented as first-hand reporting when it is not.

2. Source policy

Every item we publish must trace back to at least one identifiable source. Sources are classified before use:

• Primary / official. Governing bodies, leagues, tours, clubs, regulators, government entities, listed companies, developers and employers publishing about themselves. Highest trust for factual claims.
• Established media. Recognised news organisations with a public corrections process. Used with attribution and a link.
• Structured data providers. Fixtures, results, standings, listings and similar machine-readable feeds. Used for factual data, never for narrative claims.
• Low-trust / excluded. Aggregators without attribution, anonymous accounts, scraped content of unclear origin and known unreliable outlets. Not published.

Single-source claims about people, employers, transfers, prices or legal matters are marked as reported by that source, never stated as established fact. Where sources conflict, we present the disagreement rather than choosing silently.

3. Attribution and linking

• The originating outlet or body is named in the article body, not only in metadata.
• An outbound link to the original item is included wherever one exists publicly.
• We summarise; we do not republish articles in full or reproduce paywalled text.
• Quotes are reproduced verbatim and attributed to the source that obtained them.
• Images carry creator and licence attribution where the licence requires it. See source and image attribution.

4. How the pipeline works

Our production system runs in defined stages. Each stage is recorded, so any published item can be traced back to the exact inputs that produced it.

1. Ingestion. Approved sources and data feeds are polled on a schedule. Nothing is ingested from sources outside the approved list.
2. Clustering. Items covering the same underlying event are grouped so we can see how many independent sources support a claim.
3. Routing. A cluster is assigned to the publication whose audience it is relevant to. Cross-posting the same text across titles is avoided; each title gets its own framing.
4. Drafting. AI-assisted tooling produces a summary draft strictly from the ingested source material, together with the source list, attribution and suggested imagery.
5. Automated checks. Drafts are blocked when attribution is missing, when a claim has no supporting source, when imagery lacks a usable licence, or when the subject matter falls into a restricted category (see section 6).
6. Human review and release. A responsible person reviews the queue and releases, edits or rejects the draft. Release is a human action.
7. Post-publication monitoring. Updates to a story and corrections are applied to the original item rather than published as a silent replacement.

5. AI and automation — what the machine does and does not do

We are explicit about this because most of our workflow is automated. Automation is infrastructure; it is not an editorial authority.

AI-assisted tooling is used to:

• Monitor and de-duplicate source material.
• Summarise already-published material into shorter reader-facing text.
• Translate and adapt language for a specific audience.
• Suggest headlines, categories, tags and internal links.
• Structure factual data such as fixtures, results, standings and job listings.

AI-assisted tooling is never used to:

• Invent facts, quotes, statistics, sources or events.
• Generate photorealistic imagery presented as documentary photography.
• Assert something as confirmed when the underlying sources do not.
• Decide, on its own, that an item may be published.

Where an article is materially produced with AI assistance, that is disclosed to readers. Fuller detail on our approach is on the AI & automation transparency page.

6. Restricted subject matter

Some subjects are never released automatically and require deliberate human judgement before publication:

• Deaths, injuries, accidents and crime.
• Legal proceedings, investigations and allegations against named individuals.
• Health and medical claims.
• Financial, property or investment claims that a reader could act on.
• Employment claims about named employers, salaries or visa and labour rules.
• Politics, religion and national security matters.
• Minors and private individuals who are not public figures.

7. Accuracy, corrections and updates

• Factual errors are corrected as soon as they are identified.
• Substantive corrections are noted on the article itself, with what changed and when.
• Items that cannot be substantiated after publication are corrected or removed.
• Readers can report an error at any time via our contact page or by writing to hello@thenewscollective.ae. Full process: corrections policy.

8. Independence, commercial content and partners

• Commercial relationships never influence factual conclusions.
• Sponsored, affiliate and partner content is labelled as such and kept visually distinct.
• Where we power a news section for a partner brand, the same standards and this policy apply to that content.
• We do not accept payment to remove or suppress accurate published information.

9. Rights, privacy and takedowns

If you are a rights holder, or the subject of an item, and believe we have used material without permission or published something inaccurate about you, contact hello@thenewscollective.ae with the URL and the specific issue. Requests are reviewed and answered, and material is removed where a claim is valid.

10. Governance and review

Responsibility for this policy sits with the licence holder of The News Collective, not with any automated component. Source lists, restricted categories and automated checks are reviewed as the network grows, and every publishing action is logged for auditability.

The News Collective — UAE Media Licence No. 47033817. Registered address: RAKEZ Business Zone-FZ, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates. Contact: hello@thenewscollective.ae.

The News Collective is a digital content promotion and marketing platform. Content is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, employment or investment advice. Trademarks and reporting belong to their respective owners.