Editorial Standards and Corrections Policy

Applicable to Frayed and all current or future November 8 Studios productions

Policy owner

November 8 Studios, LLC

Responsible editor

Bobbi Short, Sole Member and Managing Editor

Effective date

July 18, 2026

Editorial contact

november8studios@hotmail.com

1. Purpose, Status, and Scope

This Policy establishes mandatory internal editorial requirements for November 8 Studios, LLC (the “Company”), including Frayed, its website, podcasts, transcripts, episode descriptions, social-media content, promotional materials, newsletters, video, photographs, graphics, and any other content published, distributed, or controlled by the Company (“Content”).

This Policy is an internal governance and risk-management instrument. It is binding on the Company’s owners, employees, contractors, researchers, writers, editors, producers, hosts, and other contributors only to the extent incorporated into their duties, contracts, acknowledgments, or written Company directives. It does not create contractual rights in listeners, subjects, sources, guests, or other third parties; does not promise error-free publication; and does not waive any legal right, defense, privilege, immunity, or editorial discretion.

Nothing in this Policy substitutes for advice from qualified media counsel. Content presenting heightened risk—including accusations against living persons, disputed allegations, confidential material, leaked records, private facts, minors, sexual abuse, graphic evidence, pending litigation, or uncertain copyright status—must receive enhanced review and, when reasonably warranted, prepublication legal review.

2. Core Editorial Commitments

• Accuracy before speed. Material facts must be supported by reliable evidence and fairly presented in context.

• Clear attribution. Allegations, findings, opinions, diagnoses, claims, and disputed facts must be attributed to the person, record, agency, court, or publication responsible for them.

• Fairness and meaningful context. Content must not distort through selective quotation, misleading editing, omission of material context, sensational framing, or false equivalence.

• Independence. Editorial decisions must not be purchased, dictated by sponsors, or altered to reward or punish a person, institution, political position, advertiser, source, or audience segment.

• Human dignity and harm minimization. The Company will report truthfully while avoiding gratuitous humiliation, exploitation, graphic detail, or intrusion that does not materially advance the public-interest purpose.

• Accountability and transparency. Material mistakes will be investigated, corrected, and documented promptly and visibly.

3. Evidence and Source Standards

3.1 Source hierarchy

Editors should give the greatest weight to primary and official material, while recognizing that official records may contain allegations, errors, omissions, or advocacy positions. The preferred source order is:

1. Final judicial opinions, filed court records, sworn testimony, statutes, regulations, official audits, authenticated government records, and records produced through lawful public-records processes.

2. Contemporaneous records such as police reports, dispatch records, medical examiner findings, agency records, recordings, photographs, letters, messages, and other authenticated documentary evidence.

3. On-record interviews with firsthand witnesses, participants, qualified experts, attorneys, investigators, family members, or institutional representatives.

4. Credible secondary reporting, books, documentaries, academic research, and archival sources whose relevant claims can be traced and corroborated.

5. Anonymous, pseudonymous, social-media, crowd-sourced, AI-generated, or unverified material only as a lead unless independently verified and approved under this Policy.

3.2 Verification requirements

• Every material factual assertion must have a documented source. High-risk claims should ordinarily be supported by at least two independent reliable sources, or by one authoritative primary record that directly establishes the fact.

• Names, dates, ages, locations, quotations, charges, verdicts, sentences, procedural posture, and case outcomes must be checked against the best available primary source.

• A criminal charge, arrest, allegation, civil complaint, agency finding, or accusation must never be presented as proof of guilt or liability. The current procedural status must be stated when material.

• The record must distinguish allegations, disputed accounts, proven facts, judicial findings, expert opinions, editorial analysis, and reasonable inference.

• Quotations must be exact or clearly identified as paraphrases. Ellipses and edits must not change meaning.

• Statistics and scientific or clinical claims must identify the source, relevant population, date, and important limitations when necessary to avoid a misleading impression.

3.3 Anonymous and confidential sources

Anonymous sourcing is disfavored and may be used only when the information is newsworthy, cannot reasonably be obtained on the record, the source has a credible basis of knowledge, identity is known to the responsible editor, and the risk of deception has been assessed. The audience must receive as much information as possible about the source’s basis of knowledge and motivation without revealing identity.

No contributor may promise confidentiality without authorization from the responsible editor. Confidentiality promises must be specific, documented, legally realistic, and honored unless disclosure is required by law or the source consents. Source files must be secured and access limited.

4. Fairness, Response, and Attribution

• A living person or active organization facing a materially damaging, new, or disputed allegation should ordinarily receive a meaningful opportunity to respond before publication.

• The request for comment must identify the substance of the allegation, provide a reasonable response deadline under the circumstances, and preserve a record of the outreach.

• No response, refusal to comment, inability to locate, or response received after publication must be described accurately and without editorial insinuation.

• Relevant denials, exculpatory facts, reversals, dismissals, acquittals, appeals, later developments, and credible conflicting evidence must not be omitted when their omission would materially mislead.

• Official-source attribution must remain explicit, particularly when reporting potentially defamatory allegations from complaints, police records, hearings, court filings, or government proceedings.

5. True-Crime and Criminal-Justice Standards

• Use legally accurate labels. Prefer “was arrested,” “was charged,” “prosecutors alleged,” “was convicted,” or “the court found,” rather than language implying guilt beyond the documented status.

• Presumption of innocence applies before conviction. Pending appeals, vacated convictions, retrials, dismissals, expungements, and exonerations must be stated when known and material.

• Do not romanticize offenders, turn violence into entertainment through gratuitous detail, or imply that notoriety is achievement.

• Center victims as people rather than plot devices. Avoid unnecessary repetition of degrading, sexual, or graphic details.

• Do not publish nonpublic addresses, phone numbers, financial information, medical identifiers, private contact information, security details, or other information that creates a foreseeable safety or harassment risk unless an overriding public interest is documented.

• Do not interfere with active investigations, witness safety, juror integrity, court orders, sealed proceedings, or law-enforcement operations.

6. Children, Survivors, and Vulnerable Persons

The Company will apply heightened care to minors, survivors of sexual violence, domestic violence, stalking, exploitation, trafficking, and people with diminished capacity or acute trauma.

• Do not identify a minor victim or survivor of sexual abuse, exploitation, or a protected child witness unless the identity is lawfully public and the responsible editor determines that identification is necessary, proportionate, and ethically justified.

• Do not publish identifying details that indirectly expose a protected or vulnerable person.

• Consent from a parent, guardian, or source does not automatically make publication appropriate.

• Interviews must not be coerced. Contributors must explain the intended use, the on-record status, and that publication may be permanent and widely redistributed.

• Avoid questions, editing, imagery, or promotion designed primarily to provoke distress or spectacle.

• Trauma-informed practice does not mean suppressing verified facts; it means avoiding needless retraumatization and presenting necessary facts with precision and restraint.

7. Mental Health, Disability, and Medical Claims

• The Company does not diagnose individuals and will not present speculation about a person’s mental condition as clinical fact.

• A diagnosis may be reported only when supported by a reliable public record, an authorized statement, or appropriately sourced reporting, and its relevance must be explained.

• Mental illness must not be treated as a synonym for dangerousness or used as a simplistic causal explanation for crime.

• Behavioral analysis must be labeled as analysis, tied to sourced facts, and accompanied by appropriate limits. The host’s professional experience does not convert commentary into an examination, diagnosis, treatment opinion, or forensic evaluation.

• Medical, psychiatric, psychological, legal, or safety information must not be presented as individualized professional advice.

8. Privacy, Newsgathering, and Lawful Acquisition

• Content must be obtained lawfully. Contributors may not trespass, impersonate officials, hack accounts, evade access controls, induce unlawful disclosure, purchase stolen data, or misrepresent material facts to obtain records except with prior written approval from counsel and the responsible editor in extraordinary public-interest circumstances.

• Public availability does not automatically make republication ethical or risk-free. The Company will consider relevance, age, sensitivity, accuracy, the subject’s current status, and foreseeable harm.

• Secret recording, surveillance, or publication of private communications requires advance review for applicable consent, wiretap, privacy, and jurisdictional laws.

• Sealed, expunged, confidential, illegally obtained, or inadvertently disclosed material requires heightened editorial and legal review.

9. Copyright, Plagiarism, and Third-Party Material

• Plagiarism, fabrication, and deceptive editing are prohibited.

• Language, structure, reporting, audio, video, photographs, graphics, music, and other expressive material created by others must be licensed, used with permission, in the public domain, or used only after a documented good-faith fair-use analysis.

• Attribution is required but does not replace permission or establish fair use.

• Clips and quotations must be no longer than editorially necessary and must serve criticism, commentary, reporting, scholarship, or another legitimate transformative purpose.

• No contributor may remove watermarks, falsify provenance, or use material whose source or rights are materially uncertain without approval.

10. Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Media

• Generative AI may assist with organization, transcription, brainstorming, or language review, but may not serve as the sole authority for facts, quotations, citations, legal conclusions, diagnoses, or source verification.

• All AI-assisted factual content must be independently checked against reliable sources by a human editor.

• The Company will not publish fabricated quotations, events, evidence, images, audio, or video in a manner likely to be mistaken for authentic material.

• Materially synthetic or altered media must be clearly labeled when a reasonable audience could otherwise be misled.

• No voice, likeness, image, or identity may be cloned or simulated without documented authority, except for clearly labeled parody, commentary, or other legally reviewed use.

• Confidential, privileged, unpublished, or personally sensitive source material may not be entered into third-party AI systems unless approved and protected by appropriate terms and safeguards.

11. Conflicts, Sponsorships, Gifts, and Independence

• Material financial, personal, professional, political, advocacy, litigation, or family conflicts must be disclosed internally and, when relevant to audience trust, publicly.

• Sponsors and advertisers may not review, approve, suppress, or dictate editorial conclusions.

• Sponsored content, affiliate relationships, paid placements, and material consideration must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed.

• Gifts, payments, travel, services, or benefits that could reasonably compromise independence or create that appearance must be declined or disclosed and approved.

• The Company will not accept payment from a subject in exchange for favorable coverage, removal of accurate reporting, or suppression of a correction.

12. Prepublication Review and Documentation

Before publication, the responsible editor or designee must complete a review proportionate to risk. High-risk content requires a written review record.

1. Confirm the editorial purpose and public-interest basis.

2. Complete a source map or citation file for material claims.

3. Verify identity, chronology, quotations, legal status, and outcome.

4. Identify allegations, disputed facts, vulnerable persons, private facts, copyrighted material, and safety concerns.

5. Request comment where required and retain the outreach.

6. Review titles, thumbnails, episode descriptions, trailers, social posts, and promotional copy for accuracy; marketing language is not exempt from this Policy.

7. Escalate unresolved factual or legal concerns. Publication must be delayed when necessary to verify a material fact.

8. Preserve the final script, source file, approvals, audio master, publication date, and later corrections.

13. Corrections, Clarifications, Updates, and Removal Requests

13.1 Submission and intake

Correction requests may be sent to november8studios@hotmail.com and should identify the Content, disputed statement, proposed correction, and supporting evidence. The Company may request identity verification or additional documentation. Abusive, repetitive, bad-faith, or unsupported demands may be closed without further response.

The Company will acknowledge meritorious or reasonably specific requests when practicable and will investigate in proportion to the seriousness, clarity, and potential harm. No fixed response time is promised, but material errors will receive priority.

13.2 Classification

Action

When used

Required treatment

Correction

A material factual statement was wrong or materially misleading.

Correct promptly and conspicuously; state what was wrong and provide the accurate information.

Clarification

The original statement was not false but was materially ambiguous, incomplete, or susceptible to a misleading interpretation.

Add explanatory context and label the note as a clarification.

Update

New facts developed after publication and do not establish that the original report was erroneous.

Add or publish the new development with a date; do not call it a correction.

Editor’s note

The matter is complex, under review, legally significant, or affects a substantial part of the work.

Explain the status, review, or editorial action in a prominent note.

Removal or redaction

Exceptional action justified by law, safety, privacy, identification of a protected person, invalid consent, proven falsity that cannot be cured, or other compelling circumstances.

Document the reason and preserve an internal archival copy unless prohibited by law.

13.3 Correction procedure

1. Secure the original version and relevant source file before editing.

2. Determine exactly what is inaccurate, how the error occurred, who approved it, and whether related content repeats the error.

3. Assess urgency, harm, legal exposure, platform limitations, and whether publication should be temporarily paused.

4. Correct every Company-controlled version reasonably capable of correction, including transcript, show notes, website, social posts, captions, graphics, and future rebroadcasts.

5. For audio or video, choose a proportionate remedy: corrected description or transcript, inserted correction notice, replacement file, recorded correction in a later episode, withdrawal, or a combination.

6. Do not silently correct a material error. Preserve a visible correction note near the affected content when technically feasible.

7. Use plain language. A correction must identify the original error and the accurate information; it must not blame the requester or minimize the mistake.

8. Notify material syndication, distribution, or platform partners when reasonably necessary.

9. Record the correction in the internal corrections log.

13.4 No payment, retaliation, or editorial surrender

The Company will not demand payment to correct a proven error and will not retaliate against a good-faith correction requester. A request for correction does not entitle a person to dictate wording, obtain unedited access, require deletion of accurate reporting, suppress protected opinion, erase a matter of legitimate public concern, or compel publication of unsupported claims.

14. Retractions, Unpublishing, and Search Visibility

Retraction is reserved for content whose central premise is materially false, fabricated, legally prohibited, or so unreliable that correction cannot cure it. A retraction must be prominent and explain the action without repeating unnecessary harmful detail.

The Company generally does not unpublish accurate, lawfully obtained content merely because it is embarrassing, old, unpopular, or inconvenient. It may redact, de-index, anonymize, limit promotion, or remove content when required by law or justified by compelling safety, privacy, fairness, rehabilitation, invalid consent, or identification concerns. Decisions must be documented and applied consistently.

15. Complaints, Appeals, and Editorial Authority

The responsible editor has final editorial authority unless a matter is reserved to legal counsel, an insurer, a court order, or the Company’s Sole Member acting in a separate governance capacity. A requester may submit one written request for reconsideration with new evidence. The Company is not required to debate editorial judgments indefinitely.

Threatened claims, preservation demands, subpoenas, cease-and-desist letters, takedown notices, or communications from counsel must be preserved and promptly escalated. Contributors may not admit liability, destroy files, promise removal, or communicate substantively on behalf of the Company without authorization.

16. Records Retention and Litigation Hold

• Maintain research notes, source records, interview recordings, permissions, licenses, releases, outreach, scripts, edits, approvals, publication files, and correction records according to the Company’s retention schedule.

• Do not destroy or alter potentially relevant material after notice of a claim, dispute, subpoena, investigation, reasonably anticipated litigation, or instruction to preserve.

• Corrections do not authorize deletion of the original internal record. Preserve version history securely, subject to lawful privacy and data-security controls.

17. Enforcement

Violation of this Policy may result in retraining, correction of work, suspension of publication authority, removal from an assignment, contract remedies, termination of engagement, indemnification or other remedies available under applicable agreement or law. Enforcement must be documented and reasonably consistent.

No contributor is required to publish information the contributor reasonably believes is false, unlawfully obtained, deceptively edited, or materially unsupported. Concerns must be raised promptly to the responsible editor.

18. Policy Administration

• The responsible editor will review this Policy at least annually and after any major legal claim, serious correction, platform change, new production format, or material change in law or operations.

• The Company may amend this Policy prospectively at any time. The current approved version controls.

• If a provision conflicts with applicable law, court order, insurance requirement, or binding contract, the controlling requirement will govern and the remainder of the Policy will continue to the fullest extent possible.

• Failure to follow a procedure in a particular instance does not waive any legal defense or create an admission, but departures must be documented and justified.

APPENDIX A — Mandatory Prepublication Checklist

☐ Editorial purpose and public-interest value identified.

☐ Every material fact linked to a source in the research file.

☐ Primary records reviewed where reasonably available.

☐ Names, dates, quotations, charges, outcomes, and chronology verified.

☐ Allegations clearly attributed and separated from proven facts.

☐ Relevant contradictory or exculpatory information included.

☐ Meaningful request for comment completed or exception documented.

☐ Minors, survivors, private information, and safety risks reviewed.

☐ Mental-health and medical language reviewed for unsupported diagnosis or stigma.

☐ Copyright, music, clips, images, and permissions cleared or fair-use analysis documented.

☐ AI-assisted material independently verified and synthetic media labeled.

☐ Headline, title, thumbnail, trailer, show notes, and social promotion checked.

☐ High-risk legal issues escalated where warranted.

☐ Final script, sources, approvals, and master file archived.

APPENDIX B — Corrections Log Fields

• Date received; requester and contact information; content URL/title/episode; disputed statement; supporting evidence; assigned reviewer; risk level; findings; classification; decision; approval; corrective action; publication date; platforms corrected; requester notification; preservation location; follow-up.

APPENDIX C — Standard Public Notices

Correction

CORRECTION — [Date]: An earlier version of this [episode/article/post] incorrectly stated [brief description of error]. The correct information is [accurate information]. The [audio/transcript/article/post] has been updated where technically feasible.

Clarification

CLARIFICATION — [Date]: This [episode/article/post] has been updated to clarify [issue]. The original wording was [ambiguous/incomplete description], and the added context is [brief explanation].

Update

UPDATE — [Date]: New information became available after publication: [brief description]. This update does not change the accuracy of the original report unless otherwise stated.

Retraction

RETRACTION — [Date]: November 8 Studios has withdrawn this content because [concise, verified reason]. The content did not meet our editorial standards and should not be relied upon.

APPENDIX D — Adoption and Acknowledgment

The undersigned, as Sole Member and authorized manager of November 8 Studios, LLC, adopts this Editorial Standards and Corrections Policy as the Company’s official internal policy effective July 18, 2026. The undersigned directs that the Policy be provided to covered personnel and incorporated by reference into relevant contractor, contributor, production, and employment requirements when appropriate.