Conflicts of Interest Policy

The Massachusetts Times · Published by The Massachusetts Times Company · massachusettstimes.us/policies/conflicts-of-interest · Effective October 16, 2026

The Integrity Policy states the principle: coverage serves the record, never any interest of ours. This page is the machinery that keeps it true — what must be disclosed, what forces a recusal, and what the reader is told. Every sentence here is kept today.

1. The Three Remedies

1.1. A conflict has three remedies, applied in order of severity: disclosure to the masthead and, where material, to the reader on the work; recusal of the conflicted hand from the decision; and declining the work entirely where neither cures.

1.2. The test throughout this page is the reasonable reader's confidence in the work, judged from outside — never the conflicted hand's confidence in itself, which is the one measure every compromised newsroom in history has vouched for.

2. Financial Interests

2.1. A financial stake that a work could move, or that could move a work — a holding in a covered company, a position against it, an interest in a covered outcome — is disclosed to the masthead before the work begins, and stated on the work where it could matter to the reader.

2.2. No one reports on a matter while holding an undisclosed stake in its outcome.

2.3. Knowledge gained through reporting belongs to the record until the record publishes it. No one trades on unpublished journalism — not securities, not property, not any position — and the embargoed story is never anyone's private edge. The reader gets the news first or nobody does.

3. Relationships

3.1. A family tie, close personal relationship, or financial entanglement with a subject of coverage is disclosed to the masthead before the work, and the tied hand is recused from decisions the tie could reasonably color.

3.2. Where the relationship is itself material to the reader's weighing of the work, the work says so plainly.

4. Outside Work

4.1. Outside work is disclosed to the masthead. The rule that governs it is one line long: write for anyone; be paid by no one you cover.

4.2. Payment, fees, consulting, or anything of value from a subject of coverage — including speaking fees from covered institutions — is refused while the coverage relationship exists, as the mirror of the Source Terms' rule that we pay no one for information.

4.3. Working for other publications, including rivals, is no conflict at all, as the Contributor Terms state. The line is subjects, not competitors.

5. The Publication's Own Interests

5.1. When we cover ourselves — this publication, its owner, its litigation, its commercial counterparties, including licensees under the Licensing and Reprint Terms and Machine Terms — the work says so at the work, in a plain conflict note, and meets the identical standard as any other coverage.

5.2. What owns this publication is stated at massachusettstimes.us/company, so the reader can always see whose interests the firewall holds back. The Editorial and Advertising Policies' firewalls govern the money; this page governs the telling.

5.3. An institutional conflict cannot be recused away — there is no second publication to hand the story to. The cure is daylight: the conflict stated on the work, the evidence shown, and the reader left able to judge us judging ourselves.

6. Disclosure to the Reader

6.1. A disclosure the reader needs lives on the work itself — a plain line, in words that need no decoding — never exiled to a bio page or a policy archive.

6.2. The dividing line between internal disclosure and reader disclosure is materiality, and the arguable case is disclosed to the reader, in the reader's favor, always.

7. What Is Not a Conflict

7.1. Having a life is not a conflict. Living in the community you cover is the job. Ordinary consumer relationships — the bank account, the utility bill, the grocery store — conflict no one. Broad, diversified holdings such as index funds recuse no one from covering an economy.

7.2. Citizenship is not a conflict: voting is every hand's private right. Political activity beyond the ballot is governed by the Gifts, Travel and Political Activity Policy, not this page.

7.3. This article exists because a conflicts policy that calls everything a conflict protects nothing — it trains everyone to treat disclosure as noise. We reserve the machinery for what can actually bend a work.

8. The Machinery and Its Failures

8.1. Disclosure runs to the masthead before the work; the masthead applies Section 1's remedies; and the decision belongs to the masthead, not to the conflicted hand.

8.2. An undisclosed conflict discovered after publication is corrected in daylight: the conflict note is added to the work, dated, under the Correction Terms, entered in the public ledger where substantive — and the failure itself is handled under the Integrity Policy.

9. The Record of This Policy

9.1. This policy is kept in dated versions at its address, so the conflict law governing any work can always be checked against the work's date.

This policy is one of the Policies this publication keeps.