Provenance Policy

The Massachusetts Times · Published by The Massachusetts Times Company · massachusettstimes.us/policies/provenance · Effective October 16, 2026

This policy states the two classes every artifact in The Massachusetts Times belongs to, how the difference is certified, and the one act this publication will never commit. Every sentence here is kept today.

1. The Two Classes

1.1. Everything we publish is one of two things: a record — testimony of what happened, standing as witness — or a rendering — reconstruction, illustration, or visualization made to explain.

1.2. The division is not decoration; it is the whole policy. A reader who knows which class an artifact belongs to knows exactly what it can prove, and this page exists so that the reader always knows.

2. The Record and Its Chain

2.1. A record earns its standing by a causal chain running back to the event it depicts: the named source of the material, the original capture preserved as captured, an independent reading of the claim against its source, and its dates stated in public.

2.2. The chain is the certification. Nothing becomes a record by confidence, by plausibility, or by how badly the story needs it — a link missing from the chain is a record not yet earned, held under the Verification Policy until it is.

2.3. What the chain cannot support publishes, if at all, as what it truly is under Section 3, labeled.

3. The Rendering

3.1. A rendering — a reconstruction, an illustration, a chart, a map, a visualization, by any hand or any system — is honest work this publication values, and it publishes only labeled as what it is.

3.2. The label is part of the artifact and travels with it everywhere, as the Editorial Policy's class labels travel: into the archive, into syndication and licensing, and into machine lanes under the Machine Terms' provenance duties.

4. The Boundary

4.1. Nothing publishes as witness to what nothing witnessed. By any hand: a staged scene presented as found, a reenactment presented as the event, a synthetic image presented as a photograph — the offense is identical whoever or whatever produced it, as the Automation Policy's origin-neutral law requires.

4.2. The boundary runs one direction too few publishers respect: a true record is never degraded either. The original capture is preserved; alterations beyond the Imagery Policy's stated limits turn a record into a rendering, and it is relabeled or it does not run.

5. The Counterfeit Prohibition

5.1. Synthesis of sensory record presented as capture is counterfeit, and this publication does not counterfeit — not for illustration, not for deadline, not for impact, and not with a disclosure buried where no reader will find it.

5.2. Synthetic sensory media never publishes here as documentary witness. There is no exception process, no editor's override, and no future version of this page that creates one — a loophole in this section would convert the seal on every true record we hold into decoration.

6. Text, Stated Honestly

6.1. Synthesis of text from verified, attributed sources is this publication's daily work — all writing is synthesis, and ours shows its sources under the Verification Policy and its verbatim quotations under the Journalism Policy.

6.2. The asymmetry with Section 5 is principled, not convenient: text asserts and shows its support, so the reader can weigh it; an image testifies, and testimony that was manufactured is perjury on the record. We write freely from what is verified; we never manufacture a witness.

7. Origins Disclosed

7.1. Where material's origin bears on its weight — a supplied photograph, handout material, a screenshot, archival footage, a document provided by a source — the origin is stated where the material appears, in words the reader can use.

7.2. Where protecting a source requires describing a document rather than displaying it, the Source Terms govern, and the description says that it is a description.

8. Dates in Public

8.1. A record carries its dates — capture and publication — and civic facts carry their verification dates, as the Verification Policy requires. The archive preserves the history under the Archive and Permanence Terms, so an artifact's provenance can be audited for as long as the record stands.

9. Failures

9.1. A mislabeled rendering is corrected under the Correction Terms, with the correction stating what the artifact actually is.

9.2. A counterfeit presented as capture is fabrication under the Integrity Policy, with its stated consequences: retraction, the public ledger, and the end of the relationship with whoever presented it.

10. The Record of This Policy

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

This policy is one of the Policies this publication keeps.