Editorial Standards

Sourcing

Every factual claim tied to a specific number, date, or provision should be traceable to a cited source — a government website, a public filing, a primary legal text, or another identifiable, checkable source. General background and process explanations draw on established public knowledge of how federal policy works; where something is time-sensitive (a bill’s current status, a program’s current numbers), we say so and point readers to a live source rather than asserting a figure that could go stale.

Original data

Our original data is built entirely from public Lobbying Disclosure Act filings — today in The Lobbying Ledger, and, once it launches, in the forthcoming Federal Lobbying Intelligence Index. Full calculation methodology is published on our Methodology page. We do not publish placeholder or illustrative figures as if they were real findings; any sample or demonstration data on this site is clearly labeled as such and is excluded from search indexing.

Authorship and editing

Published work carries an attributed byline. Where a piece has not yet been assigned to a named author, it is attributed to our editorial team rather than a fabricated individual persona.

Dates and updates

Every piece shows a publish date and, where applicable, a last-updated date. Material changes to a piece’s substance — not typo fixes — update that date.

Independence from the publisher’s advocacy work

As described in our disclosure statement, this publication’s publisher also works professionally in federal advocacy and lobbying. Coverage decisions and the substance of our data and analysis are made by editorial judgment, separately from that advocacy work, and not to serve any advocacy client’s interests.