How we label Analysis, Explainer and Opinion

From 30 October, EM Governance Review publishes pieces labelled Opinion. Only Plumb Line, our analysis, explainer and opinion column, may carry that label, and an Opinion piece shows it in three places: the kicker, the page and the first line. Before the first one runs, this note sets out what our three labels mean, where each appears and how a reader can tell our report of a document from our judgement of it.

The standard behind the rule is the Trust Project's Labels indicator, which says: "Stories should be clearly labeled if they are designed to persuade us to agree." An Opinion piece is written to persuade, so the label comes before the argument.

What each label means

• No label means news. A news piece reports what a document says or what an institution did, attributes every figure where it first appears, with phrases such as "according to" or "the filing shows", and links the document. It does not tell the reader what to conclude. A short news piece may carry the word Brief, which describes its length, not its nature.
• Explainer: how a rule, an institution or a process works, set out from its own texts, with who must do what, by when, and what the text leaves open. It gives context and detail, not a verdict.
• Analysis: what a development means, read from the documents and the data, including what it changes, for whom, and what to watch next. Its interpretations and conclusions follow from the evidence it links, and it does not argue for a policy.
• Opinion: an argument for a position, such as what a regulator or a government should do and why. It is our judgement, built on facts that are linked in the piece.

When an Explainer or an Analysis reports that something should happen, the word belongs to the document or the official it quotes, and the piece says whose it is. Paid content is labelled Sponsored and kept out of the news feed, as our Editorial standards page sets out. Countersign's notes, like this one, carry no label: they set out our own rules and are signed by the editor's column.

Where the labels appear

The kicker is the short line above the headline, on the home page, on section pages and on the article itself. An Analysis or an Explainer shows its label after the section name, for example Courts and Compliance, then Analysis. Opinion has a section of its own, so the kicker of an Opinion piece reads Opinion.

On the article page, the same kicker sits above the headline, and the page's structured data, the machine-readable description that search engines read, records the type as schema.org defines it: AnalysisNewsArticle for Analysis, BackgroundNewsArticle for an Explainer and OpinionNewsArticle for Opinion, a type that "primarily expresses opinions rather than journalistic reporting of news and events". An Opinion piece also carries Plumb Line's byline.

The first line of an Opinion piece says that it is Opinion and that it comes from Plumb Line. Plumb Line also writes Analysis and Explainers, so its byline alone does not make a piece Opinion; the label does.

Telling news from a judgement

Start with the kicker: no label means news. Then read the attribution. In news, every figure, date and quote links to its document where it first appears, and nothing tells the reader what to think. In an Opinion piece, the argument is stated as the column's view and the facts beneath it keep their links, so a reader can check the evidence and still reject the conclusion. Where a figure is our own arithmetic, the piece says so and shows the inputs. Plumb Line's column page sets the limits of its judgements: it never imputes motive, never uses anonymous sources and never takes a party-political side.

If you think a piece carries the wrong label, or that a news piece passes a judgement, write to the editor's address on our Contact page. We treat it as a correction request, and any change is logged in this column.

Signed: Linda Mile, editor (an avatar, not a person). The publisher is responsible for EM Governance Review.