What gets published in the record, what does not, and how it is decided

These are the rules the record runs on.

We are a publisher for aerospace and defense. We sell companies a channel on our titles for their own announcements and their people's pieces, labelled as partner content wherever they appear.

The seven tests

Every entry has to pass all seven. An entry that fails one is dropped, not softened, held or published with a caveat.

Test one. Subject. The entry concerns a named aerospace or defense company, or a regulator action that changes what such companies may sell or who they may sell it to. Airline route announcements, airport infrastructure, general aviation consumer news and air show colour do not qualify unless a named supplier is the subject.

Test two. Event. Something happened, on a date. Certification, approval or design change granted. Contract or award announced. Funding closed. Acquisition or merger. Facility, production line or capacity opened. An executive appointed to a role that owns revenue, or to the executive team. Product launched or entered service. Export control status changed. First-time exhibition at a named show.

Test three. Source. A public address we can open, from the party the event is about or from a publisher of record: a government register, a regulator, the company's own newsroom, a wire release carrying the company's name, a securities filing, or a named trade outlet with a byline. No source, no entry.

Test four. Checked quotation. Before an entry publishes we fetch the source again and confirm the quoted words are still there. If they are not, the entry is dropped.

Test five. Consequence. The event is one that changes something in the market, and the class of event is what decides that. The list in test two is the list of things that change something; an opinion, a survey, a rebrand, an award, a sponsorship, an anniversary and a piece of thought leadership are refused because they do not. Where somebody here can also say in one factual sentence what a particular event changes, that sentence goes on the entry marked as ours.

Test six. Recency. Published within thirty days of when it reaches us. Once an entry is published it stays permanently; the thirty days is the window for getting in.

Test seven. Not already here. One entry per event. Where several outlets carry the same event, the source closest to it wins: the register over the wire, the wire over the write-up, the company's own words over a rewrite of them.

What does not earn a place

• Anything with no source we can open.
• Anything whose quotation we cannot confirm is still in the source on the day it publishes.
• Anything that is not one of the events in test two, which is the list of things that change something.
• Opinion, commentary, thought leadership, awards, sponsorships, rebrands, anniversaries, and vendor material published by a trade outlet under a commercial arrangement.
• Appointments below the level of the executive team or a role that owns revenue.
• Anything from a company that comes up on the restricted-party screen described further down.
• Anything about a company connected to the editor's current employer.

When an entry goes up

An entry publishes the moment its quotation has been checked at the source, and no sooner. That check is the last thing that runs: the source is fetched again and the quoted words are confirmed still present in what comes back. An entry that fails it is not published. There is no override for it, and no exception for a busy day.

Nothing is queued to a later date and nothing is held back to make room for something else. A record that holds entries back is a record of an earlier day, and the dates are the whole proof.

Entries a company sends us pass the same seven tests as the ones we find, and one thing more: a person reads every submission, because a submission arrives as a message from somebody rather than as a source we are already reading. Send us yours instead of waiting to be found.

When a period gets a brief

A segment's edition publishes for a period that has enough in it to be one. The floor is five entries in that segment, from at least three companies and two sources.

A period under the floor is not published, because a list of three rows is not a brief. The entries themselves are on the record either way, and the next period that clears the floor carries them forward in the segment's own run. The briefs.

The editor's sentence

Where the editor has written a sentence on an entry, it says what the event changes in the market, and it is marked as ours. It goes on the entry the day he writes it.

It never says what the company should do about it. It never says the company now needs anything. It never contains a prediction.

The sentence does not hold the entry back: the checked quotation is what decides whether an entry publishes, and a sentence is added to an entry that is already up. Where there is no sentence, nothing stands in for one.

Anything worth arguing goes in a story on the title, which carries its own sources, and the entry links to it.

The account in our own words, and what stands behind it

Every account is written from the facts its own entry already carries, and screened before it publishes. Every name and every figure in it appears in those facts. Its longest run of words shared with the source is under the cap, which is what lets an account stand beside a quotation without being part of it: the facts are ours to state and the publisher's sentences are the publisher's. It carries no export or handling marking, no performance figure, no named programme or contract number, no price, and no statement about what the event means commercially or what anybody should do about it. Which screens ran, at what version and with what verdict, is recorded on the entry, and the record's own file carries it.

A person signs whatever the screens refuse. Three of the six questions in our export procedure are a person's judgement, and the software does not ask them. The constraint above is what makes the rest defensible: an account drawn only from facts the record already publishes cannot introduce technical data the record did not already carry.

An account never carries a person's name unless a person read it. Each one records what its signature is over, the standard or the row itself. Where it is the standard, the entry says the account was drafted and screened by software, names the model that wrote it, and says that the person named answers for the standard rather than for that entry.

An account is not silently rewritten. A changed account keeps the text it replaced with the reason and the date, and the entry says it was corrected, on the same rule as everything else here.

How much of a source we reproduce

From a source, an entry carries four things and nothing else:

1. The headline as the source published it, unmodified.
2. One passage quoted from the source, of forty words or fewer, unless the register below says this source allows more. One continuous passage, and never two separated pieces joined by an ellipsis into a sentence the source did not write.
3. Who published it: the publisher, the author where there is a byline, and the date.
4. A link to the original, direct, with nothing in between.

Everything else on an entry is ours and is not reproduction: the account in our own words where there is one, the editor's sentence where he has written one, the facts, who else is named, and what else the record holds on them. Facts are ours to state and expression is the publisher's, which is the line the whole of this section is drawn along.

We never publish the full release. We never publish a summary long enough to save anybody the trouble of reading the original.

A photograph publishes only where the publisher's own terms permit it, and on the same discipline as a quotation. What each source says about its own images is read, recorded verbatim with the date, and expires after ninety days like every other terms reading. Where a photograph publishes, the credit line the publisher requires publishes with it everywhere it appears, and any notice the publisher asks to be shown beside it goes with it. An image is stored and served from our own files rather than loaded from the publisher's, and where a library photograph stands for an aircraft type rather than the event itself, the entry says so. Where there is no clean basis there is no image, and absent evidence the answer is no image. Each entry records the basis its images were decided on. We never publish a chart or a logo from a source.

The register: the terms we rely on, and the day we read them

A source is quoted under the forty-word rule unless its own published terms say more is allowed. When they do, the clause is in this table with the date we read it.

No reachable terms means the restrictive rule applies. The row records the failed attempt and its date. Every row expires after ninety days and goes back to the restrictive rule until somebody reads the terms again. Nothing is published under an exception that is not a row here.

Every row above is rechecked by 12 November 2026. A row that is not rechecked reverts to the restrictive rule on that date, and any entry running longer than forty words on that source gets shortened.

No wire is on this table as an exception. Every release from a wire is quoted under the restrictive rule until that wire's terms are retrieved, quoted and added as a row.

If you publish something we have quoted and you want it shortened, delinked or taken down, ask, and it happens within five business days. We will not argue about it.