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Our Manifesto

Monday January 26, 2026
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  1. Our Values
    1. TLDR is an independent news organisation dedicated to delivering objective, fact-based reporting. Our goal is to strip away partisan rhetoric and provide clear, apolitical explainers which allow our audience to better understand the complex global events that shape their world.
    2. Since TLDR’s founding in 2017, we have believed in upholding rigorous standards for our content, often exceeding the expectations and benchmarks set by others in the digital media industry. We believe that being YouTube-native is not an excuse for lower standards. Instead we see it as an opportunity to redefine journalistic expectations for a new generation.
    3. As such, every member of our team is required to understand and abide by the standards set out in this manifesto. These are not merely guidelines; they are the core principles that protect our integrity and your trust.
    4. If you ever believe that TLDR has fallen short of the standards we set for ourselves, we invite you to hold us to account. Please contact our editorial team directly at manifesto@tldrnews.co.uk.
  2. Ownership
    1. We believe that the owner of a news organisation determines what stories they are allowed to tell. In an era of media consolidation, we have made the intentional decision to stay 100% independently owned. By maintaining total ownership, we protect the essential freedoms required to report the news without fear or favour. Our independence creates a firewall between our reporting and the pressures of the modern media landscape. Because we answer to our audience rather than a corporate boardroom, venture capital firm, or billionaire parent company, we are never forced to compromise for the sake of a corporate agenda. 
    2. TLDR is currently 100% owned by Jack Kelly, TLDR’s Founder and CEO. We currently have no plans to offer a stake in the company to anyone outside of the organisation, but if this were to happen, we would:
      1. Update this manifesto to clearly indicate any changes in ownership.
      2. Notify all stakeholders and employees within the business.
      3. Post a standalone announcement video notifying the audience, with that video additionally shared as a YouTube community post, as a TLDR Newsletter, within the Too Long magazine, and on Instagram, BlueSky and LinkedIn.
  3. Editorial Independence and Neutrality
    1. We believe that for news to be trustworthy, it must be produced free from the influence of those we cover or who fund us. At TLDR, we maintain absolute editorial control over every second of our content. To protect this independence, we uphold four non-negotiable pillars:
    2. Content Autonomy
      1. Only our internal editorial team determines the topics we cover and the scripts we write.
        1. No outside entity, whether a platform, sponsor, or government has the right to dictate, review, or veto our reporting.
      2. Our team has full editorial independence to report on whichever topics they deem worthy of their attention, and to conduct their investigations in the way they determine to be necessary.
      3. All team members take our editorial independence seriously, and as a result refrain from taking part in any activities which could compromise our coverage.
        1. When our journalists do have a conflict of interest they will be removed from the relevant reporting and/or disclose that conflict.
        2. Conflicts of interest can include, but are not limited to:
          1. Personal relationships with those being reported on
          2. Active investments in companies being reported on
            1. Journalists may invest in broad index and tracker funds. However, direct investment in specific companies precludes a journalist from covering those companies.
          3. Donations to political campaigns being reported on
          4. Working for, or having worked for, organisations or companies being reported on
    3. The Sponsor Firewall
      1. While sponsorships help fund our work, sponsorship doesn’t buy anyone access to our editorial decision making.
      2. Sponsors have zero input into our coverage, and we maintain a strict separation between our business partnerships and our journalism.
      3. We do not accept paid stories or allow sponsors to influence the tone or content of our videos.
    4. Unconditional Interviews
      1. When we speak with public figures or experts, we do so on our terms.
        1. We never give the subject of the interview the ability to preview or sign off on the questions that will be asked
        2. We do not allow them the ability to review the content itself before it is published.
    5. Neutrality
      1. We require our writers to challenge their own assumptions, seek out counter-arguments, and use objective, data-driven language. As such we ensure that our journalists:
        1. Consider and read a wide variety of perspectives around a topic.
        2. Guard against their own personal biases, choosing not to tackle topics where they have too strong a vested interest, as well as actively discouraging team members from working on projects where they have a conflict of interest.
        3. Consult with other members of the team to ensure viewpoints and perspectives are fully considered, including throughout the review process outlined in section 4.3
    6. Ultimately, we know that it’s not our job to tell you what to think. Instead we provide the verified information you need to think clearly for yourself.
  4. Corrections, Review and Deletion
    1. As an independent news brand, we know that trust is our most valuable asset. However, despite our desire for perfection we are a human organisation (see section 6) and as such in a fast-paced world errors will inevitably occur. 
    2. However, we believe that we aren’t defined by our attempts towards perfection, but by our courage to be honest when we fail. 
    3. Rigorous Review:
      1. Every video undergoes a multi-stage verification process before it reaches your screen, in an effort to catch as many errors as possible before videos are ever published.
      2. That includes, but is not limited to, the following stages:
        1. The script’s original writer will take care throughout the creation of the script to ensure the validity of information, only using verified and trusted sources and using at least two sources for any breaking news story.
          1. Writers will also maintain a source list for their reporting. This helps our editors fact-check the writing, and is also shared in the description of every video so you can explore the sources and see the full reports.
        2. Every script will then be reviewed by another journalist within the team, normally the Editor-in-Chief or Deputy Editor-in-Chief. They will check the script to ensure factuality and neutrality.
        3. Each script will then be reviewed again by the animator and/or editor responsible for creating the video. That team member will then raise any issues with the original writer as soon as they’re identified.
        4. The host of the video will then conduct a full check of the script, including a speech test when recording the video to ensure that the script is not only accurate but also is clear when spoken out loud.
        5. An observer will sit in on the host’s recording of the video to ensure that the script was delivered accurately, comprehensibly and coherently.
          1. Best efforts will also be taken to ensure the correct pronunciations of places and names.
        6. Once the video is edited, the animator and/or editor will conduct a full review of their own work, putting particular focus on on screen elements including maps, graphs, data visualisations and spelling.
        7. The original writer of the video, when available, will conduct another final review of the video in order to ensure the graphics and host’s delivery match their expectations and don’t change the meaning of the text.
          1. If the original writer isn’t available to conduct this final check, it will instead be conducted by the Editor-in-Chief or Deputy Editor-in-Chief. 
    4. Open Corrections:
      1. If we do get something wrong, we admit it openly. We believe that quietly changing the facts or quickly deleting a video without explanation is a clear breach of your trust.
      2. If the error is major and we believe the resulting video is fundamentally misleading and inaccurate, we will immediately unlist the video from YouTube. That ensures that the video will no longer be surfaced to new viewers, but keeps it on the platform for future review. We will then post to the Community Tab of the relevant channel explaining why the video was taken down and linking to the unlisted video so it can still be reviewed by the audience. When relevant we will work to recreate the video and repost it with all errors fixed. When the video is reposted we will immediately post a pinned comment explaining why the video was reuploaded, and again linking to the original unlisted video. We will also discuss the incident in full, explaining the process errors that occurred which led to the mistake in the next episode of The Editorial.
        1. Published videos will never be fully deleted from any TLDR channel, unless explicitly required as a result of legal action or YouTube’s Terms of Service.
        2. Videos will never be deleted or unlisted at the direction of our advertisers.
      3. If the error is deemed to be minor and not misleading, we will immediately post a pinned comment correcting the mistake as well as an official on screen ‘correction’ through YouTube’s backend. We will also discuss the incident in full, explaining the errors that occurred during the process which led to the mistake in the next episode of The Editorial.
    5. Ultimately, our commitment is to the facts, not our public image or reputation. By being transparent about our process and our mistakes, we hope to earn the trust you place in us every time you click on one of our videos.
  5. Radical Transparency
    1. We don’t just ask for your confidence; we aim to earn it through radical transparency. 
    2. Open-Book Finances
      1. We believe that financial transparency is the ultimate check on editorial bias. 
      2. As such, once per calendar year TLDR will publish a breakdown of the company’s finances in order to maintain financial transparency with viewers and supporters. That will include:
        1. A full breakdown of revenue sources, particularly highlighting any new or unusual sources of revenue that could raise concern
        2. A full breakdown of costs
        3. An accurate representation of the company’s profitability
    3. Active Engagement with Criticism
      1. We know that we can’t always be right, so we actively listen to and engage with criticism from our community. We commit to responding regularly to audience concerns, correcting our blind spots, and explaining the reasoning behind our editorial decisions.
        1. As such, once per year we will respond to a broad and representative array of criticisms and complaints, as submitted by the audience, in a standalone criticism response video.
        2. Additionally, TLDR’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief will respond to criticisms and controversial videos in our fortnightly podcast The Editorial.
          1. If either isn’t available due to scheduling issues they may be replaced by another relevant member of the TLDR team
          2. If we aren’t able to publish in a specific week we will post to the TLDR Podcasts YouTube community section to explain the missing episode. The subsequent episode will also explain the absence and cover any issues that arose during the missed week/s.
    4. Total Disclosure
      1. If a member of our team has a personal or professional connection to a story we are covering, we will disclose it upfront or prevent them from working on the story at all. 
  6. Artificial Intelligence
    1. We believe that the best reporting is done by passionate journalists driven by a desire to uncover the truth and share the world with our audience. We also believe that the best videos are produced by creative and engaged animators and editors who work closely with journalists to ensure accuracy and clarity. Both of these tasks require humanity and understanding beyond the level AI systems are capable of. While humans will inevitably make mistakes, we are able to probe human decision making, workflows and behaviour in a way that’s simply not possible with black box AI systems.
    2. As such, TLDR will not use AI to:
      1. Write scripts or articles
      2. Generate any of the photos or videos used within our content
      3. Generate music or audio
      4. Generate synthetic voiceovers or host videos
    3. In isolated incidents, we may need to show pre-generated AI content as part of a story. In such instances we would clearly mark on screen that the footage was AI generated.
    4. As AI image and video generation improves, it is possible that we may use AI content without realising. To avoid this we will conduct any necessary training to ensure our team is able to recognise AI generated photos and videos. We will also continue to purchase footage from reputable sources which allow us to filter out AI generated content.
    5. There are some areas where AI tools are able to improve our workflows without impacting the content that we produce. As such, we currently permit our team to use:
      1. Non generative tools within the Adobe Suite, such as subject selection and background removal in Photoshop.
      2. AI transcription tools for video call software such as Slack and Zoom
        1. If those transcriptions are being published anywhere publicly they must first be fully reviewed by a member of the team
      3. Finding additional sources to back up an argument
        1. In these instances, it’s only the sources themselves that are permitted to be used. AI may be used in limited instances to assist in finding specific sources, but the source itself may never be AI.
    6. As other outlets begin using AI more in their reporting, we will also avoid using outlets that do use AI as sources for our videos. We will continue to monitor the media landscape and will maintain a list of outlets that we don’t permit in our reporting due to their own AI standards.
  7. Sponsorships and Grants
    1. We believe that the financial health of our company must never come at the expense of our journalistic integrity, as we aim to demonstrate through our regular disclosures (see section 5.2)
    2. We view our sponsors as partners towards our broader mission, but they’re in no way directors of our content. To ensure that our commercial interest never compromise our reporting, we adhere to the following principles:
    3. Values-Aligned Sponsors
      1. We are selective about who we work with. We only collaborate with sponsors whose products and services align with our values. As such we would never work with businesses operating in the following industries:
        1. Political campaigning
        2. Tobacco and vaping
        3. Alcohol
        4. Pharmaceutical companies
        5. Cryptocurrencies
        6. Gambling and sports betting, including prediction markets
        7. Military or defense contractors
        8. Unverified supplement or alternative medicine
        9. Any company we are actively reporting on
      2. We also reserve the right to refuse any sponsorship that we believe could mislead our audience or damage our credibility.
      3. Unfortunately YouTube doesn’t grant us total control over the programmatic advertising placed against our content. However, we will use all tools provided by the platform to prevent advertising from the above sectors appearing against our content.
    4. The Sponsor Limit
      1. A sponsor’s influence is strictly confined to their sponsored segment of the video. While a partner may provide the copy for their specific advertisement, they have no control over the editorial content that proceeds it. Our news remains independent, regardless of who is funding the video.
    5. Disclosure of Grants and Funding
      1. If we receive grants from organisations, non-profits, foundations, or educational institutions to engage in certain projects, these will be clearly and prominently disclosed to the audience.
    6. Our Voice is Not for Sale
      1. No amount of money can buy access to our editorial process or influence our tone. We do not participate in pay-to-play journalism
      2. While individuals are able to financially contribute to TLDR through Too Long, TLDR Party, merchandise sales and direct donations, none of these contributions have any impact on what we choose to cover.
        1. If any one person’s contribution ever exceeds 1% of our revenue, that will be officially disclosed
  8. Platforms
    1. As a digital news brand we work across a number of external platforms including but not limited to:
      1. YouTube
      2. Instagram
      3. BlueSky
      4. LinkedIn
    2. All of our editorial standards, and all points within this document, apply to all work conducted across all platforms
  9. Employee Standards
    1. All team members are expected to be familiar with the TLDR Manifesto as well as all of our associated standards and contracts.
    2. TLDR team members are not permitted to work for, or receive payment from, any other news brands nor any company or organisation on which we are likely to report, without express written consent. Nor are they permitted to work in an advisory capacity, whether paid or not, for any such company without express written consent.
    3. Our journalists are required to request permission from TLDR if they do want to work with any other media outlets in order to ensure standards are upheld, with final permission needed from both the company’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief.
  10. Updates
    1. This document was last updated January 20th 2026 and will continue to be updated.
    2. When updates are made previous versions of this document will be maintained and made available to access.

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