The boundary we work inside

HappeningNow organizes reporting produced by other news organizations. It does not gather the underlying facts, and it does not present itself as having done so. Where the platform has something of its own to say — about its methods, its product, or its decisions — it publishes that under its own name and labels it as such.

Attribution

Every story names the publication that reported it and links to the original report. Attribution is not optional metadata: a record that cannot be attributed to a source publication is not published at all.

The link to the publisher is treated as the primary path on the page. HappeningNow does not reproduce publisher articles in full, and does not present summarized text as if it were the publisher's own words.

Accuracy over speed

Where the platform cannot establish something deterministically, it omits it rather than approximating it. This is why context sections disappear instead of degrading, and why incomplete records are dropped at ingestion. An empty space is a more honest output than a confident guess.

Labels and vocabulary

The platform keeps its vocabulary precise, because imprecise words make stronger claims than the data supports. A tracked source is a publication the platform reads. A report is one published article. Coverage from distinct domains is a count of publisher domains, not a finding of independence. A cluster is a group of reports about the same event, not an established version of events.

The platform does not describe sources as trusted, does not label reporting as verified, and does not present a count as consensus.

Sensitive subjects

For breaking events, casualty figures, active investigations, criminal accusations, health guidance, and elections, the platform stays closer to the source than usual: attribution stays visible, publisher framing is preserved, and no automated text is permitted to assert what the reporting itself does not.

For unresolved legal matters, HappeningNow presents what publications reported and nothing beyond it. An accusation reported by a publisher is displayed as an accusation reported by that publisher.

Independence and conflicts

Which stories appear, how they are grouped, and what context is shown are determined by the published methodology. Advertising, sponsorship, donations, and subscription revenue have no input into those outcomes, and there is no mechanism by which a publisher can pay for placement, ranking, or context eligibility.

Advertising is labelled and separated from reporting. If a commercial relationship ever touches a subject the platform covers, that relationship is disclosed on the affected surface.

HappeningNow is independently operated. It is not affiliated with a political party, campaign, or advocacy organization.

Reader data

Reading behaviour is used to organize what a reader sees, never to change the substance of a story, a count, or a context section. Two readers looking at the same article see the same evidence. The Privacy Policy describes what is collected and why.

Accountability

These standards are owned by the founder, who is named on this page and on the About page. Errors in HappeningNow's own output are handled under the corrections process, which distinguishes them from errors in publisher reporting.