Editorial policy.

Belgium Impulse’s editorial choices are independent of every commercial relationship the newsroom has. Sponsored content, where present, is clearly marked, produced separately from editorial, and never influences the headlines, framing or scheduling of editorial coverage.

We will refuse a sponsorship that conflicts with our editorial integrity. We have done it; we will do it again. See source transparency for how the firewall actually works in practice.

Every article links to its primary sources. Quotations are limited to short, fair-use extracts; full articles are never reproduced verbatim. The source list at the bottom of every piece shows the publisher, the publication date where known, and the date we accessed the source — visible, not buried.

Sources never appear inline in the article body (R2). The dedicated sources popup is the single place to verify what we read, so the reading flow stays clean and the audit trail stays intact.

Many Belgium Impulse drafts are produced with AI assistance — specifically, an automated editorial pipeline that reads source material and generates a structured draft including the “why it matters”, the historical context, and the geopolitical framing. Every draft is reviewed and approved by a human editor before it appears publicly. Nothing auto-publishes.

Each article carries a visible transparency label — AI-assisted, fully editorial, or sponsored — at the bottom of the page. That label is non-negotiable: it is enforced by the publish-validate gate (R36), not left to editor judgement.

Every article, dossier and breaking item must surface the maximum reasonable historical and geopolitical context. A reader landing on any one piece should be able to answer five questions without leaving the page: what happened, how we got here, who’s affected beyond Belgium, why now, what to watch.

This is a permanent rule (R44). The editorial pipeline scales depth from the story’s geopolitical surface area; the publish-validate gate enforces a floor. Context is not garnish on top of reporting — it is the product.

Sponsored content is clearly marked with a “Sponsored” label, a visible sponsor disclosure banner, and the same publish-validate gates that apply to editorial. Editorial articles are not paid for, and editorial decisions are not influenced by sponsorship relationships.

Sponsored articles linked from /news must declare the sponsor in the kicker, not just at the bottom of the page. Readers should never have to scroll to find out who paid for what.

We correct material errors. Substantive corrections are noted, dated, on the article and added to the public corrections log. Minor typographical fixes are made silently.

Email [email protected]. Acknowledgement same business day; fix as soon as the report is verified.

If you believe an article fails our editorial standards, write to [email protected]. We review every complaint and respond within five working days.

Complaints that result in a published correction or retraction are recorded in the corrections log alongside the original; they are not handled privately.