These are the rules we hold ourselves to. They exist because we publish quickly, about named companies and named people, and speed is not an excuse for getting it wrong.
Attribution is not optional
Every story names its source in the first paragraph, and links to the primary document, whether that’s the SENS notice, the statement or the release, wherever one exists. If a claim comes from a company, we say the company said it. A company statement is a claim by that company, not an established fact, and we write it that way.
How we report
Most business coverage in South Africa is written for people who already trade the companies it covers. We write for the people running them: the SME owner, the entrepreneur, the manager who has to decide by tomorrow morning whether something changes for them. That’s the actual difference between us and everyone else covering the same event, not a different set of facts.
We open with what changes and for whom, not the number first. We explain financial and technical terms in plain language every time they appear, not once and then assumed. We connect a story to what else is genuinely happening in that sector, never with a vague line about “economic headwinds” that could apply to anything. And we say plainly what is confirmed, what is a company’s own claim, and what is still unknown, because a reader deciding whether to trust a story deserves to see how sure we actually are.
Not every story fits a small business angle, and we do not force one where it does not belong. A multi-billion-rand mining deal is not made into an SME story just because that’s part of who we write for. Skipping an angle that isn’t there is more honest than manufacturing one.
How we check what we publish
Every story is built from a named source and links back to it. Before a story goes live it has to pass fixed rules: name the source in the first paragraph, never state an unverified claim as fact, never invent a figure, a date, a name or a quote, and never speculate about consequences. A story that breaks those rules is held back rather than smoothed over, and nothing under 600 words is published.
Editors then read held and flagged stories against the original source, and go back over published stories on a rolling basis, correcting or removing anything that does not hold up. We publish quickly, so some errors will get through; when they do, we correct them and say so.
What we will not do
We do not publish unverified allegations about individuals. We do not speculate about the consequences of a company announcement. We do not write headlines that promise more than the story delivers. We do not run copy that exists to attract search traffic rather than inform a reader.
Corrections
We correct errors promptly and visibly. Material corrections are recorded, with the date and what changed, on our corrections page; we do not quietly edit and move on. If you believe something we published is wrong, tell us through contact, and we will check it against the source and respond.
Where a story is updated after publication, the update time is shown on the article.
Independence
Business News South Africa is independently owned and self-funded. No company, investor, government body or advertiser pays for coverage, and none has any say in what we report on or how we report it. We do not run sponsored or paid-for articles. If that ever changes, anything paid for will be clearly labelled as such at the point of publication, not disclosed only here.
Commercial partners and affiliate links
Some pages carry a clearly labelled partner box offering a product or service from a company we have an affiliate arrangement with, such as business funding, web hosting or debt counselling. If you sign up through one of those links, we may earn a commission. That is how we keep this site free to read.
The rules we hold ourselves to: a partner box is always labelled as a partner offer and sits outside the article itself, never inside the reporting. Partners do not see stories before they publish, cannot request or block coverage, and are covered on exactly the same terms as any other company, including critically where the facts call for it. A partner box never appears next to stories about death, crime or personal tragedy. Partner links are marked for search engines as sponsored, as Google requires. If you think a partner arrangement has influenced a story, tell us through contact.