Editorial guidelines

Midbar is a news outlet covering Israel and the Jewish world, in French and in English, published by 100-8 Studio. It is available on midbar.media, in the Midbar app for iOS and Android, and on Instagram (@midbar.media, @midbar.en). Every story is published as an article and as a short vertical video.

Midbar writes from a Jewish and Israeli perspective and takes a stand. Our articles are analyses, not wire reports: we give context, we interpret, we defend a reading of the events. We say so on every page, in the app store listings and in the instructions we give our writing tools, so that no reader mistakes an opinion for a neutral account.

• No invented facts. A fact, a figure or a quote published by Midbar must be verifiable in the source we cite. We never make one up, never embellish one, never attribute words to someone who did not say them.
• Opinion is not fact. Taking sides means arguing, not bending the facts. When we interpret, the reader should be able to tell the interpretation from the fact it rests on.
• Doubt is stated. When a fact is contested or not yet confirmed, we say so rather than picking the convenient version.

Midbar does not report from the field. Every article is written from identified press sources — Jewish news agencies, the Israeli press, the general press — and names its original source, with a link to it, on the website and in the apps. The reader can always go back to the raw fact and check it against what we made of it.

We cite; we do not copy. A source is summarised, quoted briefly and credited, never reproduced.

We will make mistakes. When an error is reported or found, we correct or withdraw the article, and we say so on the article itself. Reports go to hello@100-8.studio (see contact us) and are handled within a few working days. We do not silently rewrite a published article.

Defending a side never means hating another. Our guidelines rule out hate speech, calls to violence and degrading generalisations about any ethnic or religious group. Criticising actors, ideologies and policies is what we do; dehumanising a people is what we refuse.

Our articles, video scripts and captions are written by a language model from the sources above and from instructions we write ourselves; part of our output is published automatically and reviewed afterwards, the rest is approved by a person before publication. The full account, with the actual instructions, is on our transparency page. Using a model does not transfer responsibility: what Midbar publishes is ours to answer for.

Our illustrations are generated images, deliberately non-photorealistic and never depicting a real, identifiable person. No image published by Midbar should be read as a photograph of the event described.

Midbar is free for its readers and is funded, now or in the future, by advertising and partnerships. The rule is simple: an advertisement is labelled as such, kept apart from the content, and never has a say in what we write. No affiliate links, no sponsored articles, no paid placement presented as news. Nobody pays to be covered, or not to be. The only personal data we hold is the email address you choose to give us for the evening letter, and nothing else.

Midbar publishes several new stories every day, in each edition. Content in the apps is the same as on the website, updated at the same moment.

Questions about these guidelines, or about an article: hello@100-8.studio — or see the contact page.