Editorial standards

What we publish

Tārake publishes short, uplifting stories about Māori and Indigenous communities. Every story is either (a) an AI-curated summary of a piece already published by a reputable outlet, with the original source clearly linked, or (b) a long-form contribution written by a reader and reviewed by the Editor before publication.

Sourcing rules

• Every AI-curated story links back to a primary source. If a fact cannot be traced to a named source, it is not published.
• Preference is given to established Aotearoa outlets, Māori-owned media, iwi communications, and official releases from marae, hapū and iwi.
• Only recent stories (typically within 30 days of the original publication) are considered for the AI-curated feed.
• Historical clippings from Papers Past are surfaced with full attribution to the National Library of New Zealand.

Verification and gates

Before an AI-curated story appears on the site it passes through automated gates:

• Source gate: the source URL must resolve and be from an allowed publisher.
• Positivity gate: stories that centre on tragedy, harm or negative framing of Māori are rejected.
• Cultural gate: content that risks breaching tikanga or misrepresenting Māori worldviews is rejected.
• Fact-check pass: the summary is compared against the source; a verdict of verified and a confidence of 0.85 or higher is required for auto-publication. Anything lower is held for human review.

Reader-submitted long-form pieces are read end-to-end by the Editor. Any factual claim about a named person, iwi, hapū or organisation must be supported by a linkable source or by the writer's own first-hand experience.

Whakapapa and self-identification

Whakapapa claims are matters for whānau, hapū and iwi — not for Tārake to adjudicate. Where a story references a person's iwi affiliations, those affiliations come from how the person publicly self-identifies (or from the named source). Tārake does not verify individual whakapapa and does not use AI to infer iwi affiliation.

Tikanga considerations

Tārake takes care with imagery and language relating to tūpāpaku, tapu places, taonga and karakia. Where kōrero belongs to a particular marae or iwi, we defer to that authority and will remove or amend content on request.

What we will not publish

• Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or hate speech.
• Rage-bait or content that appears designed primarily to provoke.
• Unsourced claims, gossip, or private information about identifiable individuals.
• Sponsored or paid editorial dressed up as reporting.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it. See the corrections page for how to raise a correction and what happens next.