Version: 4 FINAL (May 27, 2026)

External standard: Registered with The Trust Project. Trust Indicators published at lacaribenanews.com/trust.

Preamble

La Caribeña News (LCN) is a news platform covering the Caribbean and Latin America for micro, small, and medium business owners and operators, journalists, institutional readers, the regional diaspora, and the foreign press. We use artificial intelligence in the production of journalism. We have used it openly since the platform's earliest articles. We will continue to use it. The question is not whether AI plays a role in modern journalism but what discipline governs that role.

This charter sets that discipline. It is a public commitment. It binds the Publisher, the LCN Newsroom, and every contributor. It is reviewed annually and revised when the field, the regulatory environment, or our own architecture changes in ways that require it.

Article I. Human Responsibility and Editorial Authority

1.1 Every article published on La Caribeña News is the editorial responsibility of Theon Alleyne, Publisher. There is no exception to this rule.

1.2 No article is published without a human reading and approving it first.

1.3 Articles authored by the Publisher are bylined "Theon Alleyne." All other articles are bylined "LCN Newsroom." LCN does not publish anonymous content.

1.4 AI is never the sole verifier of a published fact. Human judgment closes every fact.

1.5 The final editorial review for every LCN article is conducted by EDEN™. EDEN is a multimodal editorial system operated under standards stated in this charter. EDEN's editorial decisions are accountable through three mechanisms: the sourcing standard in Article 3.1, the public corrections register in Article 3.4, and the reader complaints channel established in Article 3.5.

Article II. What AI Will and Will Not Do at LCN

2.1 AI is used inside LCN's news production cycle for the following functions: research; validating the news angle; challenging the news angle; framing the initial human input; SEO and distribution copy; social copy; image alt-text. AI does not originate the reporting in any LCN article. The reporter is responsible for the lede, the central argument, the framing, and the conclusion of every article published, without AI generation of those elements. AI may assist with copy editing, fact-checking, source identification, draft structuring, and language refinement of reporter-originated material. The boundary is structural, not quantitative: AI may help the reporter say what the reporter has decided to say, but may not decide what the article should say.

2.2 AI will never conduct an original interview or speak to anyone on behalf of LCN.

2.3 AI will never generate news photography or any photorealistic image of a real person or real event. Illustrative graphics that accompany explainer content may be AI-generated only when they are clearly labeled as illustration and do not depict a real person or real event in a manner that could be mistaken for documentary record. Any AI-generated illustration published by LCN carries machine-readable marking identifying it as AI-generated, in compliance with EU AI Act Article 50 effective August 2026.

2.4 AI will never generate commentary written to mimic the voice of an identifiable real person.

2.5 AI will never generate a quote attributed to a real person. Quotes in LCN articles originate from named human sources verified by a human reporter.

2.6 AI will never be involved in the coverage of active criminal proceedings.

2.7 LCN does not publish deepfakes. LCN does not publish fake news. These lines are absolute and admit no exception.

Article III. Sources, Verification, Attribution, and Corrections

3.1 Every fact in every LCN news article is sourced and verified by a human reporter. The Publisher stands behind the sourcing under the editorial responsibility named in Article 1.1. This standard applies regardless of whether the production cycle involved AI.

3.2 LCN does not recompose another journalist's reporting without primary source verification and full attribution to the original journalist and the original outlet.

3.3 LCN's news research operations work exclusively from publicly available source material. Sources behind login walls, leaked documents, embargoed releases, and material shared in confidence are excluded by design.

3.4 When an error appears in an LCN article, the correction is handled under the same protocol regardless of cause. Articles touched by an AI-attributable error are re-routed through EDEN before re-publication. All corrections are logged in a public corrections register at lacaribenanews.com/corrections. Complaints that fall outside the corrections register (characterization, framing, source selection, named-person treatment) are handled through the reader complaints channel established in Article 3.5.

3.5 LCN maintains a reader complaints channel at lacaribenanews.com/complaints for matters that fall outside the corrections register, including disputes about characterization, framing, source selection, and use of named persons in articles. Complaints are acknowledged within 72 hours and substantively responded to within fourteen days. Where a complaint is upheld, the article is corrected or annotated and the resolution is recorded in the public corrections register. The channel is not an ombudsman. Final editorial authority rests with the Publisher. The channel exists to ensure complaints are received, considered, and resolved transparently.

Article IV. Technology, Vendors, and Data Discipline

4.1 LCN operates an AI-supported research and validation layer as part of editorial production. The layer runs on infrastructure controlled by LCN and processes only publicly available source material.

4.2 LCN uses AI vendor services only where the vendor's data handling has been reviewed and where the Publisher has authorized the vendor for the work in question.

4.3 The following categories of information never pass through any AI system at LCN regardless of vendor: confidential source identities; unpublished documents shared in confidence; interview audio and transcripts prior to publication; subscriber payment data; private direct messages from readers; un-redacted leaks; legal documents under seal; press releases under embargo.

4.4 This charter governs the news operations of La Caribeña News. The Publisher, Theon Alleyne, is personally bound by the red lines in Article II in any news or news-adjacent publication under his control, regardless of imprint, brand, or corporate structure. News-adjacent publication means regularly published content including current event reporting, public-figure analysis, or factual claims about identifiable persons or institutions. Distinct businesses with distinct content categories, including the publishing imprint Team Shaw Caribbean Press and the compliance advisory practice EICCIO Advisors, operate under their own data-handling rules. The carve-out for distinct businesses does not extend to entities whose primary content category is news.

4.5 LCN commits to an annual equity review of editorial outputs, examining whether coverage is balanced across CARICOM member states, Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking Caribbean territories, French-speaking Caribbean territories, business sectors (MSME, large corporate, public sector), and source languages. The equity review's findings are published at lacaribenanews.com/equity-review. Identified imbalances trigger corrective action in the following editorial cycle.

4.6 LCN maintains an internal AI audit log recording, per article, which editorial AI tools were used and which human reviewer signed off. The log is internal to LCN operations.

4.7 Every LCN contributor reads this charter and confirms understanding before publishing under the LCN byline. The Publisher provides a briefing on AI use in LCN editorial work, including the boundaries in Article II and the verification standards in Article III.

4.8 LCN maintains an internal synthetic content registry recording, for every AI-generated illustration published, the tool used, the prompt, and the date of generation. The registry supports the machine-readable marking commitment in Article 2.3.

4.9 LCN publishes an annual environmental footprint statement with the equity review at lacaribenanews.com/equity-review. The statement reports estimated electricity consumption and carbon-equivalent emissions from LCN's editorial AI operations for the year. The Publisher commits to reporting these figures regardless of operational scale, on the principle that environmental transparency is a journalistic responsibility that applies to small publishers as well as large ones.

Disclosure and Governance

LCN does not annotate individual articles with AI-use disclosures. Our position is that AI now sits inside the production cycle of virtually every information industry, including law, medicine, financial services, and journalism, and that per-article disclosure isolates AI as exceptional when it has become ambient. Sourcing transparency is a journalistic standard that predates AI and applies regardless of who or what assisted in researching a given fact. The two commitments operate at different levels and do not substitute for each other.

This charter is the canonical statement of LCN's AI practice. It is published at lacaribenanews.com/ai-charter and indexed in robots.txt and llms.txt so that automated systems referencing LCN may find it directly. Within human navigation, it is linked from the LCN About page.

When asked directly whether AI wrote a given article, LCN responds: "AI assisted with research. The article was reported, written, and approved by the named byline under the editorial responsibility of Theon Alleyne, Publisher. Our full AI Charter is at lacaribenanews.com/ai-charter."

LCN is registered with The Trust Project and publishes the Trust Indicators at lacaribenanews.com/trust. The Trust Indicators provide a standardized, machine-readable disclosure of LCN's ownership, funding, editorial team, ethics policy, corrections policy, sourcing standards, and methods. The Trust Project is an independent non-profit. Its inclusion makes LCN's editorial practice auditable against an external standard the Publisher does not author or control.

The Publisher reviews developments in CARICOM data protection law, EU AI Act enforcement that affects LCN-deployed AI systems, and Caribbean media regulation on a quarterly basis. Where a development creates a charter gap, an out-of-cycle revision is initiated.

This charter is reviewed annually by the Publisher. Non-material revisions are made under the Publisher's authority. Material revisions, defined as changes to the red lines in Article II, changes to scope, or changes to the governance provisions themselves, require consultation with legal counsel. The charter is revised outside the annual cycle when a new regulatory development, a new model adoption by LCN, or a public error exposes a gap that the annual cycle cannot wait to close.

Signed

Theon Alleyne

Publisher, La Caribeña News