Preamble

ChatEurope’s goal is to give access to a reliable information database on European news produced by public and private reference media brands and to allow the public to obtain answers from a chatbot relying on this trustworthy content.

The editorial and ethics charter is at the heart of the project and must guarantee high standards of journalism content quality, aligned with European values of diversity, inclusion, and media integrity.

Its fundamental principles include providing accurate, balanced and impartial coverage of news, reporting with an independent voice free of political, commercial or ideological influence and guaranteeing the reliability of the chatbot.

Accuracy

With the amount of disinformation and rumors circulating online and on social networks, ChatEurope partners’ role of providing verified news on European affairs via identified and trustworthy sources has never been more important.

ChatEurope project partners will be responsible for ensuring the accuracy of their content.

Every story must be correctly, precisely and transparently sourced.

Anonymous sources should be used in exceptional circumstances and based on strict criteria such as:

- Necessity: Anonymous sources should only be used when the information is essential and cannot be obtained by other means. The story must have significant public interest or impact.

- Credibility: The source must be credible, reliable, and have a proven track record of providing accurate information. Efforts should be made to independently verify the claims.

-  Verification: Wherever possible, the information provided by an anonymous source must be corroborated with evidence or confirmed by additional sources.

-  Motivation: Assess the source’s motivation for remaining anonymous. Ensure they are not acting out of personal or malicious intent that could compromise the story’s integrity.

-  Transparency: Disclose to the audience as much context as possible about the source’s role or position (without revealing their identity) to help readers or viewers assess the credibility of the information.

-  Editorial Oversight: The decision to grant anonymity should be approved by senior editors and justified in writing to ensure accountability.

Partners must never present the work of others as theirs. If they use external material such as extracts from the work of others, pick-ups from interviews and other media, the source must be fully identified and credited. They must not violate copyright.

Impartiality and balance

ChatEurope coverage must be fair, impartial and balanced to offer a pluralistic and diverse view of EU affairs. However, it should not give a platform to hate speech, designated as speech aimed to provoke hate, or even violence, towards a target group in society (see below).

Partners must try to contact all relevant sides of a story and obtain balanced comment and reaction from those facing criticism or accusations of wrongdoing.

They must also ensure that information obtained from social media is from authentic and verified accounts and don’t spread hearsay or rumors.

The goal of ChatEurope is to give the public the guarantee that it will not be exposed to the risks of manipulation and misinformation.

They should not give a platform to falsehoods and have a responsibility to frame the falsehood with the truth.

Images, graphics

News, photos and videos must not be staged, manipulated or edited to give a misleading or false picture of events. In some circumstances, such as feature production, the subject may be asked to pose in a certain manner or repeat an action, but this should be the exception and not the rule.

Graphics must be scaled correctly to avoid giving a distorted comparison of data. Information used in graphics must come from trustworthy sources and be thoroughly checked. It should be presented in a neutral fashion and not in a way that favors any particular narrative or indicates bias.

Independence

ChatEurope reports the news with an independent voice free of political, commercial or ideological influence.

Editorial independence is ensured not only for ChatEurope but also for each individual partner newsroom in their contributions.

Its reporting and its editorial decisions are totally independent of the European Union which has co-funded the project.

By enforcing transparency and neutrality, ChatEurope is serving as a reliable, ethical, and inclusive source of information about European affairs.

If the project is granted the possibility to connect ChatEurope to official EU websites’ content to allow the chatbot to mention links to these websites, the partners will leave no room for compromise on editorial independence.

ChatEurope will make a clear distinction between this official EU content and the independent editorial one and will not reproduce full extracts of the official EU websites but invite users to click on the links, should they wish it.

Hate Speech and other Harmful Content

The partners of the project reject discrimination based on race, gender, nationality, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other factor.

Ethically, the partners have a duty of care and must minimize harm against vulnerable members of society and should not give a platform to speech that could put them at risk. They are under no obligation, for example, to report hate speech, that can be defined as language that advocates, promotes, incites or encourages violence, discrimination, or other forms of hostility against individuals or groups because of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or other characteristics.

However, if it is in the public interest to publish the remarks made by a public figure, for example a politician campaigning in an election, these remarks should be fact-checked in real time and should be framed with reactions from the concerned parties and those with opposing views.

Partners must also provide warnings for potentially disturbing material and ensure it is presented within a proper context. Explicit material should be included only when necessary to inform or educate and must respect the privacy and the dignity of those affected.

Diversity

ChatEurope must reflect the diversity of opinions and the diversity of society. Diversity should be a priority when it comes to production and content.

The partners should have a gender balance and be inclusive when it comes to race, ethnicity, religion, culture, social background, sexual orientation, age and disability.

The persons interviewed should be equally diverse. Stereotypes and discrimination must be avoided. Regular audits of the production by the Editorial board should be carried out to track diversity in the content.

Clarity

To ensure ChatEurope reaches the widest possible audience, the language used will be clear, concise, and accessible. Partners will carefully choose terminology that is readily understandable and avoid jargon, technical terms, or acronyms without providing clear definitions or context. The partners will ensure that assumptions about the audience's prior knowledge are minimized and that information is presented in a way that is easy to grasp for a diverse readership across Europe.

Informed consent

Before interviewing people, partners should provide them with the information necessary for them to decide whether they wish to participate, which is called informed consent.

This includes being transparent about for whom one is working and how the content will be used; any potential harm they may face, such as harassment on social media. This is particularly important for private individuals who have no experience of speaking to the media.

Artificial Intelligence

ChatEurope project is using AI-based tools to create more interactive user experience with a chatbot able to answer users’ questions, relying on clearly identified and trusted content from the partners.

Reliability of the chatbot must be at the center of the experimentation and all content used by the chatbot will be sourced and totally transparent with links to the original content of the partners used in its answer.

The partners will constantly evaluate the performance of the chatbot on this trusted database to guarantee reliability and avoid potential hallucinations and biases.

ChatEurope does not publish content directly created by generative AI in text, images or other formats without human oversight. The content production comes from the work and professionalism of its partners' journalists.

These journalists can use AI under certain conditions to research, prepare stories and translate but they have the responsibility to verify the responses they produce and to keep in mind that this technology is likely to produce inaccurate, biased, stereotypical and dated results.

Generative AI is used on ChatEurope to translate articles but full transparency will be guaranteed with the partners providing clear disclosure about AI involvement in the translations and their lack of editorial responsibility on these translations. Those using translation tools to help create content that will be published must have a command of both languages so they can identify any discrepancies.

Editorial Board

A diverse editorial board has been created to oversee content quality and ensure adherence to the editorial charter and meets on a quarterly basis. This board includes key representatives of our consortium’s partners involved in the editorial workflow, under the supervision of the editor-in-chief of the project and an Ethics Officer (DEI). Issues and potential infringements can be pointed out to the editor-in-chief, who will have 24 hours to provide an answer on urgent matters and one week on less urgent issues that also require an in-depth investigation.

Paris, May 2025