Philreport.com Editorial Taxonomy and Tagging Policy
Last reviewed: February 28, 2026
Every story published on philreport.com is assigned a content category, a set of topic tags, and — for Press Check assessments — a verdict tag. This page explains what each of those means, how they are applied, and what standards govern the verdict tags specifically.
We publish this not as a technical document but as a commitment: the reader who wants to understand how we organize our coverage, filter our archive, or challenge a verdict we have reached should be able to do so from a single page. This is that page.
Content Categories
Every post on philreport.com belongs to exactly one content category. The category tells you what kind of work the piece represents — not what it is about, but how it was produced and what standard it was held to.
Press Check Assessments of official communications from Philippine government agencies measured against publicly available data. A Press Check post takes a specific claim made in a government press release, speech, or official statement and asks whether the evidence supports it. The methodology is documented below under Verdict Tags. Every Press Check carries a verdict.
Investigative Primary-source, document-driven accountability reporting. Investigative posts are built on primary documents — court records, audit reports, Senate transcripts, budget documents, official filings — corroborated by named sources with direct knowledge where possible. The standard for central claims is higher than for any other content type on the site.
Special Reports Synthesis across institutions, time periods, and data sources. Special Reports are written for readers who want the structural picture — the policy history, the institutional pattern, the finding that only becomes visible when the pieces are assembled. They are longer, more extensively sourced, and take more time to produce than other formats.
Opinion Committed arguments from named contributors — including philreport.com’s own weekly Editorial. Opinion posts state a position and defend it. They are clearly labeled as opinion and they reflect the views of the named author or, in the case of Editorials, the institutional position of philreport.com. Opinion posts are not subject to the Press Check verdict framework — they are arguments, not assessments.
Field Notes Compiled news reports drawn from credited mainstream Philippine media sources, cross-referenced against primary documents where available. Every Field Notes post carries a source note identifying the outlets whose coverage was compiled. philreport.com does not present compiled coverage as originally reported. The format is explained in full on our Field Notes methodology page.
Economy Feature coverage of the Philippine economy at ground level — agriculture, microenterprise, MSME, consumer finance, regional economic conditions. Economy posts are reported and analytical. They are not Press Check assessments and do not carry verdict tags.
Technology Coverage of digital infrastructure, government technology programs, connectivity, data privacy, and fintech — treated as accountability journalism rather than consumer technology coverage. Technology posts examine the gap between what technology policy and programs claim to deliver and what the evidence shows they deliver.
Corrections and Updates Every correction, update, and formal response to philreport.com coverage is published as a post in this category. The archive is permanent and publicly navigable. Corrections are never silent. When a fact changes after publication, the original post is updated with a visible notice at the top and the correction is published separately in this category with the date, the nature of the error, and what was changed.
Topic Tags
Topic tags connect posts across categories. A Press Check on a DOF investment claim, a Field Notes report on the same PSA data release, and a Special Report on the 2025 investment slowdown will share tags — Foreign Direct Investment, Department of Finance, CREATE MORE Act — that link them into a coherent archive a reader can navigate.
Tags are applied at three to eight per post. Fewer than three and the post is under-indexed. More than eight and precision is lost.
We maintain a controlled tag vocabulary — meaning we do not create new tags freely. Before a new tag is added, we check whether an existing tag covers the same ground. Canonical forms are enforced: Foreign Direct Investment, not FDI; Philippine Statistics Authority, not PSA. This discipline keeps the archive coherent over time.
Our main tag groups cover:
Government agencies and institutions, from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to the Ombudsman to the ICC. Legislative bodies and committees. Economic topics from GDP and inflation to Critical Minerals and the Digital Economy. Governance and accountability topics including specific controversies where they generate recurring coverage. Political figures and administrations where their actions are the subject of coverage, not commentary. Companies and sectors in regulated industries where official claims about performance are assessed. Geography for coverage with specific regional relevance.
One tag deserves specific explanation.
AI-Assisted is applied to every post where artificial intelligence played a meaningful role in research, data synthesis, or analysis. It is applied honestly — which means consistently, not selectively. A reader who filters the site by this tag will find a transparent, timestamped record of where AI contributed to published work and can assess that record accordingly. We do not hide AI involvement. We document it.
Press Check Verdict Tags
This is the section most worth reading carefully if you are using the Press Check archive to inform a decision, a piece of analysis, or a challenge to one of our assessments.
Every Press Check post carries exactly one verdict tag. The four verdicts are defined below with the specific criteria that govern each. These definitions were written before the first Press Check was published and are applied consistently across all agencies and all administrations. The standard does not change depending on who made the claim or whether the verdict is politically convenient.
Verified
The primary claims in the official communication are supported by available evidence. This means: the specific figures cited trace to primary sources and are accurately represented; the framing of those figures does not materially mislead about their context or significance; and the causal claims — that reform X produced outcome Y — are consistent with available data.
Verified does not mean the communication was complete or that it acknowledged all relevant context. It means the claims it made were accurate. A government press release can be Verified and still omit information a full assessment would include. When that is the case, the Press Check post notes the omission even as it awards the Verified verdict.
Partially Verified
Some primary claims in the official communication are supported by available evidence. Others are not, or cannot be assessed against available data, or are framed in ways that create a materially different impression than the underlying figures support.
Partially Verified is the most common verdict for official economic communications. Most government press releases cite accurate figures in isolation while omitting the comparative context — the year-on-year trend, the target that was missed, the aggregate direction the individual data points sit inside — that would change how the claim reads. Citing a real figure in a misleading context is not a false claim. It is a partially supported one.
When a Partially Verified verdict is issued, the Press Check post specifies which claims are supported and which are not, and explains precisely what context was omitted.
Not Supported
The primary claims in the official communication are not supported by available evidence. This means: the figures cited do not match primary source data, or the causal claims made are contradicted by available evidence, or the framing is constructed in a way that a reasonable reader would find materially false rather than merely incomplete.
Not Supported is not issued lightly. Before this verdict is applied, the Press Check must identify: the specific claim, the specific evidence that contradicts it, and the primary source for that evidence. A general impression that an official communication overstates conditions does not meet the standard for Not Supported. A specific figure that does not match the PSA release it purports to cite does.
Misleading Framing
The figures cited in the official communication are accurate but the framing produces a materially false impression in a reader who does not have access to the full context. This verdict applies when a government communication selects a comparison period, a data subset, or a causal explanation that is technically defensible but designed to obscure rather than illuminate.
The trade deficit example from our January 2026 coverage illustrates this. Four outlets reported the same PSA figure using four different comparison periods, all accurate, producing four incompatible headlines. A government press release that cites only the comparison period that supports its preferred narrative — without acknowledging that other valid comparisons tell a different story — meets the Misleading Framing standard even if every number it contains is correct.
Misleading Framing is the most editorially demanding verdict to apply because it requires demonstrating intent to mislead, or at minimum a pattern of selective framing, rather than simple inaccuracy. We apply it when the selection of framing is not incidental but systematic.
Challenging a Verdict
If you are a named party in a Press Check assessment, a government communications officer, an analyst who disputes a finding, or a reader who believes a verdict was applied incorrectly, we publish formal responses.
To submit a formal response: identify the specific claim in the Press Check post you dispute, provide the evidence you believe we did not adequately weigh, and send it to our editorial contact. We will review it against the primary sources and publish the response in full alongside our reply — whether or not the reply changes the verdict.
We have changed verdicts when presented with evidence we had not adequately considered. We have maintained verdicts when the challenge did not engage the primary source record. Both outcomes have been published in the Corrections and Updates category with the full exchange visible.
The standard for changing a verdict is the same as the standard for issuing one: primary source evidence, not assertion.
A Note on Consistency
The taxonomy and verdict framework described on this page are only as useful as the consistency with which they are applied. A verdict tag that means different things in different posts is not a filter — it is a label.
We review our tagging and verdict consistency at 90-day intervals. If we find that application has drifted from the definitions above — that Partially Verified has been applied where Not Supported was warranted, or that Misleading Framing has been applied too broadly — we document the recalibration here, update the affected posts with visible notices, and publish a note in the Corrections and Updates category.
This page is updated whenever definitions change. The version date at the top reflects the last review. If you are citing a verdict from a post published before a definition change, the version of this page in effect at the time of publication governs.
philreport.com is committed to the public’s right to accurate information about the institutions that govern them. This page is part of that commitment.
Questions about this policy, contact us