The Space Coast Rocket distributes press releases about legal and political issues that are accurate and conform to our editorial guidelines.
Press releases on The Space Coast Rocket about legal cases and political issues must:
- Cite from and contain a case or complaint number, as well as the court of record, for all officially filed legal actions and accusations of illegal conduct referenced in the release
- Contain explicit attribution to an authorized source of the material, such as court documents
- Cite from a fact checked news source; proper citation needs to provide the source of the report, the date it was published or aired, and a link to the site
- Be accurate and free of potentially libelous material
- Be free of content intended to harm or exact revenge upon an individual or group
- Clearly identify opinions in quotes or attribute these statements as opinions belonging to the organization, and not state as fact
- Be written in an acceptable press release format
Press releases on The Space Coast Rocket about legal cases and political matters can:
- Contain fair comment of a political or public figure as long as this content does not cross over into libel territory
- Express the opinion or official stance of an organization on a public issue or current event, however opinions must be put into the form of a quote and properly attributed to the organization making the statement
Press releases on The Space Coast Rocket about legal cases and political matters are not:
- Announcements of intentions to file a court case against an individual or group
- Potentially libelous, which is defined as content that falsely depicts or implies:
- A person has committed a crime or is guilty of illegal activity
- A person lacks mental capacity
- A person has engaged in immoral behavior
- A person has a loathsome disease
- Interpretations of legal proceedings
- All claims about events surrounding a court case need to be attributed to court documents
- Until a case is decided, events cannot be interpreted, but only detail what court documents allege
- Avoid inflammatory language, hyperbole and unattributed opinion
- An invasion of someone’s privacy
- Threatening, abusive, menacing, offensive, violent, intimidating or otherwise objectionable
- Intended to harm or exact revenge upon an individual or group, which is defined as content that is deemed intended to:
- Incite, advocate or express hatred, bigotry, racism or gratuitous violence
- Promote personal opinions attacking an individual or group
- Maliciously affect a company’s stock
- Stalk, defame, defraud, degrade, shame or victimize an individual or group
- Additionally, The Space Coast Rocket does not publish releases that attempt to incite fear or panic, including but not limited to releases predicting the end of the world or terrorist attacks.
