ETHICS POLICY

As a company, Digit (and its parent company Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited) are registered in India, and follow all laws and regulations applicable to companies in India. Digit/Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited conducts all business in an ethical and honest manner. This code of ethics applies to everyone we interact with within the company or externally, and includes but is not limited to, our employees, our readers, advertisers, suppliers of goods and services and any other external agencies. We are an equal opportunity company, and do not discriminate at all, in any way, based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation age, disability or any such characteristics.

CODE OF CONDUCT

All employees of Digit, it’s sub-brands, and all employees of Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited (our parent company) have a code of conduct that we are required to adhere to strictly. This includes some of the following points:

• No employee is allowed to accept any gifts or benefits from any brands who operate in the same space that we cover as a media house, might write about, might be potential advertisers or who we might do business with.
• We do not reveal in advance any details of our editorial stories to anyone or any brand. When an editorial story is published, the readers, advertisers and the world at large gets to read it at the same time.
• No editorial staff is allowed to report on or test the products of any company where there might be a possible conflict of interest. This includes things such as a relative working at that company, the staff themselves having worked at the company previously, etc.
• No editorial staff is allowed to invest in or buy shares of any of the companies that we cover editorially.
• No employee has ever, or will ever make a paid endorsement of a product or service that falls into the science and technology category, or for any brand or service that we might write about as part of our editorial coverage.
• We do not accept any conditions set by anyone for the editorial coverage of products that we do – such as not publishing a review if it is negative, only being given access to the product if we can cover it in a stipulated way, etc.
• We receive a lot of products before launch, and we sign legal embargo documents with the brands to ensure that we do not publish content about the product before the stipulated and agreed on embargo deadline. We accept no other preconditions of coverage as part of embargo documents.
• Our editorial staff accept invitations to travel across the world for launch events conducted by brands for global media, but we do not accept any quid pro quo offers as part of this. We’d rather miss out on a launch than compromise our ethics in any way whatsoever.
  
  For any queries about company policies, our code of conduct, or for any complaints about violations by any employee of ours, please directly contact our Editorial Director here. Your complaint will be redressed ASAP, while your name and email will be kept confidential, and your privacy respected.

DIGIT’S EDITORIAL ETHICS

We are proud of our editorial independence and maintain the highest integrity in journalism standards in India. We offer totally unbiased reviews of products, and know that our readers have trusted us for over two decades because we excel at doing so. Our testing is designed to be objective, easily repeatable and aims to remove any kind of subjective bias that individual reviewers might fall prey to.

We primarily receive products to test from the manufacturing brands themselves, and once tested, almost all products are returned to the brands. We only keep a few products (with the brand’s permission, and without any conditions of doing so), in order to be used as part of larger comparisons, or to when they’re used in benchmarks – such as components of a PC that are used as a test bench. This is standard practice for the industry. On occasion, if a product is popular and we have not been able to procure it for testing, we buy the product in order to review it.

If you have any questions about our Ethics policy, you can contact our Chief Editors.

Fact Checking and Sources

Digit attempts to fact check everything we report on. With our own original content we have a procedure in place to fact check all claims made. For test centre data, random quality checks are conducted to ensure that data filled in by a reviewer is accurate. The Chief Editors take full responsibility for the accuracy of the content published on their watch. When the source of news or information is external, we ensure accuracy by insisting on three or more independent sources of information. When sources are anonymous, we mention that clearly in the article and more than a single source is sought after. While it’s not always possible to corroborate facts by using multiple sources, we make sure to mention when we have only a single source.

We protect the privacy of our sources (such as when an insider leaks us some information) when we are requested to do so. If you have a leak or information to share with us, please do so by writing to leaks@digit.in

If you have questions about our fact checking of any article in particular, please contact our Chief Editors, and remember to mention the URL (or issue number and name of the article for print articles) in question.

Corrections Policy

No one is perfect. In the very unlikely and rare event that we do make a mistake or commit an error in our reporting, we promise to fix said error as soon as we are informed of it. We will update our story with a clear notice of what has changed, what error we had made, and if necessary issue an apology to anyone affected by the error.

If the error is made in a platform where a quick edit is not possible (in print, or in a published video) we issue a corrigendum in the next print edition, or in the case of a video, might take down the video and re-upload once corrected. If you have noticed an error of any sorts in any of our content on this site or elsewhere, please drop us an email at editor@digit.in and we will rectify it immediately.

Advertising Ethics

While we accept advertising and paid promotions from brands across our properties, they are always clearly marked as such, with terms such as Sponsored, Promotion, etc. We DO NOT in any circumstance allow even a single paid promotion to be masked as editorial content, or include paid promotions inside our editorial content. You can rest assured that all editorial content put out by our team of editors is 100% unbiased.

We do not allow advertising on our platforms of any sort that can be construed as immoral, immodest or unethical. This includes any products or services that are related to gambling, anything sexual in nature, anything that targets children under the age of 16, or anything divisive or offensive based on religion, race, sexuality, gender, etc.

Apart from this, even if the advertisement violates none of the above, but we feel that the advertiser is running a pyramid scheme, or advertising a scam, or the advertisement in question is making claims that are obviously false, we will refuse the advertisement.

Affiliate Linking

As is now pretty standard for all online media houses, Digit too includes Buying links to products it reviews or writes about, which include embedded affiliate links from which we make a small commission. In no way does this affect our judgement of a product, or cause us to write favourably about any products. We clearly mark which online or offline store we are sending users to, and we inform our readers about our affiliate income in our About Us page.