Terms of Service

The short version

These terms are the agreement between you and RTD JOURNAL when you use this site. Reading the news does not require you to sign anything, and for a reader who simply reads, most of what follows never comes up. It matters when something goes wrong: when work is copied, when a comment crosses a line, or when someone treats a news story as advice it was never meant to be. By using the site you accept these terms, and if you do not accept them the remedy is not to use it.

We have kept this in plain language. Where a sentence has a legal job to do we have let it do that job, but we have not padded the page to look thorough.

Using the site

You may read, link to, and share our work for your own personal, non-commercial use, and we are glad when you do. What you may not do is republish whole articles, scrape the site in bulk, or pass our reporting off as your own or as anyone else’s. The line between fair quotation with a link and wholesale copying is usually obvious, and where it is not, our DMCA and copyright policy explains where we draw it and how to ask.

You also agree not to attack the site: no attempts to break, overload, probe, or gain unauthorised access, no automated harvesting beyond what a normal reader’s browser does, and nothing that interferes with another reader’s use of the service. Framing the site to disguise its origin, or stripping our identification from our content, is not allowed either.

Comments and anything you submit

If we offer comments, tips, or any other way to send us material, you are responsible for what you send. Keep it lawful and keep it yours. Do not post other people’s private information, do not defame anyone, do not upload anything you have no right to share, and do not use our space for spam or harassment. We can remove anything that breaks these rules, and we can decline or close comment threads at our discretion, without turning it into a debate about your right to be published on our website.

When you send us something, a tip, a letter, a comment, you give us permission to publish and edit it in connection with our work, unless you have clearly told us it is confidential or off the record and we have agreed. You keep ownership of what you wrote. How we treat confidential material and sources is described in our editorial standards, and what we do with any personal data is in our privacy policy.

Our content and your use of it

The articles, images, graphics, and layout on this site are owned by us or used with permission, and they are protected by copyright and related rights. Nothing here transfers those rights to you. A licensed wire photo or agency report carries its own restrictions, which is one reason bulk copying is a problem even when a single quote is not.

Trademarks, logos, and brand names that appear in our reporting belong to their owners and are used to report on them, not to suggest any endorsement in either direction. If you believe your work has been used here in a way that is not permitted, the process for telling us, and for us to act, is in our copyright policy.

Links and third-party services

We link out constantly, to documents, to other coverage, to the primary sources behind a story. Those sites are not ours, we do not control them, and a link is not an endorsement of everything on the other end of it. When you follow one you are subject to that site’s terms and privacy practices, not ours. The same goes for advertising: the advertisements you see are, for the most part, chosen and served by third parties, and clicking one takes you into their world.

No warranty, and the limits of our liability

We work hard to be accurate, and we correct ourselves in the open when we are not, but the site is provided as it is, without a guarantee that it will be error-free, uninterrupted, or fit for any particular purpose you have in mind. News is a first draft written at speed, and our disclaimer tells you frankly what that means for how you should and should not rely on it.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from your use of the site, or from a decision you made on the strength of something you read here. Nothing in these terms limits any liability that cannot lawfully be limited. This is not us disclaiming responsibility for our journalism, which we stand behind and correct; it is us declining to be treated as an insurer for what readers do with it.

Changes, ending, and the law that applies

We may update these terms as the site changes, and the date below moves when we do. If a change is significant we will do more than move a date. We may also change, suspend, or discontinue any part of the service, and we may restrict access for anyone who breaks these terms. If any single provision here is found unenforceable, the rest still stands.

These terms are governed by the law of the place where the publication is established, and any dispute belongs to the courts there, without prejudice to any mandatory consumer rights you hold where you live. Questions about this page go to support@rtdjournal.com, and the other pages it refers to, our privacy policy and our disclaimer among them, are linked throughout.

Last updated: August 2026