The team of journalists we collaborate with wish to deliver quality, thorough and independent content to users across our websites.
Here is the North Star Network ‘Journalist Charter’, outlining the seven values that we ensure is upheld across our portfolio of sites:
Zero-tolerance to prejudice
Our articles and content do not contribute to hatred and are free of any kind of prejudice or discrimination, whether it be social, ethnic, racial, gender-related, sexual, religious, disability, political or other opinions.
Fact checking, Sources, Credits & Plagiarism
The writers we collaborate with are expected to be accurate and provide information that has been gathered first hand or can be traced to a trusted and verified source.
We aim to reference comments made on social media by embedding the original post where possible.
We do not tolerate any plagiarism of any kind.
Right of Reply
Article subjects are afforded ‘right of reply' before publishing significant criticism or allegations.
Correction on wrong information
We encourage readers to send us feedback on any incorrect information or reporting they come across on our sites, and we commit to changing anything demonstrated to be false as quickly as possible.
Any updated article will clearly detail what has been changed, when and why.
Confidentiality of sources
The journalists we collaborate with always advise sources that their interview is on the record and will be recorded before starting the interview. They maintain professional secrecy and protect the sources of their information.
The writers we collaborate with take careful precautions not to reveal the identity of confidential sources, including avoiding putting a source’s name in writing on unsecured channels.
Independence
NSN websites make money only from ads and affiliation for betting operators. Any other paid content will be clearly displayed as “sponsored”.
Investment in real journalism
We collaborate with professional journalists and sports specialists who, where possible, are clearly identified in their articles.
How we use AI
We use artificial intelligence in our newsroom, and we would rather tell you exactly how than hide it.
Since the relaunch of GoalBall in October 2026, a large share of GoalBall's articles, from match news to player profiles and updates of older pages, has been researched and drafted with the help of an AI model, Claude, made by Anthropic. The AI works inside a written editorial brief set by the North Star Network team: what to cover, which sources count, the tone, and what must never appear on the site. The topics and the editorial plan are chosen by people, not by the machine.
These are the rules every AI-assisted article has to follow before it goes online:
- Every fact, figure, date and quote is checked on the day of writing against a primary source (the NFF, CAF, a club, a league, an official register) or two serious news outlets. Anything that cannot be confirmed is left out, or the article says plainly that the information is not public.
- Quotes are always real, attributed to the person who said them and to the outlet that reported them. Nothing is paraphrased into a quote, and no scene, person or anecdote is invented to make a story read better.
- The sources behind each article are logged internally, so any figure can be traced back if a reader questions it.
- Salaries, fortunes and private lives are only reported when they have been published or made public by the person concerned. When a salary is an estimate, we say so and name who made it.
- Images are never generated by AI. Photos come from the IMAGO picture agency and carry their credit; screenshots of betting sites are taken by us, dated and captioned.
Our betting and promo code pages follow the same logic. Bonus amounts, wagering rules and payment details are read on the operator's own website from Nigeria on the date shown in the article, or taken from a named review when the operator does not publish them, and licences are checked against the public register of the Lagos State Lotteries and Gaming Authority.
AI makes mistakes, and so do people. An NSN editor reviews what is published, has articles corrected or rewritten when they fall short, and updates these rules when a problem is found. If you spot an error, contact us: under our correction policy above, we will fix it and say what changed.
