How We Work

VoteFresno exists to tell Fresno voters what their government is actually doing — not what a press release says it’s doing. Here’s how we go about it.

We work from the public record, not press releases

Our reporting starts with primary sources: council and county agendas, campaign finance filings, court records, contracts, budget documents, and on-the-record statements. When an agency won’t put something in writing, we file public records requests. We go to the source, not to whoever got there first.

We follow beats, not headlines

Fresno’s city council, the county board of supervisors, school boards, and water districts don’t stop making decisions between election cycles, and neither do we. We track agendas, filings, and votes continuously, so a story about a contract or a zoning decision is reported because it matters, not because it already went viral somewhere else.

Every fact is checked against its source before publication

No claim runs because it sounds right. Before a story is published, every factual assertion in it is checked line by line against the specific document, filing, or quote it’s supposed to come from. A second editor — not the one who wrote the piece — does this check independently. If a claim doesn’t hold up against the record, it’s cut, not softened.

We push back on the framing agencies want us to accept

A government press release tells you what an agency wants you to know. We ask what it leaves out: who voted no, who benefits financially, what a report actually says versus what an official claimed it says. When an agency’s public statement doesn’t match its own underlying documents, we report the documents.

Analysis is labeled, and it’s built on evidence

When we explain why an official might have voted a certain way, or who stands to gain from a decision, we say plainly that it’s analysis. We only build that analysis from documented facts — voting records, disclosed donors, contracts, public relationships — never from speculation about someone’s private motives.

We show more than one side

When we break down a ballot measure or a contested proposal, we check that we’ve fairly represented how it affects different people, not just the side that issued the press release. A good explainer holds up under scrutiny from either side of an issue.

Editorial review, every time, no exceptions

Every piece we publish — news, analysis, scorecards, explainers — goes through editorial review before it goes live. Nothing skips that step.

Paid content is clearly marked and never mixed with our reporting

Campaigns and organizations can purchase advertising or sponsored opinion space on VoteFresno. When one side buys space, we proactively offer the other side the same opportunity, at the same price. Paid content lives in its own visually distinct section and is labeled as paid every time it appears.

The Record uses one public rubric, applied to everyone

Our politician scorecard, The Record, is built on a rubric we publish before we score anyone, applied identically regardless of party. We show the underlying data — votes, attendance, donor patterns. We don’t tell you who’s good or bad; that’s your call.

We correct our mistakes, publicly

When we get something wrong — a fact, a date, a figure — we fix it and note that a correction was made.