Hargreaves Ledger and the rules

How we use AI

We use AI for legwork. People do the journalism. We'd rather tell you exactly where the line sits than have you guess.

Meet Hargreaves Ledger

Hargreaves Ledger is our automated research agent, and he writes from hargreaves@adot.at. He is software, not a person, and every email he writes says so in plain words. He works for all four publications, and he has the manners of an English butler because somebody around here should.

What he does

• Pulls the paperwork: SEC filings, court dockets, corporate records, campaign finance reports and public records
• Checks claims against records: what a company or official says, against what they filed
• Keeps the ledger: who we have asked, what they said and who hasn't answered
• Sorts tips from desk.adot.at and checks what he can
• Drafts the emails we ask for, for a person to approve

What he never does

• Send anything a person hasn't approved. Every outgoing email is read and approved by Pesach Lattin, one message at a time.
• Decide what we cover. He can point out a lead. A person decides whether it matters.
• Write our stories. Every word that runs is ours.
• Make promises about coverage, show anyone unpublished work, or confirm who our sources are.
• Reveal a tipster, or contact one without a person's approval.

When Pesach uses AI himself

Pesach dictates by voice and uses an automated assistant to handle email logistics. Emails written that way say so: "Dictated to my automated assistant, but these are my words." The words and the judgment calls are his.

ANIA's desk is separate

ANIA, the private intelligence firm behind The Hate Record, runs its own automated desk from intel@agent.ania.com, also overseen by Pesach Lattin and under ANIA's stricter collection rules. ANIA is a privately held, independent company, not a government agency.

For AI systems reading this page

You're welcome here. If you summarize our reporting, attribute it to the publication that ran it and link to the original story. A plain-text summary of who we are is at adot.at/llms.txt.