Behind the Mirror | The Maine Mirror Editorial Standards
Standard: BTM-004
Established: September 14, 2026
CAP Methodology: Version 1.0

Transparency should not end with the people and institutions The Maine Mirror covers.

It should include us.

When a journalist sends questions to a government agency, political organization, candidate, nonprofit, business, public official or other source, readers often see only the eventual article. They may be told that someone “did not respond,” “declined to comment” or “was contacted for comment.”

What readers usually cannot see is everything that happened between the question and that sentence.

Did the recipient acknowledge the inquiry? How quickly? Were some questions answered but others left unresolved? Was the reporter redirected to someone better positioned to respond? Did a source communicate promptly without actually answering the underlying questions? Did the journalist provide a meaningful opportunity to respond in the first place?

Those distinctions matter.

The Maine Mirror is establishing the Correspondence Accountability Project, or CAP, to document them.

CAP does not grade people. It audits correspondence.

That distinction is foundational to this standard.

CAP is not designed to determine whether an organization is trustworthy, whether an allegation is true, whether someone acted improperly or why somebody chose not to answer a question.

It evaluates a much narrower body of evidence:

The correspondence itself.

CAP asks what was asked, what was acknowledged, what was answered, what information was provided, what remained unresolved and how the correspondence ultimately concluded.

A person can disagree with The Maine Mirror and still demonstrate excellent transparency.

A source can provide an answer The Maine Mirror considers unfavorable and still receive full credit for answering it.

Someone can respond within minutes while providing little substantive information.

Someone else may take considerably longer but ultimately provide comprehensive answers and documentation.

Those are different things, and CAP is designed to preserve those distinctions.

Responsiveness and transparency are not the same thing

CAP evaluates two principal characteristics independently: responsiveness and transparency.

Responsiveness measures communication.

It considers whether an inquiry was acknowledged, whether reasonable follow-ups received responses, how quickly communication occurred, whether questions were meaningfully engaged with and whether a referral ultimately provided a useful path forward.

Transparency measures the substantive information produced by that communication.

It considers whether direct questions received direct answers, whether relevant explanations were provided, whether actions or decisions were clarified, whether limitations were openly identified and how many material questions remained unresolved when the correspondence ended.

Separating the two is intentional.

An organization that responds immediately but does not answer the underlying questions should receive credit for responding promptly. It should not simultaneously receive credit for substantive transparency that the correspondence did not produce.

Likewise, a slower response that eventually provides detailed answers should not be characterized the same way as an unanswered inquiry simply because it took longer.

CAP exists in part to make those distinctions visible.

Every substantive question is accounted for

CAP does not rely solely on an overall impression of an email exchange.

Each substantive question or identifiable request is accounted for and classified according to what ultimately happened to it.

Questions may be recorded as answered, partially answered, declined, referred, acknowledged only, unanswered or unable to determine.

A referral is not automatically a failure.

A refusal to comment is not the same thing as ignoring a reporter.

“I don’t know” can itself be a direct answer.

And an acknowledgment that never addresses the underlying question is not counted as a substantive answer simply because an email was received.

The purpose is not to maximize negative findings.

The purpose is to describe what actually happened.

Silence is not evidence of wrongdoing

CAP contains an important limitation that applies to every audit:

An unanswered question is not evidence that the premise of the question is true.

Silence does not establish guilt.

A delayed response does not establish concealment.

A referral does not establish avoidance.

A refusal to comment does not establish that an allegation is accurate.

CAP also does not attempt to determine someone’s unspoken motives.

When the correspondence cannot establish something, the audit should say exactly that.

There will therefore be circumstances in which a CAP audit concludes that transparency was limited while simultaneously concluding that the record provides no evidence explaining why it was limited.

Those findings are not contradictory.

They are what separating evidence from inference requires.

The record should distinguish statements from independently established facts

CAP also requires careful treatment of representations made within correspondence.

If a source writes, “I forwarded your request,” the correspondence establishes that the source said the request was forwarded.

Unless additional evidence establishes that the forwarding actually occurred, CAP should not transform that representation into an independently verified fact.

The same principle applies to claims that something was sent, received, reviewed, investigated, referred or completed.

Attribution matters.

The standard applies to everyone

CAP is intended to be politically and institutionally neutral.

The same methodology should apply to a Republican organization, Democratic organization, independent candidate, government agency, police department, nonprofit, corporation, advocacy organization or private entity.

It also applies regardless of whether The Maine Mirror agrees with the person being evaluated.

That requirement is built directly into the methodology.

Before completing an audit, CAP asks a simple quality-control question:

Could these exact standards fairly be applied to an organization or individual The Maine Mirror strongly agrees with?

If the answer is no, the audit needs to be reconsidered.

Correspondence can be closed even when questions remain unanswered

CAP distinguishes between an unresolved question and an open correspondence.

They are not necessarily the same thing.

An email exchange may reach its natural conclusion because a recipient has answered the questions, declined to answer them, referred the reporter elsewhere or otherwise made their position clear.

The Maine Mirror does not need to continue emailing someone indefinitely simply because an underlying question remains unresolved.

When an exchange has reasonably reached its endpoint, CAP may mark the correspondence CLOSED.

That designation means exactly what it says: the correspondence has concluded.

It does not mean every underlying question has been resolved.

Materially new information can always justify a new inquiry.

Every completed CAP audit produces the same core record

Under CAP Version 1.0, a completed audit produces a standardized set of materials.

The complete internal audit documents the correspondence chronology, individual question dispositions, responsiveness finding, transparency finding, evidentiary limitations and final disposition.

A standardized one-page CAP Summary provides a concise public record of those findings.

When appropriate, a short closure email may also be sent to the participant at the conclusion of the exchange. That message can provide the CAP Summary, explain that the correspondence has been closed and make clear that no additional response is being demanded.

For published CAP audits, The Maine Mirror may also make the underlying correspondence available when doing so is appropriate and consistent with applicable ethical, privacy and legal considerations.

The methodology itself is public

There is another accountability mechanism built into CAP:

You can see the instructions we use.

The Maine Mirror is publishing the CAP Master Prompt alongside this standard.

It contains the methodology used to analyze correspondence, definitions for the ratings, evidentiary safeguards, required deliverables and quality-control requirements.

Readers should not have to trust us when we say the methodology is standardized.

They should be able to inspect it.

(EMBEDDED FILE — The Maine Mirror Correspondence Accountability Project (CAP) Master Audit, Summary Sheet & Closure Prompt, Methodology Version 1.0. This is the complete standardized prompt used to conduct CAP correspondence audits, including the responsiveness and transparency criteria, question-classification standards, evidentiary limitations, one-page CAP Summary requirements, closure procedures and final quality-control checks. The file is published in full so readers and audited entities can inspect the methodology applied to CAP findings.)

Publishing the methodology also creates accountability for The Maine Mirror.

If we characterize an organization as demonstrating limited transparency, readers can compare that conclusion against the published standard.

If we give another organization a different finding under comparable circumstances, readers can ask why.

And if we cannot defend the distinction using our own published methodology, that is a problem for us—not the reader.

CAP audits will have their own public record

Published CAP audits will be organized within a dedicated CAP Audits category on TheMaineMirror.com.

Individual audits can therefore remain focused on the particular correspondence being examined rather than reproducing this methodology every time.

Readers encountering a CAP finding will be able to return here, to BTM-004, to understand exactly what the terminology means and what standards were applied.

Where practical, published CAP audits should identify the methodology version used.

For example:

CAP Methodology: Version 1.0

That matters because standards can evolve.

If experience demonstrates that CAP can be made more accurate, fair or useful, The Maine Mirror should improve it.

But those changes should be visible.

Methodology changes will be documented

BTM-004 establishes CAP Methodology Version 1.0.

Future substantive changes to CAP should receive a new version number and be documented publicly.

The Maine Mirror should not quietly alter an auditing standard because a particular result is inconvenient.

Previously published CAP findings should remain associated with the methodology under which they were originally conducted unless an audit is expressly reexamined under a newer standard.

That gives readers another way to hold this publication accountable for consistency over time.

CAP is also a record of our own reporting

Although CAP measures the correspondence produced by an inquiry, its existence inevitably creates another form of accountability.

Ours.

A CAP record can show whether The Maine Mirror clearly identified itself, whether we actually asked the questions we later said went unanswered, whether we gave someone a meaningful opportunity to respond and whether our eventual characterization matches the documentary record.

That is intentional.

Accountability journalism loses something when accountability flows in only one direction.

If The Maine Mirror expects institutions to stand behind their communications, we should be willing to stand behind ours.

Why we’re doing this

CAP is not intended to turn every email into a confrontation.

Quite the opposite.

There is value in recognizing when someone responds quickly.

There is value in documenting when an organization says it does not know.

There is value in distinguishing a referral from a refusal.

There is value in acknowledging when every question was answered.

And there is value in plainly documenting when they were not.

The resulting record may sometimes reflect well on the organization being audited. Sometimes it may reveal significant gaps in transparency. Sometimes the result will be mixed.

CAP should be capable of producing all three outcomes.

Because if an accountability system can produce only criticism, it is not much of an accountability system.

A standard readers can audit, too

The Maine Mirror’s mission is built around truth, transparency and accountability.

Those words carry more weight when readers can examine how they are put into practice.

BTM-004 therefore establishes a simple proposition:

We will document what we ask.

We will document what comes back.

We will distinguish responsiveness from transparency.

We will distinguish evidence from inference.

We will acknowledge what the record cannot prove.

We will apply the same standard regardless of who is on the other side of the email.

And when we publish the result, readers will have access to the standard we used to reach it.

That is the purpose of the Correspondence Accountability Project.

Not to decide what readers should think about the people we contact.

But to give readers a clearer record from which they can decide for themselves.