Policy and Compliance

This collection of documents contains public information about Northern Community Radio. It includes financial information, compliance documents, board and advisory board members, board meetings, ethics, and more. Please contact CEO/General Manager Sarah Bignall if you have any questions: 218-326-1234 or sbignall@kaxe.org.

Board of Directors Information

Station Information

CPB & FCC Compliance Documents

Contest Rules

Code of Integrity

Northern Community Radio has adopted the following Code of Integrity as a statement of shared principles, and to strengthen the trust and integrity that communities expect of their public service media.

Public media organizations like Northern Community Radio contribute to a strong civil society and active community life, provide access to knowledge and culture, extend education, and offer varied viewpoints and sensibilities.

The freedom of public media professionals to make editorial decisions without undue influence is essential. It is rooted in America's commitment to free speech and a free press. It is reflected in the unique and critical media roles that federal, state and local leaders have encouraged and respected over the years. It is affirmed by the courts.

Trust is equally fundamental. Public media organizations create and reinforce trust through rigorous, voluntary standards for the integrity of programming and services, fundraising, community interactions, and organizational governance.

These standards of integrity apply to all the content Northern Community Radio produces and presents, regardless of subject matter, including news, science, history, information, music, arts and culture. These standards apply across all our channels and platforms — broadcasting, online, social media, print, media devices and in-person events.

Northern Community Radio shares these principles with other public media, individually and collectively:

We contribute to communities' civic, educational, and cultural life by presenting a range of ideas and cultures and offering a robust forum for discussion and debate

We commit to accuracy and integrity in the pursuit of facts about events, issues, and important matters that affect communities and people's lives

We pursue fairness and responsiveness in content and services, with particular attention to reflecting diversity of demography, culture, and beliefs

We aim for transparency in news gathering, reporting, and other content creation and share the reasons for important editorial and programming choices

We protect the editorial process from the fact and appearance of undue influence, exercising care in seeking and accepting funds and setting boundaries between contributors and content creators

We encourage understanding of fundraising operations and practices, acknowledge program sponsors, and disclose content-related terms of sponsor support

We maintain respectful and accountable relationships with individual and organizational contributors

We seek editorial partnerships and collaborations to enhance capacity, perspective, timeliness, and relevance and apply public media standards to these arrangements

We expect employees to uphold public media's integrity in their personal as well as their professional lives, understanding that employee actions, even when "off the clock," affect trust, integrity, credibility and impartiality

We promote the common good, the public interest, and these commitments to integrity and trustworthiness in organizational governance, leadership and management

The Public Media Code of Integrity was developed in September 2013 by the Affinity Group Coalition and the Station Resource Group, collectively representing public television and radio stations and service organizations from across the country, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Newsroom Policies

Our news team ensures fairness and ethical considerations are at the forefront in our reporting.

We abide by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics and National Public Radio’s Ethics Handbook, as well as the Code of Integrity detailed above.

These guidelines help us conduct our public service broadcasting mission of providing news, information and cultural content for our region that aligns with NPR’s core principles of honesty, integrity, independence, accuracy, contextual truth, transparency, respect and fairness.

As stated by NPR’s Ethics Handbook, these guidelines are not prescriptive and are not designed to provide a ‘do this, but not that’ list of rules: “Rather, it is a foundation upon which staff should consider these often-competing principles and exercise judgment in deciding how to best represent the core values of our organization and to serve our audiences with journalism they can trust.”

How we do our work
Ensuring the health of our democracy in your city, township, state or country is central to the mission of our news team and to journalism as a whole. Making sure we are giving our listeners and readers the best local journalism is our top priority.

Our goal is to provide our listeners and readers at KAXE/KBXE the highest-quality independent, fact-based news and information about Northern Minnesota.

Our newsroom takes several steps to ensure what we publish and broadcast is timely, accurate, clear, thorough, fair and relevant. Here are some of those ways:

To craft a single story, journalists use official reports, interviews, data and other sources to verify our information is accurate.
Our audio reports and written stories are reviewed by other trained members of the news team with input from other content creators on staff. Through this process, we are making sure the stories are accurate, fair and provide context for people who may not know much about the topic. This process also helps to ensure different perspectives are included and that we aren’t causing any unnecessary harm.
Reporters often check several sources to verify a single fact. Most stories have a handful of sources to make sure we are representing all sides.
When practical, we provide links within text stories so readers can see where we obtained the information. As much as it is possible, we describe and cite our sources and avoid using unnamed sources except in rare circumstances.

How we correct our mistakes
Despite diligent efforts to make sure everything published by our newsroom is timely, accurate, clear, thorough, fair and relevant, we occasionally make mistakes.

When we do, we will correct them. Your trust is the most important thing for which we strive, and we know owning up to when we get things wrong is important to keeping that trust.

Here’s our process:

Errors or misleading information in text articles will be corrected in the story and a statement about the error will be affixed to the original story.
Corrections to factual errors in audio stories that affect our audience’s understanding of an issue will be made on a subsequent day at a similar time, and we will make reasonable efforts to replace that audio with a corrected version where it lives on our website.
If we make an error on social media, we will correct the post or occasionally delete it, but only after publishing the correct information.

If you believe one of our stories needs to be corrected, please contact news@kaxe.org.

What if I think you’re biased?

Tell us how you feel. We welcome all feedback from our audience because it helps us understand where we may need to provide greater transparency or make improvements. Our news team members are not part of any political party, following the rules of the SPJ Code of Ethics and the NPR Ethics Handbook.

The vast majority of local offices are nonpartisan and we focus on the issues that unite people across party lines — but do not shy away from holding public officials accountable, no matter their political affiliations.

Funding Transparency

We are committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization.

Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services or opinions.

We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics and special projects. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that operates as a public trust, we do not pay certain taxes. We may receive funds from standard government programs offered to nonprofits or similar businesses.

Our news judgments are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors or any revenue source. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review or edit content.

We make public all revenue sources and donors who give $5,000 or more per year. As a news nonprofit, we avoid accepting charitable donations from anonymous sources, government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources who, deemed by our board of directors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.