Critics Code of Conduct

As a Tomatometer-Approved Critic or Publication on Rotten Tomatoes, you are required to read and adhere to the following standards.

Violations of this Code of Conduct may result in removal of your reviews and/or Tomatometer approval.

We reserve the right to add to or change our critic guidelines and Code of Conduct as we see fit.

The following are prohibited:

Inappropriate Conduct

We expect critics to honor journalistic integrity and uphold publishing ethics. We do not tolerate plagiarism, trolling, discrimination, hate speech, bigotry, or other breaches of conduct across all platforms. Posting of bigoted, hateful, or disparaging material is prohibited.

Conflicts of Interest and Financially Incentivized Reviews

On Rotten Tomatoes: You are prohibited from posting any reviews that are directly or indirectly influenced by a conflict of interest (real or perceived), including but not limited to reviews for which you receive any financial incentive or other incentive from a person or entity associated with the title you are reviewing.

Compensation from an independent editor, publication, video/broadcast channel, or podcast including salary, freelance fees, or compensation supported by the outlet’s ordinary advertising, subscription, or other general revenue is not prohibited, provided that the compensation is not funded, directed, or conditioned by an interested party in connection with the review.

On Other Platforms: Accepting payment or other compensation from a filmmaker, production company, distributor, publicist, or other interested third party – directly or indirectly – in exchange for publishing a review violates this Code of Conduct, whether that review is submitted to or appears on Rotten Tomatoes or not. Any participation in such financially incentivized reviews, whether on Rotten Tomatoes or not, may result in the loss of Tomatometer status.

Participation in Prediction Markets

You are prohibited from posting any reviews that are, or may be perceived to be, directly or indirectly influenced by participation in a prediction market.

Manipulation of the Tomatometer

You are prohibited from posting any reviews or engaging in any conduct that attempts to manipulate our data in any way and/or intentionally distorts a movie or TV season/episode score.

Content Generated by Artificial Intelligence

Reviews attributed to you on the Tomatometer must reflect your own intellectual work. Use of generative AI is prohibited – reviews must reflect human opinion and expertise.

Misrepresentation

Do not add a review for a movie, TV season, or TV episode you have not seen. Do not write (or re-write) pull-quotes specifically for RT; your pull quote on Rotten Tomatoes must be directly from your review.

Misattribution

Do not misattribute your outlet. Do not add a review to your critic profile under your name if you are not the author of the review. Do not add reviews without links to reviews you have authored. If you need to update and/or add a new publication to your profile, please reach out to us. It is against our policy to attribute a review to one publication and then link out to a different website than the one indicated, or to attribute a review to yourself when you are not its author.

Submitting More Than One Review for the Same Title

Individual critics are prohibited from adding more than one review for the same movie, TV season, or TV episode. If you review the same movie/season/episode for multiple outlets, post only one of those reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. If you publish the same reviews in more than one place (ex. originally at a publication and subsequently on your personal blog or website), always default to the publication when posting on Rotten Tomatoes.

Features, Interviews, Brief Comments

Brief comments in response to, or published in addition to, a full-length review do not meet our guidelines for inclusion on the Tomatometer, and therefore cannot be added to Rotten Tomatoes. Interviews, feature articles, and coverage of other entertainment/media/beats are not eligible.

Most guides, re-caps, festival roundups, best-of, or brief write-ups on what to watch series do not fall under review categories, even if written by a Tomatometer-approved critic or published in a Tomatometer-approved publication. To be eligible for inclusion on Rotten Tomatoes, reviews must focus substantially on the film or television title(s) being analyzed.

For more details, please refer to our Tomatometer guidelines.