Fact Checking Policy
Fact Checking Misinformation and Disinformation
In an age of thriving misinformation, it is our policy to take several measures to ensure readers of The Published Reporter® are provided with true and factually accurate information whenever and wherever possible. Below are our fact-checking policies and processes.
Fact Checking Policy
Our reporters are held to a high standard of being precise with their words, headlines, facts and figures. Reporters and contributors must verify the information they gather. Reporters conduct their own fact checking processes using their own judgment guided by their own ethics. However, articles which appear in The Published Reporter® are, in most cases, edited and thoroughly reviewed for their content, intent and statements including numerical or statistical information within reports. The Published Reporter® then uses its own fact-checking processes in certain circumstances it deems warranted prior to publication. While The Published Reporter® and its owners and affiliates specifically disclaim liability for accuracy, errors and/or omissions through the sites terms of service, this is a necessary legality and our editorial teams do the best they can to ensure the service is providing timely, factually accurate and reliable information to the public.
Fact Checking Processes
When and wherever possible, when an article or story contains information deemed reasonable to be investigated or ‘fact-checked’ through our own investigative means such as thoroughly researching the subject matter and providing hypertext links to original documents, screenshots, reliable news media, video content or other verifiable sources, including contacting third party individuals for statements, this is done, if not by the contributing writer at the time of writing, by editors during the editing phase. In many cases, it may not be possible to fact-check each and every statement made in a story, or even fact-check every individual story, however, when our team is reasonably able to do so, content will be read over, validated, statements checked and facts and figures verified.
Fact Checking Sources
Our fact-checking processes and editors specifically avoid untrusted media and/or poor sources for fact-checking such as “Wikipedia.org” and/or “Snopes.com.” These types of sources are considered un-trusted for fact-checking for a variety of reasons and as such, they are avoided wherever possible when citing sources or verifying information. Our team leans more towards our own list of news sources, governmental documents, legal or judicial documents, particularly those which reside on a .gov domain name, state or federal law enforcement sources, educational institutions residing on the .edu domain name, and / or other official entities as well as political persons either currently or previously in office. Where possible, graphs will be included with statistical information from their source if deemed reliable.
Fact Checking Example
Below are examples of documents, even if redacted when necessary, would be relied upon, and added to a story in order to fact-check circumstances.
