Documented. Versioned. Same standards applied to every outlet. Built to answer the questions skeptics actually ask.
Two sources only count as independent if they obtained their information through genuinely different means. Five outlets republishing the same Reuters report counts as one source, not five. This is how the system avoids confusing reach with corroboration.
A claim made directly by the outlet is scored against the outlet. A claim attributed to a named speaker — a politician, an official, a CEO — is still analyzed and still receives a verdict, but that verdict does not affect anyone's score. It does not count against the outlet, which was reporting rather than asserting, and we do not maintain a score for any speaker. The outlet is evaluated on one thing only: whether it quoted accurately.
6-hour gate, so any verdicts produced will affect the outlet's live score.30 and enter the verification queue.Supported · +1.0Supported · +1.0Overstated · −0.5Every verdict is generated automatically using the same prompt and the same standards, applied identically to every outlet. No human editorial decisions sit between an article and its verdict.
That means a verdict is reproducible: re-running the same article through the same methodology produces the same result. It also means there's no editor with a thumb on the scale for any outlet — favorable or unfavorable.
The pipeline ingests an article, extracts factual claims, runs each claim against the same evidence-finding process, and assigns a verdict from the same eight categories. Every outlet runs the same code path. There is no dial labeled "left" or "right." There is no editor who decides which outlets get scrutiny.
Verum Signal never describes itself as a fact-checker. Fact-checking is a craft — one that involves human judgment, editorial framing, and choices about what to cover. Verum Signal does something narrower: it evaluates claims on evidence using a documented methodology, applied uniformly. We provide the signals. You decide.
Outlet scores are a function of the verdicts that outlet has accumulated under this methodology. They are not curated. They are not adjusted for editorial reasons. They change as more verdicts are accumulated, and the trajectory of any outlet's score is itself public.
Methodology versions are bumped when scoring math, verdict definitions, or inclusion rules change. Substantive changes are documented. Archived versions remain available and continue to be browsable.
(weighted_sum / scoreable + 1.5) / 2.5 × 100.A methodology should be honest about what it can't do. Some of what follows is by design; some is a function of where the system is in its lifecycle. Either way, it's worth saying out loud.
The leaderboard is still maturing. Outlets need at least 20 verdicts to receive a public score, and many outlets are below that threshold. Coverage will expand as the corpus grows.
When the only credible source for a claim sits behind a paywall the system cannot access, the claim may land in Not verifiable — excluded from scoring rather than counted against the outlet.
A subset of ingested articles arrive without a parseable publication date and are excluded from outlet scoring under the date-required policy. The ingestion pipeline is being improved to reduce this exclusion rate.
Opinion is excluded from scoring rather than rated, because reliability is the wrong axis to judge editorial commentary on. This means an opinion-heavy outlet has fewer scoreable claims, not a lower score.
Every claim lands in one of eight categories. Six contribute to the outlet's reliability score. Two (Opinion and Not verifiable) are excluded from scoring. The thresholds are fixed, not negotiable.
The number on each card is the verdict's weight in the outlet's reliability score. Positive weights push the score up; negative weights pull it down.
Two genuinely independent sources confirm the claim.
Consistent with one credible source but cannot be corroborated.
Five or more outlets consistently report the claim without contradiction. Reduced confidence vs Supported.
Core fact is real but framing is misleading or lacks critical context.
At least one credible independent source contradicts the claim.
Available evidence directly contradicts the claim.
Editorial commentary, columns, or content explicitly framed as opinion. Excluded from outlet scoring — opinion is the wrong category for the question "is this accurate?", not the wrong kind of content.
Cannot confirm — necessary sources are unavailable, paywalled, or the claim cannot be empirically tested. Excluded from outlet scoring because absence of evidence is not evidence of inaccuracy.
The complete reference — implementation details, scoring constants, the unabridged changelog, and every rule that produces a verdict.