Editorial standards

Facts Brief follows the editorial standards that apply to every LetterHouseMedia publication. This page summarises how they apply here. The full text is on the LetterHouseMedia editorial standards page, and if the two differ, that page is the source of truth.

Sourcing

We rank sources by reliability. Primary and wire sources sit at the top: official records, court documents, filings, peer-reviewed research and wire reports. Other reporting and commentary can point us to a story or give context, but does not by itself support a factual claim. Content farms, known fabricators and AI-spam sites are blocked and never cited.

Every source we cite is fetched and saved when we research an issue, and fact checks run against that saved copy. Quotes must match the source exactly.

How we check facts

Facts Brief is AI-assisted, and readers should know how.

  • AI drafts; checks decide. Issues are drafted with AI models. Every factual sentence is then broken into individual claims and checked.
  • Automated checks first. Code checks that quotes appear in the source, numbers match the cited passage, dates are plausible and links work.
  • Two independent fact-checkers. Two fact-checking models from two different AI providers each review every claim against the saved sources, without seeing each other's verdict. A claim stays only if both find it supported. Otherwise it is rewritten or softened, and a claim still in dispute is cut.
  • Approval gates. No issue sends until it passes every required check, and the approval is pinned to the exact final version.

AI makes mistakes. These checks exist because of that, and they do not make us infallible. That is what corrections are for.

Corrections

When we get a fact wrong, we correct it in the next issue and on the web version of the affected issue, with the date of the correction. See the corrections page.

Labels

Content is labelled by what it is. News is factual reporting in neutral language. Analysis interprets the facts and must cite them. Opinion is a stated point of view, labelled as such, with a byline. Sponsored content is paid for and labelled as such. The labels look the same across all LetterHouseMedia publications.

Viewpoint

Facts Brief has no house viewpoint. Our fact-checkers are never told which publication a claim came from.