About

1. 1

   Read a lot. We check about 70 news outlets every 20 minutes. They come from a dozen countries, in nine languages, and from both the left and the right.

2. 2

   Sort into events. Reports about the same event are put in one group. We match them on the rare words they share: names, places and numbers.

3. 3

   Write from the reports. A computer reads the group and writes a new account. Where outlets say different things, it keeps both instead of picking one.

4. 4

   Check every link. Each sentence has to point to a real report. If the link does not lead anywhere, the sentence is thrown away.

5. 5

   Test it against others. Facts are tested against outlets we did not use, and against reference pages for the people named. Anything they contradict is deleted.

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   Wait if it is thin. A story needs 2 outlets that do not copy each other, and a confidence score of 0.45 or more. If it falls short, we hold it. Late and right beats first and wrong.

Every line carries the reports behind it. The full list sits next to the story, and the list of outlets we read is public.

Facts belong to nobody. Wording belongs to whoever wrote it. That a bank raised rates is a fact, and anyone may say so. The sentence a reporter wrote about it is theirs. So we write our own sentences, mark quotes, and link back to the outlet that did the work.

Pictures are ours to show or we do not show them. We do not borrow a publisher’s photo. Art comes from Wikimedia Commons with the licence credited. When there is no honest picture, the story runs without one.

Run an outlet and want us to stop reading it? Write to corrections@factliner.com and we will take it off the list.

A story is written in the language its outlets used. Then it is translated into whatever edition you are reading, and marked when it has been. The source links stay in their original language, because that is what those outlets actually published.

• Print a line with no working source link. The code cannot do it.
• Print an event only one outlet has reported.
• Guess at what someone meant, or what happens next.
• Hide the news in the headline to make you click.
• Show a picture that is not of what the headline says.
• Play video on its own, or use pop-ups and alerts.
• Sell your data. We keep your email, your topics and your saved stories.

Software builds these pages, so some of them will be wrong. Email corrections@factliner.com with the link and what is wrong with it. We fix it or take the story down, and we say on the page that we changed it. We do not edit quietly.

Outlets disagreeing is not an error — that is what the disputed section shows. A story we are holding back is working as intended.

Ads, plus an optional Pro plan that turns them off. Ads sit still, are labelled, never appear inside the facts of a story, and hold their space so nothing jumps while you read.

Ads never decide what gets written. How many outlets covered a story counts ten times more than what a section earns.