Fact-Checking Policy
The problem this policy solves
Breaking news is an environment engineered to produce error: information arrives fast, much of it is wrong, and the incentive to publish immediately never sleeps. This policy describes the checks STUDIO ONE NETWORKS runs between a claim arriving and a claim being published, across every section of the site. It exists so that readers can judge our process, not just our output.
Verification before publication
Every factual claim in a story must clear one of two bars before it is published: we have confirmed it against a primary source, or we attribute it explicitly to a named source and present it as that source’s claim rather than as established fact. There is no third category. Numbers, names, titles, dates, locations and quotations are checked individually, because these small facts are where most errors live. A story is read in full by a second set of eyes before it goes live, with specific attention to whether the headline is supported and whether any claim outruns its sourcing.
What counts as a primary source
A primary source is the origin of a fact, not a repetition of it: the court filing rather than a tweet about the filing, the company’s earnings release rather than a blog summarizing it, the recorded interview rather than a paraphrase, the official statistics release rather than a chart someone made from it. Wherever a primary source is public, we link to it, so readers can bypass our summary and check the original themselves. When a story rests on a document readers cannot access, we say what the document is and how we know about it.
Wire discipline on breaking stories
In the first hours of a major event, most of what circulates is unverified. Our discipline is borrowed from the wire agencies that have covered breaking news longest: report what is confirmed, attribute everything else or leave it out, and never let competitive pressure move a claim from the second category to the first. Casualty figures are attributed to the authority issuing them and updated as that authority revises them. Claims from parties to a conflict are labeled as claims. Single-source reports of dramatic developments are either independently confirmed or clearly flagged as unconfirmed reports, and when major outlets are all citing the same single origin, we treat that as one source wearing many hats, not as confirmation.
When official numbers disagree
Different authorities routinely publish different figures for the same event or statistic. We do not average them or pick the most dramatic; we report the disagreement, name each source, and note which figure is more current or more directly sourced. Where a number is provisional, we say so, because a provisional number presented as final is a correction waiting to happen.
Official does not mean true, either. Governments and institutions have interests, and a figure issued by an interested party is attributed as such even when it is the best figure available. Where independent verification exists, we use it; where it does not, the story is honest about resting on a single institutional source.
Social media, video and user material
Social platforms are often where news breaks and always where fabrication spreads. Before material from a platform enters a story, we work through the standard questions: is the account genuinely who it appears to be, is the footage from the event and date claimed, does anything in the image contradict the claimed location or weather or language, and has the material appeared online before in a different context. Old footage relabeled for a new crisis is the single most common fake in circulation, and reverse-searching material catches most of it. What we cannot verify, we do not publish; where verification is partial, the story says exactly how far it goes.
Statistics, studies and surveys
Research coverage has its own failure modes, so it has its own checks: we look at the study itself rather than only the press release, note sample sizes and whether findings are preliminary or peer-reviewed, and resist turning a correlation into a cause in the headline. Survey stories name who commissioned the poll and who was asked, because a finding’s sponsor is part of the finding. A single striking study is reported as a single study, not as the settled state of science.
The same test for every subject
These checks do not bend by topic or by how much we might like a claim to be true. A statistic that flatters a popular narrative gets the same scrutiny as one that offends it; a claim from a source we have trusted before still gets checked this time. The test of a fact-checking policy is whether it is applied when the claim is attractive and the deadline is close, and that is precisely when this one applies.
When a check fails after publication
No process catches everything, and this policy’s backstop is visible accountability: when a published claim turns out to be wrong, it is corrected and labeled under our Corrections Policy, quickly and without euphemism. Readers who believe a specific claim in a story is wrong can reach the team at support@studioonenetworks.com with Correction in the subject line; such messages are reviewed against sources, not against pride.
