Fact-Checking Policy
What we mean by fact-checking
Fact-checking here is not a separate department that stamps stories at the end. It is a habit that runs through everything before it publishes: the discipline of asking, of every claim that carries weight, how do we know this, and could we show a reader the evidence. On a general news site covering business, health, politics, science, and the rest, that habit is the difference between reporting and repeating.
This page describes how we verify, because you are entitled to know what our confidence actually rests on. It is a description of practice, not a promise of infallibility. We aim to publish only what we can stand behind, and when we still get something wrong we fix it in the open through our corrections policy.
Verify against primary sources
The core rule is simple: check claims against primary sources, not against other people’s summaries of them. A primary source is the thing itself. The court judgment, not a tweet about the judgment. The official statistics release, not a press release describing it. The full transcript, not the clipped quote. The peer reviewed study, not the university’s excited write up of the study.
Summaries are useful for finding a story and useless for confirming one, because every layer between you and the original is a chance for error to creep in. So we go to the document, we read past the headline figure, and we check that the source actually says what the claim says it says. Very often the original contains a qualifier, a date range, or a caveat that changes the story, and finding it is the job.
How we handle different kinds of claims
Numbers and statistics
We trace a figure to its origin, note what it measures and over what period, and watch for the usual traps: a percentage change from a cherry picked baseline, a raw count presented as a rate, a projection quoted as a fact, or a survey whose method does not support the sweeping claim built on it. If a number cannot be sourced, it does not run as a fact.
Quotes and attribution
We check that a quote is accurate, in context, and correctly attributed, ideally against a recording or a transcript. We do not tidy a quote into saying something the speaker did not, and we do not run a quote whose provenance we cannot establish.
Images, video, and documents
Before we use user submitted or circulating media, we try to confirm it is what it claims to be and when and where it was captured, watching for old footage recycled as new and for edits that change meaning. A document is checked for signs it is genuine before we report its contents.
More than one source, and knowing when to wait
For claims of any consequence, especially contested ones or serious allegations, we look for corroboration from independent sources rather than resting on a single account. Independent means genuinely separate, not two outlets both quoting the same original tweet. Where a person or organisation is accused of something, verification includes putting it to them and carrying their answer, which our editorial standards require.
Sometimes the honest position is that we do not yet know. In that case we say so. We would rather report that a figure is unconfirmed, and name who is claiming it, than present a guess with the confidence of a fact. Holding a story for another hour to nail it down is a decision we make often, and never regret.
Breaking news, where the facts are still moving
The hardest place to fact-check is a story unfolding in real time, when information is partial, official numbers lag, and rumour outruns confirmation. On a developing story we attribute clearly, we distinguish what is confirmed from what is reported but unverified, and we resist the pressure to round a rumour up into a fact because everyone else has.
We label what is provisional, we update as solid information arrives, and we timestamp so you can see how current our account is. If something we reported early turns out to be wrong, it becomes a correction, prominently, not a quiet edit. The disclaimer explains why a live story is always a best current account rather than a final one.
Corrections close the loop
Verification and correction are two halves of the same commitment. Checking hard beforehand reduces errors; correcting openly afterward deals honestly with the ones that get through. A publication that never corrects is not one that never errs, it is one that does not look. If you can show us that something we published does not hold up against the primary source, we want to know. Write to support@createmoreflow.com with the link, the claim, and the source, and it will be checked. What happens next is set out in our corrections policy.
Last updated: August 2026
