Why every Alethman News article carries its record

We have just opened Alethman News, a newsroom built on the same engine as the Alethman dashboard. Every article on it ends with a section called "The record": the reports the article was built from, each with the outlet, the headline, the date and a link, and the ones we read in full marked as read. This post explains why that section exists and how the rules behind it work.

Starting from the record, not from a draft

An Alethman News article does not start from a writer's idea of the story. It starts from one story the engine is tracking: an event that many independent outlets have reported, grouped and counted, with wire reprints collapsed so that thirty copies of one agency report count once. I wrote about how that grouping works in an earlier post on this blog.

Before anything is written, the reports are read, and every fact in the article has to appear in at least one of them. Articles are drafted with the help of AI language tools that work only from the reports in the article's record. They add no facts of their own, and the newsroom is responsible for everything published. We say so on our standards page, because readers should know how the words were made.

Every article lists at least two reports, and most list more. We also check that every link in an article's body points to a report listed in its record. If a sentence cites something, you can follow it to the source.

Every figure has an owner

The most common thing that goes wrong in fast news is not invention. It is numbers. Outlets give different tolls, different counts, different prices, and a summary that quietly picks one has picked a side.

Our rule is simple. When reports disagree on a figure, we set the figures side by side and say who gave each one. We do not average them, pick the largest, or state one as fact when the reports disagree. What no report we read could confirm, we say we could not confirm.

Here is an example from the articles we opened with. HCLTech's July to September results were widely reported, and the reports did not agree on the margin. Our article says that The Hindu and The Free Press Journal report the EBIT margin widened 131 basis points from the previous quarter, and that Mint reports the operating margin up 80 basis points. It does not choose between them. A reader who meets either number elsewhere can see where it came from, instead of wondering which outlet is wrong.

What a claim check's label means

Some articles are claim checks. They take one public claim, from an official, a party, a company or a widely shared message, and set it against what the reports show. Each carries one of five labels:

• Consistent with the record. The reports we read support the claim.
• Inconsistent with the record. Reports we read contradict the claim.
• Contested. Credible parties dispute it, and the record does not settle it.
• Unconfirmed. No report we read verifies it independently; it rests on the claimant's word.
• Missing context. Accurate as far as it goes, but it leaves out something the reports show matters.

Notice what is not on the list: "true" and "false". That is deliberate. The label describes the state of the reporting, not the truth of the matter, and it can change as the record does. "Inconsistent with the record" means the reports we read contradict the claim. It does not mean we have established what happened.

An example. An Emirates executive said Navi Mumbai International Airport was not ready for international flights because it lacked supporting infrastructure such as catering and cargo warehousing. Unnamed airport sources, quoted by one outlet, disputed that. Neither report we read included an independent assessment or an on-record statement from the airport. The claim check is labelled Contested, and it says why. Every claim check is listed on one page.

Why publish the record at all

Three reasons.

First, it keeps us honest. A rule that every fact must trace to a linked report is easy to state and hard to fake, because anyone can check it.

Second, it is fairer to the outlets that did the work. We paraphrase; we do not reproduce other outlets' reporting, and the record sends readers to the original.

Third, it is the discipline the product is built on. In the dashboard, every number links back to the articles behind it. A newsroom built on that engine should hold itself to at least the same standard.

The live feed

Alongside the articles, the live feed shows the stories the most independent outlets are covering, straight from the engine's reading of the news. Nothing in it is rewritten: each line is an outlet's own headline, linked to its report. Anyone may quote or embed it with the credit "Powered by Alethman".

No side taken, and no private people named

The newsroom reports what parties, governments, courts and companies said and did, in their words where it matters, and how outlets framed a story. It does not tell readers what to conclude. Opinion, including this post, lives on this blog under the name of the person who wrote it, and never on the news site.

We also do not name victims, children or private people accused of crimes, even when other outlets do. We name officials, institutions, companies and public figures acting in public.

When we get it wrong

We will. When we do, the correction goes at the foot of the article with the date, and the original is not quietly edited away. If you find an error, write to contact@alethman.com with the article's address and what you believe is wrong.