Fact-Checking Policy
Why this policy exists
Every publication says it checks its facts. This page says how, so the claim means something you can inspect rather than a phrase we hope you take on trust. Fact-checking at Newfound Times is not a separate department that inspects finished articles. It is a habit built into how a story is reported, from the first claim to the moment it publishes and afterward, when new information arrives.
The core rule is simple to state and harder to live by: we verify claims against primary sources before we publish them, and where we cannot, we say so plainly.
What we check, and against what
Before a story goes out, we check the things most likely to be wrong and most costly if they are: names and their spellings, titles and roles, figures and the units attached to them, dates and the order of events, direct quotations, and the central claim the story rests on. Each of these is checked against a primary source rather than against another news report that might be repeating the same error.
A primary source is the thing itself: the official statement, the filing, the dataset, the transcript, the ruling, the person who was actually present. Secondary reporting is a useful pointer and we credit it, but a claim is not confirmed simply because several outlets carry it. Repetition is not verification, and a chain of stories all citing one another can carry a single mistake a very long way.
How we handle numbers and studies
Figures get special care because they travel fast and lose their context easily. We go back to the source of a number, note the period and the units, and try to say what it is being compared with, because a figure with no baseline can prove almost anything. We are wary of a percentage without its underlying total and a record without its timeframe.
With research, we look past the press release to the study itself where we can. We note the sample size, who funded the work, whether it has been reviewed, and what its own authors say it does not show. A single study is rarely the last word, and we try to place it in the wider body of evidence rather than reporting it as a sudden reversal of everything known before.
Claims we cannot confirm
Some things cannot be nailed down by deadline, and we do not pretend otherwise. When a claim is important but unverified, we can attribute it clearly to whoever is making it, describe what we have and have not been able to confirm, or hold the story until it firms up. What we will not do is launder an unconfirmed claim into a plain statement of fact by choosing a confident verb and hoping.
Language is part of verification. There is a real difference between said, claimed, alleged, and confirmed, and we try to use the one the evidence actually supports. On a developing story we label it as such, because a first account is provisional by nature, and we update it in the open as the picture clears.
Sources, documents, and the things people send us
Documents and tips from readers are valuable and are treated as leads to be checked, not as stories ready to run. We try to authenticate a document before relying on it: where it came from, whether it is internally consistent, and whether an independent source or record supports it. A convincing looking file is not a verified one, and manipulated or out of context material is a routine hazard, not a rare one.
Where we grant a source anonymity to obtain information we could not get otherwise, we still verify what they tell us, and we protect their identity completely. The safe ways to reach us, including in confidence, are on our contact page.
Images and video
A photograph or a clip can be genuine, staged, edited, or simply old material recycled as if it were new, and the last of these is the most common trap. Before we present visual material as evidence of something, we try to establish where and when it was captured and whether it shows what it appears to show. If we cannot confirm it, we either do not use it or we say clearly what remains unverified about it.
When a check fails after publication
Verification does not stop when the publish button is pressed. If something we reported turns out to be wrong, we correct it openly on the story with a dated note, exactly as our corrections policy sets out, and where the same kind of error appears twice we treat it as a fault in the process rather than one bad day. The wider rules this policy sits inside are on our editorial standards page. If you can show that something we published does not match the primary source, we want to know. Write to support@newfoundtimes.com with the link and the source, and you will get an answer.
Last updated: August 2026
