Our fact-checking standards

Radical Reading Room investigates checkable public-interest claims, including statements published by elected officials, political organizations, broadcasters, and social media accounts. Our editorial reporting may focus on political accountability, but evidence determines each factual conclusion. We do not treat a claim as false because of the speaker's politics, or as true because we agree with it.

1. Preserve the original statement

Find the original post, video, transcript, document or recording, identify who said it, and record its date and full relevant context. A repost or headline quoting someone is not necessarily evidence that the named person made the claim.

2. Separate facts from opinion

Split compound assertions into separately checkable statements. Opinions, predictions, slogans, jokes and subjective characterizations are not rated as established fact. Claims with insufficient evidence remain unresolved.

3. Follow the documents

Prefer court orders and filings, government records, original speeches and transcripts, official statistics, primary datasets and named on-the-record reporting. Where possible check material assertions against at least two independent sources. A single genuinely dispositive primary record may suffice if its relevance and limitations are explained.

4. Evaluate supporting and contradicting evidence

Record what supports the assertion and what undermines it. Verify numbers, event dates, identities, legal status, attribution and context. An indictment is an allegation, not a conviction; a procedural ruling is not necessarily a decision on the merits.

5. Report results with appropriate uncertainty

Explain exactly what was checked and how to reproduce the assessment. For rated fact checks, use clear factual findings such as True, Mostly True, Mixed, Misleading, Mostly False or False only when the evidence warrants them. Missing a citation does not, by itself, make a statement false. If a result cannot be established, state that rather than guessing.

6. Automated assistance must be auditable

Automated systems may discover claims, retrieve possible documents, identify discrepancies, check dates, detect duplicates and prepare research. Search headlines and AI-generated interpretations are research leads, not verified evidence. New or revised rated claims require a traceable original statement and linked source evidence before publication. Some older archive entries predate these controls and are marked when origin documentation is incomplete.

7. Corrections and responses

We invite relevant evidence from the people or organizations whose claims we examine. We correct material errors publicly, explain what changed and date the correction. You can report factual errors through our corrections policy or contact page.

Transparency

Our work is independent reporting. This page explains our editorial rules; it does not claim membership, certification or endorsement from Snopes, the International Fact-Checking Network or other fact-checking organizations.

Read the Claims Desk · Submit a checkable public claim · Editorial policy