TruthScore Methodology

What it measures. Ownership, funding sources, editorial leadership, and any disclosure the outlet makes about its own conflicts of interest. The piece and the outlet behind it both count: an outlet that names its funder, publishes its masthead, and links to a corrections policy is doing the disclosure work itself, rather than leaving the reader to assemble it from context.

How it is scored. Scored 0–10, weighted by the completeness of the public disclosure around the piece. A named funder and a published corrections policy score higher than an opaque entity; an in-house conflicts page beats a labeled-but-empty one. Single-source claims with no on-record attribution sit near the bottom of the axis regardless of how confident the tone sounds.

What it measures. The range and the independence of the voices the piece cites. A piece that leans on a single think-tank, two wire services, and a press release is more fragile than one that draws on independent reporters, primary documents, and named on-the-record witnesses, even when both lists end up the same length. We weigh the spread, not the count.

How it is scored. Scored 0–10, weighted by the spread of cited sources across independent reporters, primary documents, and named on-the-record witnesses. A single-wire stack, a press-release echo chain, or a partisan amplification network pulls the axis down; a single piece carrying named officials from opposing sides plus a primary-record citation does not.

What it measures. Whether each citation is primary, secondary, or paraphrased, and whether it carries the claim on its own. A claim backed by a transcript, a court filing, a regulator statement, or a named on-the-record witness outranks one backed by "officials said" with no further identification. Every citation should be verifiable from an independent archive, not just from the piece itself.

How it is scored. Scored 0–10, weighted by the share of citations that are primary (transcripts, filings, regulator statements, named on-the-record statements) and verifiable from an independent archive. The axis is not about how many sources a piece lists but about whether each citation does the work of supporting the claim on its own.

What it measures. Whether the piece names, characterizes faithfully, and answers the strongest rebuttal to its own thesis. A piece that ignores the strongest counter-argument is more fragile than one that names the rebuttal, summarizes it fairly, and addresses it on the merits — even when both pieces reach the same conclusion. This is what separates a one-sided amplification from a defensible argument.

How it is scored. Scored 0–10, weighted by whether the rebuttal is named, characterized faithfully, and answered on substance (versus dismissed with a sentence, hand-waved, or omitted). A claim that survived an on-record rebuke from named officials and was rebutted by independent fact-checking desks gets a higher score than one whose rebuttal never surfaced.