Fact-Checking Policy

Before a story goes live on PQR News, its claims are checked. This Fact-Checking Policy explains how we verify what we publish — the standards a piece must meet, the sources we trust, and what we do when something turns out to be wrong. It puts into practice the accuracy commitment in our ethics policy.

We publish evergreen explainers and analysis on real, verifiable subjects. That makes verification central to our work: the value of an explainer is only as good as the facts underneath it. Checking is not a final rubber stamp but a habit built into how we write and edit.

What we check before publishing

Every substantive factual claim is checked before a piece is published. That includes the names of people, laws, and institutions; the dates and sequence of events; the way a mechanism or system actually works; and any figure we choose to state. If a claim is load-bearing for the story, it gets scrutiny.

We also check the framing around the facts — whether context has been dropped in a way that changes meaning, and whether the piece implies more certainty than the evidence supports. A story can be technically accurate sentence by sentence and still mislead; we try to catch that too.

How we verify a claim

We verify by going to the most authoritative source available, and by preferring primary sources over second-hand accounts. For how a law works, we look to the text of the law or the body that administers it; for scientific claims, to published research or the relevant institution; for official data, to the agency that produced it. Our approach to choosing and citing sources is detailed in our sources policy.

Where possible we corroborate an important claim against more than one reliable source. When sources disagree, we say so rather than picking the tidiest version. If a claim cannot be verified to our standard, it does not run as fact — we either leave it out or clearly frame it as unconfirmed.

Handling numbers and statistics

Numbers deserve special care because they carry an air of authority. We state a statistic only when it is genuinely well established and we are confident it is correct, and we attribute it to the body that produced it. We never invent figures, round guesses into false precision, or borrow a number whose origin we cannot trace.

When a precise figure is not reliably available, we describe the scale qualitatively — “a large majority”, “one of the costliest on record” — rather than fabricating a number. This is a firm rule across every desk, and it reflects the anti-fabrication standard set out in our ethics policy.

Editor review

No piece publishes on the say-so of its author alone. Each desk is led by an editor who reviews the reporting on their beat, questions claims that need support, and confirms that sourcing meets our standards before a story goes out. The wall between our journalism and any commercial content, described in our editorial policy, is part of that review.

This review is a check on both fact and fairness. An editor may send a piece back for more sourcing, a clearer caveat, or a fairer framing. The goal is not speed for its own sake but a piece we are confident is right.

When we get it wrong

No process is perfect, and errors sometimes slip through. When one does, we treat it seriously: we assess it, correct the record promptly, and note significant changes so readers can see what was altered. The full mechanism is set out in our corrections policy.

Accuracy is a standing commitment, renewed with every story rather than assumed. If you spot something you believe is wrong, we want to hear about it — write to corrections@pqrnews.com, and read more about our approach on our about page.