“Proverified.Media” is a fundamentally independent fact-checking project, equidistant from political parties, movements, and public figures. Our priority is to maintain objectivity and impartiality. The objects of fact-checking in our project can be any person, media or organization - their statements, publications, announced figures, etc. Our methodology is based on international standards, open sources and fact-checking tools available to the reader.
“Verified.Media” as an organization does not support any political party or candidate, does not call for voting for any political party or candidate, does not provide recommendations related to supporting politicians, and does not participate in any election campaigns.
“Proverified.Media” is fundamentally guided by international legislation, as well as UN-recognized values and ethical standards. To maintain the principle of neutrality, regular contributors cannot simultaneously be a member of a political party, work for a government of any country, or work for a company controlled by a political party or government. Also, to avoid conflicts of interest, authors cannot write about the organizations in which they work. In the event of a conflict of interest regarding the subject of verification, the material is transferred to another fact checker.
Verified.Media employees are prohibited from accepting, as part of their professional activities, any gifts, services or other benefits that go beyond the scope of politeness or everyday social interactions. If it is discovered that such gifts have been received, this is subject to discussion at a general meeting of the editorial board. If it is discovered that such a gift was given to an employee as payment for violating principles and methodology or supporting a political party/candidate or business entity, the relationship with the employee must be severed and the violations found corrected in accordance with “Rules for making changes and additions to published materials"
When checking statements, “Verified.Media” does not concentrate on checking the statements of any one party to a political, military, commercial, legal or other conflict and equally checks the statements of all parties if they meet the selection criteria.
The person whose statements became the subject of analysis has the right to challenge the verdict using the feedback form. “Verified” undertakes to conduct an additional analysis of such material (if necessary, with the involvement of independent experts) and, if inaccuracies are detected, carry out the correction procedure in accordance with “Rules for making changes and additions to published materials"
What we check and how we select statements to check
The objects of verification can only be factual statements (including visual ones), but not opinions, assumptions or forecasts.
Main selection criteria:
— the fundamental verifiability of a statement (specificity, its connection with objective measurable and verifiable reality, on the one hand, and the ability of a journalist to verify statements using only open data and the resources available to him, on the other);
— the level of retransmission of statements in the Russian-language segment of the Internet (number of citations and references in the media, stability of belief in society);
- social significance of the statement;
- public interest in the statement
Basic verification scheme
- Hwas it said, by whom and when? If the statement is original, then we must reliably verify that the speaker actually said/wrote/posted it to the public, and also make sure that when disseminated the statement was not changed or taken out of context. If necessary, we contact the author of the statement for clarification.
- Is the statement true? We examine the most current publicly available and methodologically consistent data on the subject of the statement in order to make a preliminary conclusion about its reliability. If necessary, we seek expertise from specialists in the field to which the statement relates.
- Checking the accuracy of the verdict and transparency of the audit for the reader. Before publication, each text undergoes a second reading, which involves checking the compliance of the statement being verified with the selection criteria, verification of sources, availability of sources for the reader, compliance of the verdict with the logic of verification and our credibility rating. The second reading occurs during the editing stage. After the editor’s work is completed, the author once again checks the data and the accuracy of the verdict, and the text is sent for proofreading. If the author of the review is one of the editors of the project, its text is checked by another editor.
- “Verified.Media” guarantees that during the second reading the text is also checked for the presence of biased, non-neutral or other statements expressing the author’s support for any political party, candidate, idea or social movement.
- "Verified.Media" uses at least two sources to support the main statement of the verification, except in cases where the statement has only one source. For evidence, we strive to use exclusively primary data sources, whenever suitable primary sources are available. If suitable primary sources are not available or have a limited number of users, we explain the reason for using a secondary source and select for evidence those sources that can be easily accessed by any user.
Quality control. After publication, we continue to monitor information about the subject of the review; if more relevant data sources are discovered, the review can be supplemented in accordance with rules for making corrections and additions. We also support feedback with readers and in the event of controversial situations, the editors are ready to consider counterarguments and the possibility of creating an expert working group to double-check the verdict.
