How we publish
Stories of Record is run by Saadat Rafiq and team. Each story is one page that we update as the story develops. Every earlier version stays readable, and each story's history page shows what changed and when.
Every story is checked against the sources it cites. The team uses AI-assisted research and writing tools; they are never treated as a source.
What a new fact must pass
A fact is only added to a story when all of these are true:
- Every source it cites is on our list of known sources. News aggregators and search feeds are used only to spot that something happened, never as evidence.
- The source contains, word for word, the passage the fact is based on. We store that passage with the fact.
- A confirmed fact comes from an official source, such as a government, regulator or court, or from two news organizations with different owners. Identical wire copy published by several outlets counts once.
- Every number in our wording appears in the quoted source.
- The fact is not already on the page, and our wording does not copy 12 or more words in a row from any source.
Anything that fails a check is held back and not published.
Never added as a routine update
These are held back from routine updates and handled separately:
- Deaths or casualties, unless the source is an official body
- Allegations or crime
- Minors
- Self-harm
- Medical advice, unless the source is an official body
- Election results, unless the source is an official body
- Corrections
Images and video
Every story has a cover image. Stock images and footage are always labelled as illustrations, never presented as photos of the event. Before publishing, a reviewer looks at every image and video to check that it shows what its caption says and that its licence and releases are in order. Our own graphics are built only from the sources cited on the page.
New stories
A new story needs at least one confirmed fact with a date and must pass the same checks. We start no more than 5 new stories a day at first. The limit rises to 10 only after 14 days, and then only after a week with no corrections and a quality-check pass rate above 90%, and to 20 only after that and further approval. Updates to existing stories are not limited this way.
A new story is not shown in search results or sitemaps, and carries no advertising, until it has at least 3 sources from 2 or more publishers and 2 or more timeline entries.
Safeguards
Routine updates stop by themselves when corrections or rejected facts rise above set limits, and the team can pause them at any time.