Fact-Checking Policy
This page sets out what a story goes through before it appears on Blue Hole Men. It is a working process rather than a pledge, so where it is thin we say so.
The short version: the writer checks it, the commissioning editor reads it, and a second editor who had nothing to do with it asks where every number came from. A sentence nobody can trace does not run because it is probably fine.
Who checks, and when a second editor is required
The writer’s own check is mechanical rather than instinctive. Names and titles against a register, dates against the document, figures against the source rather than against our earlier story, quotes against the recording, every link opened. Freelancers file with their sources attached, which is a condition of the commission.
The second read is compulsory for anything with a named person facing criticism, anything resting on an unpublished document, anything with a number in the headline, and anything where we are first. It asks the annoying questions. Which page. Who confirmed it. What does the other side say. On a Lifestyle piece it takes ten minutes. On a company story assembled out of filings over a fortnight it can send the whole thing back to the waiting list.
The document beats a report of the document
Where a primary source exists we use it. The judgment rather than a summary of it, the decision notice rather than the release announcing it, the recall database rather than the manufacturer’s statement, the filed accounts rather than the results presentation. When we cannot get the document, the story names the one we are waiting for.
Other outlets are a lead, not a source. If a rival reports something we cannot confirm and readers should still know, we name them, link to it and say we have not verified it. We do not launder somebody else’s single-sourced claim into our own voice, which is how one newsroom’s error becomes the thing everybody knows.
Links, so you can check us
Claims link to what they rest on, in the paragraph making the claim rather than in a pile at the bottom. Filings, judgments, datasets, transcripts, and the page number where a report is long.
Some sources cannot be linked: a paywalled register, a document given on condition we do not publish it, a file that would identify the sender. The story then describes the source as precisely as we safely can, and a reader who wants more can ask at support@blueholemen.com. Occasionally you have to take our word for one paragraph, and we would rather flag that than let a vague sentence slide past.
Photographs and video
Pictures are checked before they go near a story. Reverse image search first, to find out whether the frame has been circulating for six years under another caption. Then the file itself, for creation date and camera data where the platform has not stripped them. Then the image against the place it claims to show: signage, plates, weather, whether the trees have leaves on.
Video from an unfolding event gets that plus the question of who posted it first. Old footage recirculating as new is the commonest trap on a fast-moving story, followed by a clip that is real and mislabelled. If provenance will not resolve we do not use it, and not with a hedge in the caption either. Handouts and agency frames are credited.
Numbers, studies and things that are not findings yet
Statistics get traced to the body that produced them. We open the release and look at what was measured, over what period, against what baseline. Where two official sources disagree, which happens more often than the coverage admits, the story carries both figures and names both bodies instead of picking the more dramatic one.
For research we read the paper rather than the press release, because a press office writes the strongest sentence the data can bear and sometimes one stronger. We check the sample, whether a correlation is being sold as a cause, and whether the headline claim appears in the results at all. A preprint is reported as a preprint. Industry-funded work says who paid for it.
Social posts, and what strangers send us
A post is evidence that somebody posted something. Before citing one we establish that the account belongs to who it claims to, that the post has not been edited or reuploaded, and ideally that the person confirms it directly. Screenshots of deleted posts get checked against an archive first.
Documents arriving in the inbox are a claim until we corroborate them away from the sender, so they get checked for internal consistency and against something the issuing body has published. We also ask who benefits from us running it. Anonymous tips are the start of reporting rather than the whole of it. What we can promise the people who send them is on our editorial standards page.
The same test whoever is talking
A claim is checked the same way regardless of who made it: a minister, a chief executive, a union, a campaign group, a club’s press office, a publicist briefing that a star is unhappy on set. Sympathy for the person quoted is not a verification method, and neither is dislike.
This bites hardest on the beats built on managed access. Entertainment and gaming coverage runs on junkets, embargoed previews and quotes from people whose job is to place them, and a friendly source feeding you a line has served their employer rather than you. We do not run “sources close to” as a story on its own, we do not honour an embargo we never agreed to, and we do not soften a piece to keep an invitation. That has cost us access.
When a check fails after publication
Sometimes the process misses something and a reader finds it. The piece is then fixed on the page with a dated note, by the route in our corrections policy. Where the failure was in the process rather than in one sentence, the process changes, which is where several of the rules above came from.
We are not a certified fact-checking organisation and claim nothing of the sort. We work to the IFCN principles because they describe the job plainly: publish your method, cite your sources, hold everyone to one standard, correct in public. If you can show us a story where we did not, write to support@blueholemen.com and we will fix it or explain ourselves.
Last updated: August 2026
