Source quality

A source quality scorecard for media claims

Published May 29, 2026. Status: evergreen source page.

A link is not the same as evidence. A quoted source, a document excerpt, a chart, and a secondhand summary can all be useful, but they do not carry the same weight. Readers need a quick way to separate strong support from evidence-shaped decoration.

This scorecard is for claims that ask readers to believe something happened, changed, caused harm, improved, failed, or deserves a strong interpretation. It works best before taking a headline personally: identify the claim, inspect the support, then decide how much confidence the support deserves.

The scorecard

Give each dimension 0, 1, or 2 points. A low score does not prove a story is false. It says the public evidence is too thin for a high-confidence judgment.

Dimension	2 points	1 point	0 points
Proximity	Original record, firsthand data, direct transcript, or full document.	Reported summary with enough detail to locate the original basis.	Secondhand description with no path back to the underlying record.
Completeness	Enough context to see what was included, excluded, and compared.	Some context, but key definitions or exclusions remain unclear.	Selective excerpt, isolated quote, or chart without denominator.
Specificity	Named claim, time period, population, metric, and comparison class.	Most details present, but one major boundary is missing.	Broad language such as "many," "experts," or "critics" does most of the work.
Independence	Support comes from a source with visible methods and no direct stake in the outcome.	Interested source, but the article names the interest and adds outside context.	Interested source supplies both the claim and the interpretation.
Uncertainty	The story states what is known, unknown, disputed, and still being checked.	Some caveats appear after the main claim has already been framed strongly.	Uncertainty is hidden behind confident language.
Replicability	A reader can follow the evidence trail and test the central comparison.	The trail is partly visible, but one step depends on trust.	The claim cannot be inspected without private access or unnamed interpretation.

How to read the total

10-12 points

Strong public support. Readers can inspect the main evidence, understand the comparison, and see the limits of the claim.

6-9 points

Usable but incomplete. The article may be directionally useful, but the strongest interpretation should stay provisional.

0-5 points

Weak public support. Treat the story as a prompt for further checking, not as a settled account.

Source tiers

Strong stories often combine several tiers. Weak stories ask a low tier to do work that only a higher tier can support.

Tier	Examples	Best use	Main risk
Primary record	Filings, transcripts, full reports, public data tables, direct statements.	Establishing what was said, reported, counted, or formally decided.	Readers still need context and definitions.
Method-bearing analysis	Research with disclosed sample, measures, limitations, and uncertainty.	Estimating change, association, prevalence, or effect size.	Methods may not match the headline claim.
Expert interpretation	Credentialed analysis tied to a visible field of expertise.	Explaining mechanisms, tradeoffs, and uncertainty.	Authority can substitute for evidence if the basis is not shown.
Interested-party statement	Company, campaign, advocacy, plaintiff, defendant, or vendor position.	Representing what a stakeholder says or contests.	The source has a reason to select favorable facts.
Secondhand summary	Aggregated writeups, paraphrases, newsletters, and social posts.	Discovery and orientation.	The frame can drift away from the original record.

Fast red flags

The headline makes a causal claim while the source only shows timing or correlation.
A single anecdote carries a population-level conclusion.
The article reports a percentage change without the starting level.
One side is described through documents while the other is reduced to a paraphrase.
Anonymous sourcing is used for interpretation rather than narrow factual context.
The strongest caveat appears only after the reader has been given a confident frame.

Useful rewrite questions

If the story says	Ask this before trusting it
"A growing number"	Growing from what baseline, over what period, and compared with what peer group?
"Experts warn"	Which experts, in which field, with what evidence, and what do comparable experts dispute?
"Data shows"	Who collected the data, what is the denominator, and what was excluded?
"Critics say"	Are critics providing facts, interpretation, incentives, or only a reaction quote?
"The move sparked backlash"	How large is the backlash relative to the affected population or normal response level?

Takeaway

The reader's job is not to demand impossible certainty. It is to keep confidence proportional to the evidence. A serious article makes that easier by showing the record, defining the comparison, and separating what is known from what is inferred.