This is how a story gets onto Parallax, and the standard it has to meet before it runs.
1. Our sources
We follow the published output of newsrooms across the world: international wire agencies and broadcasters, national outlets in a range of countries, and specialist publications for sections such as technology, science and health. We read only what a publisher makes openly available, and we honour any request from a publisher not to be included.
We take headlines, standfirsts and, for stories we go on to publish, the full article text, which we use to check our summary against the reporting. The article text itself is not kept once that check is done, and we never republish it.
2. Matching reports to the same event
We match reports to the same event by what they describe, not by shared wording. Two reports are treated as one story only when their substance lines up and they share the specific things a real event has in common: the same names, places and figures. That second test matters because similar-sounding headlines about different events are common, and getting it wrong would fold two stories into one.
A related problem is wire copy. Many outlets reprint the same agency dispatch almost unchanged, which can look like several outlets independently confirming something when it is really one report printed several times. We treat near-identical reports as a single source.
3. The two-source rule, and its exception
A news story runs only once at least two independent outlets have reported it. That is the core of the site: the source count on every story is a genuine count of independent reports, after wire copy has been treated as one.
There is one deliberate exception. Features, meaning Style, Travel and Entertainment, do not work this way. Two publications do not independently write the same travel guide or the same review, so a second source is not available and its absence proves nothing. Those sections run from a single outlet, and every such story is marked Single source, with a note saying plainly that nothing in it has been checked against a second report.
4. Writing the summary
Each summary is written from the reports we have gathered on that story, and nothing else. There is no outside material, no carrying over from an earlier story and no line to argue: it is a neutral account of what the sources say, and every claim in it has to survive the standard below.
This is the step most likely to go wrong, so it is the one we check hardest.
5. What has to be true before a story runs
Before anything is published, it has to clear four standards. Falling short of any one of them holds the story back rather than letting it through.
- Accuracy. Every figure and every named person, place or organisation in the summary has to appear in the reporting behind it. Nothing is invented or assumed.
- Sourcing. The story needs enough independent reports for its section, under the two-source rule above.
- Fit. The reports it draws on have to genuinely be about the same event.
- Originality. A summary that leans too heavily on one outlet’s own wording has paraphrased that outlet rather than summarised the story, and is held back and rewritten. Wording that several outlets share, because it is simply how the story is described, is not a problem.
A story that falls short is set aside with the reason on record. It does not reappear later without that reason being resolved.
6. Sensitive subjects
Stories touching health, crime and elections go through an extra editorial review before they appear, whatever number of sources carry them.
7. Photographs
Where a story carries a photograph, it comes from one of two places, and the difference is stated on the page.
- A photograph from the reporting outlet, credited to them. It shows the event.
- A file photo from a free-licence library, labelled as such. It illustrates the subject and does not show the event. We use these only for places and objects, such as a courtroom or a petrol station, never for an event, and only where the picture is from the country the story is about.
Photographs requiring attribution carry the photographer, the licence and a link to the original. We do not use images that carry another outlet’s masthead or branding.
8. Corrections and updates
A story that gains sources after publication is rewritten against the fuller picture and marked Updated. Where we get something wrong, the corrections policy sets out what we do about it.
The limits of the method
No summary is better than the reporting behind it. A source count records how many outlets reported a story independently, which is not the same as independent verification: outlets can agree and still be wrong, and where that matters, the original reporting is always one click away. Matching reports to an event is a judgement call, and occasionally it joins stories that should be separate or keeps apart ones that should be joined.
If you find something wrong, tell us. It is the fastest way this gets better.
Last updated 29 Sep 2026