Methods
How Reviewboard reaches a published finding.
Evidence comes first. Writing and scoring cannot outrun what the sources support.
News and Features
We look for primary records, independent reporting, and relevant conflicting accounts. Ordinary news requires at least six useful sources across four publisher ownership groups, including two independent reporting sources and an official source when one exists. A separate checking pass reviews every material claim, quotation, number, date, vote, legal finding, and financial assertion.
Unsupported work remains private in Held for Fact Checking. Corrections create a new immutable version; retractions keep a public tombstone.
Scale of Justice
Each dimension begins at 50. Verified evidence can move a dimension by no more than ten points per underlying event. Duplicate reporting counts once; unverified allegations and contributions by themselves have zero impact. Votes are never graded by party or ideology.
| Dimension | Weight |
|---|---|
| Integrity and documented legal or ethical conduct | 25% |
| Transparency, conflicts, and campaign-finance conduct | 20% |
| Truthfulness and correction record | 15% |
| Duty, attendance, participation, and execution | 15% |
| Consistency between commitments and actions | 15% |
| Measurable public outcomes | 10% |
A numeric score requires at least ten verified evidence items across four dimensions. Otherwise the profile says “Not enough verified evidence to rate.”
Reviewboard Approval Rating
This is Reviewboard’s open-web measure, not an aggregation of outside polls and not part of the Scale of Justice. It uses a rolling 60-day sample, removes copied and near-identical material, caps any one domain at 20%, and requires at least 25 useful expressions from five domains. Good, neutral, and bad always total exactly 100%.
Images and source text
Reviewboard uses public-domain, officially reusable, licensed, or branded artwork. We do not hotlink arbitrary publisher photography. Full copied articles are not retained; the evidence record stores source metadata, fingerprints, structured claims, and short excerpts.