How SB Sentinel Verifies

No fluff. Just helpful — and here is exactly how we decide what earns that label.

SB Sentinel exists because information reaches people too late, wrapped in spin,

or flat wrong. Our promise is speed and verification: as fast as we can,

and never faster than true. This page is the whole method. If we ever fall short

of it, this page is how you can hold us to it.

What counts as a source

• Primary sources first. Government agencies, official statements, court and

regulatory filings, emergency services, and the organisation a story is about.

If a primary source published it, we can stand on it.

• Independent credible outlets second. Established news organisations with a

corrections record, reporting in their own words.

• Social media is a lead, never a verifier. A post can tell us something is

being claimed; it can never be the reason we call it true. The same goes for

aggregators and opinion blogs — they cannot originate or corroborate a story

on this desk.

The two-source rule

A story is labelled Verified only when one of these is true:

1. An official primary source published it, or

2. Two or more independent credible sources confirm it.

Independent means independent. Ten outlets running the same wire story

count as one source, not ten. Copies are not corroboration. If two reports

trace back to the same owner, the same wire copy, or the same original post,

they collapse to a single source and the story stays unlabelled until a

genuinely independent confirmation arrives.

A story with only one source is not hidden and not promoted — it is shown,

labelled SINGLE SOURCE — UNVERIFIED, exactly as it is. When it verifies,

the label changes and the change is noted. When it falls apart, it comes down

and the correction is published.

The labels we use

• Verified — meets the two-source rule above.
• Single Source — Unverified — one source so far; shown openly, never

presented as fact.

• Developing — confirmed in part, still moving; we say what is known and

what is not, and we re-check on a stated schedule rather than letting it

drift.

• Disputed — credible sources conflict; we show both claims side by side

instead of picking one quietly.

Every alert on our desks also carries its source grade, the source itself, and

the time we checked it. A feed that does not answer is named as not answering.

An empty board is shown empty. We never seed, backfill, or dress up a board to

look busier than it is, and a timestamp on this site is a real time we actually

checked — never a decoration.

CHECKED — our fact-check desk

When a claim is spreading — a post, a screenshot, a rumour — we check it

against primary sources only and publish the verdict at /checks:

• The claim, stated neutrally, word for word where it matters.
• What we found, with the primary sources linked — the receipts.
• True, Partly True, Unverified, or False — and where the original post

embellished, we show exactly where.

• The verdict travels: we post it where the claim is spreading, not just where

it is comfortable.

Before any quotation is used as evidence, the words are checked against the

source document itself. A quote that is not actually in the source does not

run.

Corrections

We correct in the open, at the same prominence as the original item, and the

Morning Brief carries a Corrections & Upgrades line every day — including

the days it reads "Clean day. Nothing to correct." A correction is not an

embarrassment to bury; published daily, it is the proof the system works.

What we do not do

• We do not score outlets by political leaning, and we do not sort the news

into left and right. We grade verification — how a claim is supported —

not viewpoints.

• We do not publish a number we cannot show the working for. Our grades are

words with published rules behind them — this page — not a score we ask you

to take on faith.

• We do not present state-controlled or single-source material as anything

other than what it is; it is labelled, with the evidence attached.

• We do not let an advertiser, a sponsor, or anyone else move a label.

Who stands behind this

SB Sentinel is presenter-led. Every verdict has a name on it — Sunny Burns,

Founder & Presenter — not an anonymous desk. If you believe a label or a

verdict is wrong, dispute it: sunny@sbsentinel.live. Disputes go to human

review, and if you are right, the correction runs the same way everyone

else's does — in the open, on the record.

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