How Just The Wire works
Just The Wire reads a large number of American news publishers and combines their reporting into one record per story. Each record tells you what happened, how we know it, and what is still uncertain. Nothing more.
Finding stories
Automated monitoring watches US news sources around the clock: wire services, national and local newsrooms, and official sources. When several publishers report the same event, our system groups their articles into a single story. A person reviews every story before it is published.
Counting independence
Not every article is independent evidence. When twenty websites republish the same Associated Press dispatch, that is one piece of reporting, not twenty. We classify every article we track:
- Wire service: original reporting by AP, Reuters, or Bloomberg on their own sites.
- Original reporting: a newsroom’s own journalists reporting the story themselves.
- Syndicated: a copy of wire reporting republished elsewhere. Counted separately, never as independent corroboration.
- Primary source: the document or data itself: a government release, a court filing, an official dataset.
- Press release: a company’s or organization’s own announcement.
- Unclassified: we could not determine the provenance. We say so instead of guessing.
A story’s independent report count is the number of distinct newsrooms doing original or wire reporting on it. That number is shown on every story.
Verification labels
Every story carries one of four labels:
- Confirmed: multiple independent newsrooms report the same core facts, or primary documentation backs them up.
- Developing: the story is still changing. We update the record as more reporting comes in.
- Single source: everything traces back to one original source. Treat details as provisional until others confirm them.
- Disputed: credible sources disagree on key facts. We show the disagreement plainly.
An editor can override the automatic label at any time.
Where the coverage comes from
For stories with enough independent coverage, we show the political leaning of the newsrooms reporting it, from left to right. These ratings are our editors’ approximate assessment of each outlet’s typical editorial leaning, based on widely used media ratings. They describe the outlet, not the story: a left-leaning outlet can report straight facts, and a centered outlet can get things wrong. The ratings are a transparency aid, not a verdict.
What is still uncertain
When facts are unconfirmed, contested, or developing, we say so in a dedicated section on the story page rather than smoothing over the gaps.
What we never claim
We do not claim to be unbiased. Everyone has perspective, including us. What we promise is process: show the evidence, count independence honestly, label what is uncertain, and correct mistakes in the open.