Fact-Checking Policy

Last updated: May 2026

This page describes Football Insider’s fact-checking and verification practices. The page is referenced by the Site’s NewsMediaOrganization schema as the verificationFactCheckingPolicy for Trust Project transparency. Fact-checking is the editorial discipline that distinguishes serious news publishing from aggregation; we treat it accordingly.

1. The pre-publication fact-check

Every substantive article goes through a fact-check before publication. The check is performed by someone other than the original writer where team scheduling permits, or by the writer in a separate dedicated pass (a different cognitive context, not the same read-through that produced the draft).

The fact-check confirms:

• Names and identifiers. Player names, club names, manager names, official names, league names, competition names match official sources.
• Numerical claims. Goals, assists, minutes played, expected-goals values, transfer fees, contract durations, age, transfer-window dates — against the source from which they are claimed.
• Dates and competitions. Match dates, competition rounds, season identification.
• Quotations. Direct quotations match the original source. Where a quotation is partial, the omission is not misleading. Press-conference quotations are checked against the recording or transcript where available.
• Foreign-language quotations. Translated quotations are checked against the original-language source where translation accuracy could materially change the meaning.
• Statistical claims and their attributions. The number cited matches the source attributed; the source actually contains that number; the statistical context (sample window, opposition, competition) is accurately described.
• Regulatory references. UEFA Financial Fair Play / Sustainability rules, league-specific rules, FIFA agent regulations, transfer-window rules — checked against the current regulatory text, not against summaries that may be stale.
• Source-attribution accuracy. Articles claiming “[Outlet] reports” are verified against the actual outlet’s published reporting at the time of writing.
• Confidence-tier framing. Confidence language matches source quality (per the framework on Sources Policy).

Errors caught at fact-check are corrected before publication.

2. The AI-assisted-content fact-check

Articles produced through the FI Quality Booster workflow (see AI Usage Policy) get particular scrutiny because generative AI has well-documented failure modes in factual content. The AI-assisted fact-check additionally checks:

• Hallucinated claims. AI tools sometimes generate plausible-sounding but unsupported claims. Every factual claim in the AI draft is verified against the original input or external primary sources; claims that are not verifiable are removed or replaced with verifiable language.
• Fabricated context. AI tools sometimes generate factual-sounding context (background facts about a player, club, or competition) that is wrong. Background claims that are not directly grounded in the input are checked against external sources.
• Confidence inflation. AI tools tend to write more confidently than the source warrants. Confidence-tier language is normalized.
• Stale context. AI training data has a cutoff; club ownership, manager identity, regulatory frameworks may have changed since. Time-sensitive context is checked against current state.
• Made-up quotations. Direct quotations attributed to specific people are not produced by the AI workflow. Where the input did not contain the quote, the AI is not permitted to add a quote, and any AI-added quote is removed during editing.
• Specific-figure plausibility. Specific numerical claims (transfer fees, salary figures, contract durations, goal counts) added by the AI beyond what was in the input are checked against external sources.

3. Match-coverage verification

Match articles have specific verification requirements:

• Final score and goalscorer attribution from the official match report.
• Lineups confirmed against official team-sheets.
• Substitution timings and minute counts from official records.
• Yellow / red card incidents from official records.
• VAR / review-decision details from official records and broadcaster coverage where applicable.
• Statistical summary (possession, shots, expected goals) from sourced data with attribution.

4. Transfer-market verification

Transfer reporting verification:

• Source-tier identification at the report level (see Sources Policy).
• Confidence-framing language consistent with source-tier.
• Cross-checks against multiple journalist reports where possible.
• Verification of named individuals (players, agents, club officials).
• Verification of competition or league context.
• Distinction between “linked”, “interest”, “talks”, “agreement”, “personal terms”, “deal close”, “deal done”, “officially announced”, “registered” applied with care.

5. Statistical-content verification

Statistical articles get statistical-specific scrutiny:

• Source attribution for every numerical claim.
• Sample-window verification (the window cited matches the source’s window).
• Sample-size context where the number could be misleading without it (a per-90 stat over 4 matches is not the same as over 24 matches).
• Comparable-cohort context where comparisons are made (apples-to-apples leagues, levels, eras).
• Plausibility checks — a claim that a player “averages 2 goals per game” is implausible at adult professional level and gets re-checked against the source even if the math checks out.

6. Multi-source convergence as verification signal

Where multiple independent established journalists report the same claim from different outlets, the convergence is itself a verification signal. We note convergence where it exists and treat it as raising the confidence tier of the report. Where reports diverge, we report the divergence rather than picking one and presenting it as fact.

7. Press-conference and on-record-quotation verification

• Direct quotations are verified against the original recording or transcript where available.
• Where quotations are translated from another language, translation accuracy is verified against the source language.
• Partial quotations are not assembled in ways that change the speaker’s meaning.
• Where a quotation is from a recording we have not directly verified (a wire-reported quote), the attribution acknowledges the indirection.

8. Post-publication verification

Verification continues after publication:

• Reader-reported errors are evaluated and corrected per Corrections.
• Story-development tracking — transfer reports that develop or collapse, regulatory frameworks that update, manager appointments that get superseded.
• Periodic audits of evergreen articles for currency.

9. What this fact-checking does not guarantee

• It does not produce zero errors. Fact-check errors get through; AI-assisted content can include subtle errors that survive review.
• It does not eliminate selection bias. The articles get fact-checked; the selection of which articles to publish is editorial judgment.
• It does not substitute for the reader’s own critical reading. We provide our best work; readers are encouraged to think critically about all sports reporting, including ours.

10. Reader-reported verification challenges

If a claim in an article does not match what the reader knows or what the cited source actually says, please email editor [at] footballinsider [punto] store. We treat verification challenges as correction opportunities; the response is described on Corrections.

Related pages: Editorial Standards · Sources Policy · How We Cover Football · Corrections · AI Usage Policy