The purpose
Audit the method behind the conclusion. Evidence-led impartiality means applying consistent standards and confronting strong counterevidence; it does not require neutralizing every finding or promising perfect absence of bias.
How to apply this skill
- Read the original question, draft, evidence ledger, and coverage gaps. Identify the main factual conclusion and the assumptions required to reach it. Separate policy preferences and moral judgments from empirical findings.
- Search for evidence that could overturn or materially qualify the answer. Test the strongest plausible alternative explanation, not an easily dismissed substitute. Check whether local reporting, affected people, relevant expertise, or primary records were excluded by the initial query framing.
- Apply a symmetry test: if the actors' parties, nationalities, institutions, or affiliations changed, would the same evidence justify the same wording and scrutiny? Record concrete inconsistencies, such as treating one statement as fact and another equivalent statement as merely an allegation.
- Weight sources by relevant access, methods, independence, and demonstrated support. Separate a count of publications from independent confirmation. Document material conflicts and incentives without inventing intent or inferring unreliability solely from identity.
- Examine headline, deck, framing, images, verbs, quotation selection, and ordering. Remove loaded implications that exceed the record. Preserve precise descriptions of established harm or wrongdoing; euphemism can also distort.
- Check proportionality. Give credible challenges enough context to be understood, while identifying their evidentiary limits. Unsupported assertions do not earn equal weight solely because someone advances them. State consequential uncertainty where the claim appears.
- Identify omissions that would materially change a reasonable reader's understanding. Prioritize these over cosmetic synonym changes. Explain whether the original conclusion survives and why.
What this produces
Return a review with the draft revision, strongest contrary evidence, alternative explanations tested, symmetry findings, material omissions, wording repairs, and an outcome of pass, revise, or hold. Each requested repair needs an exact location, evidentiary reason, and proportionate remedy. Include residual uncertainty.
When publication must pause
Hold a conclusion built on selective evidence, concealed contradiction, or a serious unsupported allegation. Revise language that overstates what the evidence establishes. Pass a firm, asymmetrical conclusion when evidence justifies it. Do not add partisan quotas, fabricate opposing evidence, or require human approval simply because a topic is political.
Sources behind this skill
Use IFCN commitments and the distinction between impartiality and equal allocation in Ofcom's guidance. These are reference principles, not a claim that broadcast rules govern Follow.fyi.