Displayed when an independent claim audit extracts discrete factual assertions from the story and corroborates them against primary source evidence. The count reflects the exact number of claims verified in the audit record.

Displayed when an article clears pre-publication editorial review and validation guards. Confirms editorial policy compliance and absence of blocking findings. When reference fact grounding is additionally recorded, the badge tooltip details the exact size of the reference grounding pack.

1. Editorial Review and Audit Separation

Pre-publication validation guards verify formatting, structural integrity, and editorial guidelines prior to publishing. For audited stories, independent fact-checking runs with a separate evaluation context that evaluates only the final text and primary evidence, preventing internal blind spots from self-validating.

2. Claim Extraction and Reference Grounding

For audited articles, declarative statements are extracted and corroborated against primary league records, official team announcements, and accredited beat reporting. Articles backed by reference grounding verify core details against structured event packs.

3. Fail-Closed Editorial Gates

Any blocking finding (such as ungrounded game outcomes, contradicted quotes, or unresolved facts) prevents publication. Only stories with cleared verdicts receive clearance.

4. Honest Provenance Only

We never display synthetic or estimated accuracy badges. If an article does not have a real, recorded audit outcome in its dataset, no badge is shown.