A fact checking tool for editors who answer for everything that's published
Most tools sold as a fact checking tool for editors check one draft at a time. Editors are responsible for much more: copy from many contributors, headlines, corrections and every story already in the archive. Veritas keeps checking that published work and puts the problems in one queue.
Key takeaways
- Accuracy codes make editors answer for contributors' copy, headlines, corrections and the archive.
- Most tools check one draft. Editors also need published stories re-checked as facts change.
- Veritas routes confident, sourced findings to one queue and learns from every editor decision.
A writer checks their own draft. An editor answers for the whole publication: other people's copy, the headline on top of it, the correction when something goes wrong, and the archive that keeps being read long after the editor who approved it has moved on.
This page looks at what accuracy codes actually ask of editors, which tools cover which part of the job, and a weekly routine for a standards or managing editor. Codes and policies are quoted from the organisations' own pages, checked in October 2026.
What accuracy codes ask of editors specifically
Newsroom codes put the editor at the centre of accuracy, not just the writer:
The Editors' Code of Practice (in force from 1 January 2025) says editors and publishers must apply it to printed and online material and make sure it is observed by all editorial staff and external contributors, including non-journalists.
Clause 1 covers inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including headlines not supported by the text. Headlines are often written or approved by an editor rather than the writer.
AP tells staff to notify supervisory editors of serious errors or potential errors, whether in their own work or a colleague's. The New York Times says any question about the accuracy of a published article should go to a responsible editor and be investigated promptly.
AP says a correction must always be called a correction, never a "recast" or "minor edit". The BBC says that when an online mistake changes the editorial meaning, the article should acknowledge what was wrong and make clear it has been amended.
The BBC's guidelines say material prepared earlier must be checked so it hasn't been overtaken by events, and that archive content may have become inaccurate or out of date.
Four jobs, four kinds of tool
Search results for this keyword mix tools built for very different jobs. Sorting them by the editor's task makes the choice clearer:
Paste-in checkers such as Originality.ai's fact checker highlight claims and link sources. Originality reports 86.69% accuracy in its own study and says the tool is an aid, not the final source of truth. River's free fact-check tool adds comments to a news draft. Grammarly's Citation Finder agent says it helps find sources and fact-check your points.
Google Fact Check Explorer searches fact-checks published by others. Full Fact AI monitors media for claims and is licensed to fact-checking organisations in 30 countries, according to its site.
Style guides and proofing tools answer whether it's "Gov." or "Governor". That is house style, not fact.
Re-checking the claims in stories that are already live, across every contributor, and routing problems to the editor. This is the job Veritas is built for, and the one the ranking tools don't describe.
Why the archive is the editor's problem
Once a story is published, its writer usually moves on to the next one. The facts in it keep ageing: a figure is replaced by a newer release, an office-holder leaves, "will open next year" becomes a past event. Nobody wrote anything wrong, yet the page now is.
To a reader arriving today, an error made on deadline and a fact that changed later look the same: your publication got it wrong. That is why codes ask editors to watch for material overtaken by events, and why a standards desk needs more than a pre-publication check.
How Veritas supports a standards or managing editor
Veritas is an autonomous fact-maintenance agent built for editors and standards desks, SEO and content teams, and publishers with large archives.
It picks up every new and updated page from your sitemaps, Google News sitemap and RSS or Atom feeds, whoever wrote it.
It pulls out statistics, dates, who holds a role, quotes attributed to named people, events, comparisons and superlatives, and leaves opinion and prediction alone.
It searches outside your own site, prefers primary sources such as statistics offices, official records and peer-reviewed papers, and lets the desk list the source domains it trusts.
Supported, contradicted, outdated, misleading or unverifiable. "Outdated" is the archive case: true when published, not true now.
Only findings that clear a calibrated confidence threshold reach editors, each with evidence, citations and a suggested rewrite applied in one click. High-severity issues can go to Slack or a webhook.
When the flagged sentence changes on the live page, the issue closes itself. Time-sensitive claims are re-checked on a schedule, and unchanged claims are never re-checked twice.
Each page gets a health score, the share of its checked claims that are not problems, so the desk can see which sections or archives need attention.
See which facts on your site have gone out of date.
Request early accessEditors stay in charge of the verdict
Software can find a claim and the evidence against it. Deciding whether it is wrong, whether it needs a correction or an update note, and how to word it stays with the editor.
Veritas is built around that. Every accept, edit or "not an error" with a reason feeds a nightly learning loop. It re-fits the confidence threshold for each claim type to hit a target precision (85% by default), learns which evidence sources tend to be right, and turns rejections into lessons so the same false alarm stops coming back. Changes to its own checking instructions are promoted only if they beat the current version on your editors' labelled history and in shadow testing.
Every page version, claim, piece of evidence, verdict and editor label is exported as a versioned dataset in your own storage, which gives a standards desk a full record of what was checked and decided.
A weekly routine for a standards desk
Run drafts through a pre-publish check; Veritas has one that fact-checks a draft before it goes live. Give headlines the same check as the body.
Work the queue of flagged claims on published stories, most-read first, and assign each to the section editor who owns it.
A correction when the story was wrong when published, an update note when a fact has changed since. Follow your house rule on wording, and never disguise a correction as an edit.
Whenever you reject a finding, so the system learns your standards.
Review health scores by section to see where contributors need guidance, and report the corrections log to the managing editor.
Reporters on your team may find our page on fact checking software for journalists useful for the reporting side.
Honest limitsWhen Veritas isn't the right fit
Copy editors checking names, dates and places in a manuscript before print need a reference workflow, not a web crawler.
Use your style guide and a proofing tool.
Monitoring tools, tiplines and reverse image search are built for that.
Veritas reads the HTML a page serves.
For catching stale claims on any kind of site, see our guide to outdated content detection, or read more about Veritas.
How Veritas works
- Finds your pagesReads your sitemaps, Google News sitemaps and RSS or Atom feeds on a schedule.
- Pulls out the claimsStatistics, dates, who holds a role, quotes, events. Opinion is skipped.
- Checks the evidenceSearches outside your site and prefers primary sources.
- Hands editors the fixConfident findings only, with citations and a one-click rewrite.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best fact checking tool for editors?
It depends on the job. For a single draft, a paste-in checker that shows sources helps. For claims circulating elsewhere, Google Fact Check Explorer. For keeping everything your publication has already published accurate, across all contributors, Veritas re-checks live pages and routes problems to an editor queue.
Can an AI fact checker replace an editor?
No. Tools can find claims and evidence; editors decide what is wrong and how to correct it. Originality.ai, for example, describes its fact checker as an aid rather than the final source of truth.
Should an outdated fact get a correction or an update?
If the story was wrong when published, it is a correction. If it was right then and the fact has changed since, an update note is usually the honest label. AP's rule is that a real correction must always be labelled a correction.
Do editors have to fact-check headlines?
Under the Editors' Code, clause 1 covers headlines not supported by the text, so headlines need the same care as the story.
How does Veritas reduce false alarms?
Only findings above a calibrated confidence threshold reach editors. Each decision an editor makes, including "not an error" with a reason, feeds a nightly learning loop that tunes the threshold per claim type and stops the same false alarm coming back.
Can Veritas check drafts as well as published stories?
Yes. Veritas has a pre-publish check that fact-checks a draft before it goes live, alongside its scheduled re-checks of published pages.
Keep every page true
Veritas re-checks the facts across your published pages and hands editors a sourced fix when one goes stale.
Request early accessRelated guides
- Fact checking software for journalists: check the story, then keep it rightMost fact checking software for journalists helps you test claims before a story runs. Veritas covers the other half of the job: it keeps re-checking the facts in stories you have already published and tells you which ones have gone wrong.
9 sources, checked 30 October 2026
- Editors' Code of Practice Committee: The Code (in force 1 Jan 2025)
- AP: Telling the story (news values and principles)
- The New York Times: Ethical journalism guidebook
- BBC Editorial Guidelines: Accuracy guidelines
- The Guardian: Readers' editor
- Originality.ai: fact checker (seen 2026-10-30)
- River: fact-check comment tool (seen 2026-10-30)
- Grammarly: AI agents (seen 2026-10-30)
- Full Fact AI