Fact-Checking Policy
What fact-checking means here
Fact-checking at PLAY AT HOME FEST is not a separate department that inspects finished work. It is a habit built into how every story is written: a claim does not go up until we can point to where it came from and why we trust it. This page describes how we test what we publish, how we handle the claims of others, and what we do when a check fails after the fact. It runs alongside our editorial standards and our corrections policy.
The aim is simple to state and hard to keep: a reader should be able to trace any factual claim in our reporting back to a source they could check for themselves. Where they cannot, we should have told them why.
Primary sources first
The strongest check is to go to the thing itself. If a story rests on a report, we read the report rather than a press release about it. If it rests on official data, we take the data from the body that produced it. If it rests on what someone said, we work from the full statement, the transcript, or the recording, not a clipped quote passed along a chain. Summaries and second-hand accounts drift, and the further a claim travels from its source, the more it tends to change shape.
When we quote a document, we quote it in context, not a fragment that reverses its meaning. When we cite a number, we note what it measures and over what period, because a figure without its units is a rumour with a decimal point.
Verifying claims against the record
Before a contested claim is published, we test it. We ask who is making it and what they gain from it. We check it against what is already on the record, and against independent sources where we can find them. On anything significant or disputed, we look for a second, independent confirmation rather than resting the story on one voice. If the sources disagree, we say so instead of picking the tidier version.
Numbers get particular attention, because they carry unearned authority. We check that a statistic says what the story claims it says, that a comparison is between like and like, and that a percentage has a base a reader can understand. A striking figure that we cannot stand up does not run just because it is striking.
User content, images, and things from social media
Material that arrives from social platforms is treated as unverified until we have checked it. For a photograph or a video that purports to show a news event, we try to establish where and when it was taken and whether it shows what it claims, and we are honest in the story about the limits of what we could confirm. An old image recycled for a new event is one of the most common ways a false story spreads, and we would rather hold a dramatic clip than push an unverified one.
When we cannot independently verify something that is nonetheless newsworthy, we attribute it plainly, say it is unverified, and describe what would be needed to confirm it. Readers can handle uncertainty. What they cannot forgive is being told something is certain when it was not.
Speed, and the discipline it demands
Breaking news pulls against checking, because the reward goes to whoever is first. We have decided, as a matter of policy, that we would rather be right than first. On a fast-moving story we publish what we have confirmed, mark clearly what we have not, and update the same story as the picture fills in. Early official figures, first-responder estimates, and initial reports are labelled as provisional, because they are routinely revised. How a developing story is corrected and timestamped is set out in our corrections policy.
When a check fails after publication
No process catches everything. When we learn that something we published was wrong, we correct it on the story, dated and labelled, rather than editing it away in silence. We also look at how the error got through, because a check that failed once will fail again unless the process changes. Repeated errors of the same kind are treated as a fault in the system, not bad luck.
Help us check
Readers are part of the process. If you can see a factual error, especially one where you hold the primary source and we clearly did not, tell us. Write to support@playathomefest.com with CORRECTION at the front of the subject line, include the link, quote the sentence, and point us to the source. Corrections that arrive with a citable source are the fastest to act on, and they make the next story better as well as fixing this one. Who we are and how the newsroom runs is on our about page.
Last updated: August 2026
