source-verification-ledger

Context

The newsroom's fact-checking discipline requires every material claim (a number, a date, a quote, an attribution) in an article to be traceable to at least two independently verifiable sources before the article can be handed off for publication. This skill defines the ledger-building process that enforces that discipline.

Base format: this ledger follows the fixed-column discipline of the common evidence-ledger skill (claim | source | url/ref | verification | status). The columns below are co-news's overlay on that base — the two source columns and the receipt-number column exist to enforce the 2+ independent sources rule (NEWS-R1), which remains a co-news-specific requirement on top of the common format.

When to Use

• After financial-analyst and legal-researcher have produced their briefs, before the reporter begins drafting
• Re-run after style-editor's rewrite pass, to confirm no figures drifted during the language/style edit
• Any time a draft is about to be handed off to the next phase and contains claims not yet logged in the ledger

Execution Steps

1. Extract Every Material Claim: Read the input briefs/draft and pull out every material claim — number, date, quote, attribution — into a working list.

2. Require 2+ Independent Sources: For each claim, require at minimum one DART disclosure receipt-number citation (via the k-dart skill) plus one corroborating source (a news wire, a company IR statement, a second disclosure, or a k-law citation).

3. Build the Ledger: Construct a per-article ledger table with columns: claim | source 1 | source 2 | receipt number | status.

4. Flag Unverified Claims: Mark any claim with fewer than 2 sources as UNVERIFIED and block handoff to the next phase until it is resolved.

5. Verify Quotes Verbatim: Check every direct quote against its source transcript or press release — no paraphrasing may appear inside quotation marks.

Output Format

• A Markdown ledger table with columns: claim | source 1 | source 2 | receipt number | status
• A one-line summary: "N claims, M verified, K UNVERIFIED — [PASS/BLOCK]"

Related Skills

• financial-narrative-brief
• financial-journalism-style