Act I — Currently in Beta
Verifiability — what the Beta evaluates
JET is being built in acts. Act I focuses entirely on Verifiability — the most foundational principle, and the one Kovach and Rosenstiel identify as closest to journalism's essential core. Below is the full scope of what Verifiability entails, with clear markers for what is included in the Beta and what will follow.
In Beta
1
Claim extraction — all claims in a piece of content are identified, verbatim and exhaustively, including those in headlines, captions, and embedded media.
In Beta
2
Citation extraction — all citations, references and attributions are identified: hyperlinks, named sources, anonymous sources, paraphrased attributions, visual sourcing, and secondary references.
In Beta
3
Claim–citation mapping — each claim is mapped to any citation that appears to support it, based on what is visible in the content itself.
In Beta
4
Citation relevance check — external citations are reviewed to assess whether they actually support the claims they are attached to. Citations that misrepresent their source are flagged as misleading.
In Beta
5
Established fact verification — uncited claims are evaluated against common knowledge, scientific consensus, historical record, and mathematical truths. Those that qualify are removed from the uncited pool.
In Beta
6
Original reporting detection — claims exhibiting linguistic and structural markers of original reporting are identified and classified separately from claims requiring external citation.
In Beta
7
Source disclosure check — for original reporting, JET assesses whether the source is disclosed. If undisclosed, it checks whether that decision is defended. Undisclosed and undefended sources are negatively scored.
In Beta
8
Impact assessment — the main argument of the article is extracted and cross-referenced against unverified, misleading, or negatively scored claims to assess their impact on the core logic of the piece.
Later
9
Source reliability scoring — evaluating the quality and credibility of cited sources themselves, not only their relevance. Deferred to a later phase.
Later
10
Plagiarism detection — checking whether original reporting claims appear in prior publications. Requires integration with external detection infrastructure currently under evaluation.
Later
11
Reporter and editor disclosure — assessing whether the reporter and editor of the element are named and identifiable. Part of the full Verifiability definition; deferred to align with author layer development.