About
Headlines are arguments. Claims are checkable.
A news story is a bundle of statements: things that happened, things that were counted, things someone alleges, and what the writer makes of it all. The BANN keeps the first three and drops the last. Articles about the same thing become one event with a list of claims, and each claim stands on its own to be supported or disputed.
- Step 1
The feeds are read
Every ten minutes The BANN reads the world news feeds of nine outlets, from BBC News to UN News. A first pass sets aside sport, entertainment, lifestyle, opinion pieces and minor stories, so only news that matters goes further.
- Step 2
The analyst breaks it down
A language model describes the event in neutral terms and extracts its checkable claims. Every claim is a boolean or a number, and carries a verbatim quote from the article. Opinions, characterisations and predictions are left out.
- Step 3
Articles join events
When a new article reports on an event that is already here, it becomes another source for it. Claims gain a second report, the summary is rewritten to take in every source, and a figure that has moved keeps its history.
- Step 4
Readers weigh in
Every claim can be supported or disputed, one vote per person. The quote, and the analyst's own critique of how it read the article, sit under each claim so you can check it yourself.
How to read a claim
- No mark
- A fact: the article reports it as established, and as so.
- Alleged
- Asserted by one party and contested or not yet verified.
- A number
- The claim names what was counted or measured, and the figure sits beside it. When sources differ, the newest report shows.
- False
- The article reports that this is not so. It is rare, so it is the one answer that gets a label.
The extraction confidence under each claim is how faithfully the analyst thinks it read the article. It is not how likely the claim is to be true.
Where this is at
This is early. The pipeline runs unattended, so the analyst can misread an article or put two stories in one event; the quote and critique under each claim are there so you can catch it. Voting is one person, one vote per claim. Nothing is ranked or weighted yet.