Source Selection Principles

MeridAIn prioritizes sources that demonstrate:

• Editorial Standards: Published corrections policy and fact-checking
• Transparency: Clear ownership and funding disclosure
• Track Record: History of accurate reporting
• Original Reporting: Primary sources over aggregation
• Attribution: Proper citation of sources and quotes

High-Credibility Sources

These sources receive the highest credibility ratings (85-100%):

Wire Services

• Reuters
• Associated Press (AP)
• Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Papers of Record

• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• The Guardian
• The Wall Street Journal
• Financial Times
• BBC News

Academic & Scientific

• Nature
• Science
• Peer-reviewed journals
• ArXiv (preprints, noted as such)

Government & Institutional

• Official government releases (.gov)
• WHO, UN, and international bodies
• NIH, CDC (health)
• NASA, ESA (space/science)

Medium-Credibility Sources

These sources receive moderate credibility ratings (60-84%):

• Major cable news networks (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News - with bias notation)
• Quality digital news outlets (Axios, Politico, The Atlantic)
• Industry publications (TechCrunch, Wired, Ars Technica)
• Major regional newspapers
• Bloomberg, CNBC (business/finance)

These sources may have known editorial leanings which are reflected in bias scores.

Sources Requiring Caution

These sources require additional corroboration (below 60%):

• Overtly partisan publications
• Opinion-focused outlets
• Social media posts
• Press releases without verification
• Anonymous sources (unless corroborated)
• Content farms or aggregators

Sources We Don't Use

MeridAIn excludes:

• Known misinformation sites
• Satire sites (unless clearly labeled)
• Sites with no editorial accountability
• State propaganda outlets (unless reporting on the state itself)
• Sites promoting conspiracy theories
• Plagiarized or scraped content

Attribution Policy

Every MeridAIn article includes:

• Full list of sources consulted
• Direct links to original articles
• Individual credibility ratings for each source
• In-text citations for specific claims

Image Licensing

All images on MeridAIn are legally licensed:

• Unsplash: Free to use under Unsplash License
• Pexels: Free to use under Pexels License
• Public Domain: CC0 or equivalent

We do not use:

• Images without clear licensing
• Copyrighted images without permission
• AI-generated images (unless clearly labeled)