Editorial

How The Lede handles sources

The Lede reads whatever you save, from whoever published it, and hands you the strongest honest version of what it argues. It doesn't rank outlets and it doesn't keep a list of ones it won't touch. The standard is that every source gets the same treatment.

Every source, as it is

There's no blocklist and no quality gate. The Lede doesn't judge a piece by who published it. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fox, MSNBC: a story from any of them is read on its own terms, and the brief is the fairest case for what that story is actually saying. If you saved it, we brief it.

The one thing it changes

When a piece is opinion or commentary rather than reporting, The Lede builds the brief from the original reporting underneath it, not from the columnist's framing of it. That's the only move, and it's the same at every publication. What tells us a piece is opinion is plain and neutral: it's filed in the publication's own opinion section, right there in the web address. That signal says nothing about the politics. When it happens, the brief shows you the reporting it used. Nothing is swapped behind your back.

When you ask it to dig deeper

Ask The Lede to dig deeper and it goes looking for what the original piece left out. It reaches past the source on purpose: international reporting, and peer-reviewed or primary research over more of the same commentary. How the rest of the world covered a story, and what the underlying study actually found, usually tells you more than another take from the same vantage point.

Where we stand

We don't rank the press and we don't referee who's trustworthy. Every source gets read straight. The only time The Lede reaches past what you saved is to trade a columnist's opinion for the reporting it stands on, on a signal that treats every outlet the same, and it shows you when it did. That's the whole standard.

Questions? support@theledeapp.com