Our Methodology
How we collect, analyze, and present the news. And why every editorial decision we make is designed to keep us out of the story.
Where We Get Our News
We monitor over 40 news sources across six continents, and the list updates throughout the day. Corporate media, public broadcasters, independent outlets, state-affiliated press. That mix is deliberate. We don't curate sources to get comfortable results. We include outlets with strong editorial leanings in every direction, because our job is to analyze how the news is framed, not to decide which outlets deserve to be heard.
Every source is classified by ownership type (corporate, public, independent, or state-affiliated), so you always know who's behind what you're reading.
How Stories Are Built
When multiple outlets cover the same event, we group their articles into a single story. The clustering happens automatically, using automated cross-outlet matching. The system figures out when different headlines, from different outlets, in different languages, are talking about the same thing.
How We Summarize
Every story gets a neutral summary written by AI. It isn't copied from any single source. It's generated from the collective reporting across every article in the story, stripped of editorial framing, loaded language, and narrative spin.
No territorial or geopolitical bias. No actor labeling. No editorial amplification. These rules apply uniformly. No source gets the benefit of the doubt.
Claims vs. Facts
We classify key developments as confirmed, claimed, or disputed. The classification flows through every layer of the platform. Headlines, summaries, and timeline events all respect claim status.
How We Detect Media Manipulation
Every article is analyzed for persuasion tactics: the specific methods outlets use to shape how you interpret the news. That includes loaded language, appeals to authority, cherry-picked statistics, selective sourcing, false equivalence, bandwagon framing, and scare tactics, across a taxonomy of 30 documented techniques.
How Scores Work
Each article receives a manipulation score reflecting how many persuasion tactics it uses and how aggressive those tactics are. The scoring approach is consistent across every source.
Narrative Framing
Beyond individual technique detection, we identify the narrative frame each outlet applies to a story: the angle, the emphasis, the implicit argument. Shown side by side, these reveal how the same set of facts becomes a different story depending on who's telling it.
How We Track Developing Stories
Every story has a timeline: a chronological record of key developments as they happen. Events are extracted from incoming articles and deduplicated. Each event preserves the language of the original reporting, including qualifiers and hedging.
Where Outlets Agree and Disagree
For every story, we identify consensus points (facts all or most outlets agree on) and contention points (claims where outlets diverge). Consensus tells you what actually happened. Contention tells you where the spin begins.
Who Owns What
Every source is tagged with its ownership type: corporate, public, independent, or state-affiliated. We also show the balance of coverage per story.
Prediction Markets
Where it fits, we link stories to active prediction markets. Real-money platforms where people bet on outcomes. It's a useful counterpoint to media narratives.
Our Commitments
We don't take editorial positions. We don't curate sources to get clean results. We don't score outlets as reliable or unreliable. We don't assume Western media is the baseline for objectivity.
Why This Matters
Every outlet frames the news. The Daily Martian exists to make those decisions visible. Not to replace the news, but to give you the tools to read it with open eyes.