Writing & MediaFree
Fact-Check Comments on Your News Draft
Paste your story and get a comment on every checkable claim: what to confirm, the best source, and what public records already show.
River reads your draft the way a fact-checker does, one claim at a time. Every name, title, date, number, quote and characterization gets a comment anchored to the sentence it sits in. Each comment says exactly what needs confirming and which source would settle it. Where a public source can confirm or contradict the claim, River checks it and links the page. A summary at the top puts the riskiest items first, so the hour before deadline goes where it matters.
Spelling and grammar checkers cannot see a wrong figure, and automated checkers tend to rate a claim true or false with no source a reader could follow. This works the other way round. Nothing is marked supported without a link, and quotes are always flagged for checking against your recording, because only the tape can confirm them. Your draft stays exactly as written. The output is a checklist you work through, not a rewrite you have to undo.
It is built for reporters at small newsrooms with no research desk, student journalists, freelancers filing to an editor who expects clean copy, and newsletter writers who publish without a second reader. Run it on the near-final draft, after the reporting is done and before the editor reads it. When two of your sources contradict each other, use the source reconciliation tool, and when the story makes serious allegations, add legal review prep before it runs.
What a fact-checker actually checks
Professional fact-checking treats a draft as a list of assertions rather than a piece of prose. Each assertion is a name, a number, a date, a quote, a description or a claim about cause, and each one needs its own source. The SPJ Code of Ethics states the duty simply: verify information before releasing it. The practical skill is breaking a smooth paragraph into the separate facts it quietly contains, since errors usually hide inside sentences that read well.
An illustrative sentence shows how many checks hide in one line: Commissioner Ana Marsh, who has served since 2018, said the $4.2 million contract is the largest in the sheriff's history. That is a name spelling, a title, a start year, a quote, a dollar figure and a superlative. The superlative is the riskiest, because proving largest means checking every earlier contract. Words like first, only, record and largest deserve the hardest look of anything in a draft.
Some things cannot be checked from the outside. A quote can only be confirmed against the recording or the reporter's notes, and a scene only against the reporter's notes and photos. A good check says so instead of pretending. It also watches fairness: if a person is criticized or accused, the story should show they were asked to respond. When that response is missing, flag it as clearly as a wrong number, because either one can sink the story.
How it works
Paste the draft
Paste the story or attach the file, plus a line on the sources you used.
River marks claims
Each checkable assertion gets a comment naming what to confirm and the best source.
Public checks run
Claims that public sources can settle are checked and linked, never marked supported without one.
Work the list
Ask in chat about any claim, or paste your notes to clear the flagged items.
What you get
- A comment on every checkable claim, anchored to the exact sentence where it appears
- Each claim typed as a name, title, date, number, quote, description or cause
- Public-record checks with a linked source, marked supported, contradicted or still unconfirmed
- Every quote flagged for checking against your recording, since only the tape can confirm it
- Totals, percentages and comparisons recalculated, with any figure that does not add up flagged
- A summary listing the riskiest claims first, including criticism with no response from its subject
Common questions
Does River change my draft?
No. The draft stays exactly as you wrote it. Every finding is a comment on the sentence it concerns, so you decide what to change and nothing is rewritten behind your back. If a fix is obvious, such as a name spelled one way in the lede and another way later, the comment points it out and leaves the edit to you.
Can it confirm my quotes?
No, and it says so on every quote. Only your recording or notes can confirm what someone said, so each quote gets a comment asking you to check the exact wording and the speaker against the tape. River can still catch a quote that appears twice with different wording, or the same words attributed to two people.
How does it check facts against public sources?
For claims a public record can settle, such as an official's title, a published budget figure, a company filing or the date of a public event, River searches the web, reads the source and links it in the comment. It prefers the original record over news coverage. If it cannot find a reliable source, the claim stays marked unconfirmed rather than guessed.
Which claims are the riskiest?
Allegations about named people, figures in the headline or lede, superlatives like first, only and largest, and anything a public source contradicts. Criticism of someone with no sign they were asked to respond is high risk too. The summary at the top of the document lists these first, so limited time goes to the claims that could do real damage.
Does this replace a human fact-checker or editor?
No. It does the slow first pass, breaking the draft into claims and checking what public sources can show, so the human check can focus on judgement and on what only you can verify. For stories with serious allegations, a second editor and a legal read are still the standard before anything is published. If an error still gets through, the correction note writer drafts the fix.
What kinds of writing does it work on?
Any piece that makes factual claims: news stories, features, profiles, newsletters, press releases and nonfiction essays. It works best on a near-final draft, since claims you are still reporting will only come back as unconfirmed. Opinion pieces work too, though only their factual claims are checked, never the argument itself. Game recaps are better started in the sports recap writer, which uses only the box score's figures.
Built by
Chandler Supple
Co-founder & CEO, River
Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.
Fact-Check Comments on Your News Draft
Describe what you need, add any files you have, and your workspace opens with the work already underway.