Open, research-grade newsroom tool
BNVI is designed for real newsroom conditions: frightened eyewitnesses, incomplete access, contradictory official statements, social visuals of uncertain origin, and the pressure to publish before full certainty exists. It treats verification as a visible process that can be scored, explained, and updated.
BNVI is an epistemic reporting instrument. It does not decide truth; it structures how a newsroom records, tests, narrows, and discloses claims during breaking news.
The BNVI scoring model is a structured prompt. It operationalizes verification through source path, provenance, time-place fit, contradiction testing, and audience transparency.
Tick only the work you have actually done. BNVI scores the reporting pathway, not your confidence.
Establish whether the source plausibly is who they say they are and whether their position in the event is credible.
Do not stop at the spoken account. Ask what the source can show, send, or substantiate.
Visuals need their own verification track. A compelling image can still be old, miscaptioned, synthetic, or geographically wrong.
Cross-check the account against other human and documentary sources, not just your own intuition.
This subscale is for situations where officials deny, minimize, delay, or strategically blur what appears to be happening.
If corroboration is incomplete, the explanation of constraint is part of the reporting, not a private excuse.
The viewer or reader should see the state of knowledge, not just the newsroom’s final posture.
The score is a discipline aid, not a substitute for editorial judgment.
Hold. Too much rests on untested witness language, weak visuals, or unresolved official conflict.
Publish only as a narrow, caveated account. No sweeping framing.
Publish with a visible verification note and update plan.
Publish as strongly corroborated reporting while keeping room for correction and revision.
Draft language for broadcast, web, or live-blog publication.
Web-ready process disclosure modeled on the idea of showing the reporting trail, roadblocks, and dead ends.
BNVI is an open, research-grade interactive index created to help journalists, editors, students, and researchers evaluate the evidentiary strength and publication readiness of breaking-news reporting. It is designed for practical use in newsrooms, classrooms, and independent reporting environments where transparency about methods, limits, and unresolved uncertainty is part of the journalism itself.