Editorial Policy

This policy explains how stories on The News Engine are selected, produced and corrected. Last updated October 2026.

1. Sources

We only use publicly available RSS and Atom feeds published by established news organisations, public institutions and specialist publishers. Each source is reviewed before it is added and given a trust score that influences how prominently its stories appear. Sources that repeatedly fail or behave unreliably are automatically paused. We respect each site's robots.txt rules and never access content behind paywalls, logins or other technical restrictions.

2. How summaries are produced

Our software reads the headline and short description that a publisher makes available in its feed. It then:

• removes duplicates and groups reports of the same event from different outlets into a single story;
• classifies the story into a section and detects the main places, people and organisations mentioned;
• builds a concise summary that quotes only short, attributed passages from the publishers' own descriptions, adds context about which outlets are reporting it, and lists key details;
• adds a short, general "why it matters" note that does not introduce new facts.

The system is designed never to invent facts, quotes, numbers, people, dates or events. If a story does not contain enough reliable information, it is held for review rather than published automatically.

3. Attribution

Every story names its sources and links prominently to the original articles. Images are shown only when a publisher distributes them in its feed for this purpose or when they are openly licensed, and are always credited. Where no suitable image is available we use a neutral graphic.

4. Ranking and selection

Homepage positions are set automatically using freshness, the number of independent outlets reporting a story, source trust, the significance of the event and reader interest. No story is promoted in exchange for payment.

5. Corrections

Automated systems can make mistakes — for example by grouping two different events or misreading a headline. If you spot an error, please tell us via abdulmasud50@gmail.com or our contact form. We review every request, correct or remove inaccurate summaries promptly and, where relevant, note the update on the story page. Because our summaries rely on the original reporting, corrections made by the original publisher are reflected when we next refresh the story.

6. Publication practices

• Stories are checked automatically for a valid headline, source, link, timestamp and minimum quality before publication.
• Stories that fail any check are held as "review required" and are not published automatically.
• Breaking-news labels are applied automatically to fast-developing stories and removed once they are no longer recent.
• Older stories are archived and removed from our sitemaps over time.
• Advertising, where present, is clearly labelled and kept separate from editorial content.