EN BG

Source Triangulation

If you only check sources that agree with each other, you are not researching. You are shopping for confirmation.

Source triangulation means verifying information across multiple independent sources — especially sources with different biases, funding, and incentives. The key word is independent. Three news outlets that all cite the same press release are not three sources. They are one source, amplified three times.

The reason this matters is that every source has a perspective. Every journalist, institution, and researcher operates within a set of incentives that shape what they report, what they leave out, and how they frame it. This does not make them all liars. It makes them all incomplete. A story that looks solid from one angle might look very different from another — and the truth usually lives somewhere in the space between perspectives, not squarely inside any one of them.

In practice, this means deliberately seeking out coverage from sources that you know lean differently. Read the story in an outlet you trust, then read it in one you do not. Pay attention to what each version includes and omits. When multiple sources with opposing biases converge on the same fact, you can have reasonable confidence in it. When they diverge, you have found the place where interpretation, selection, or framing is doing the work — and that is exactly where you should pay the closest attention.

References