How a story earns its mark
Sotwire verifies who at the company stood behind the submission. It does not independently certify every underlying company claim as true.
The public badge is Company attested. The secondary status is Source verified. Sotwire does not use a standalone “Verified” mark. That word invites readers to assume the desk independently fact-checked every sentence.
1. Company files an event
Through the portal, a company submits text, an optional voice note, photos, and other source material. The desk drafts a structured event and a human-readable story from that packet. The company can edit every word. Unpublished drafts never appear on the public wire, in feeds, or in sitemaps.
2. Named attestation from a company domain
Approval is a one-time magic link sent to a work email. Sotwire publishes only if the email domain matches the claimed company domain after normalizing www, protocol, and path. Personal inboxes (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, and similar) are rejected. Subdomains do not count as a match in v1.
That check verifies a relationship: a named person used an inbox on the company domain to stand behind a specific version of the record. It does not prove the underlying claims. DNS TXT ownership is the documented upgrade for persistent organization control.
3. Source Card on the public record
The published story shows company, attester name, title, email domain, timestamp, verification method, and a stable record ID. Full attester email is not shown unless the person opts in. If the attestation click never happens, there is no badge and no public URL.
4. Media provenance
Images carry two separate ideas: what the submitter declares the file is, and what Sotwire can technically observe. v1 observes EXIF/XMP and filename, then labels camera, AI-generated, screenshot, or unknown. That is a heuristic. It is not C2PA, and it is not proof that the depicted event happened. C2PA Content Credentials are the upgrade path.
5. Corrections
Records can change. History should not disappear. Material corrections create a new version, keep the prior version internally, and show a correction note. The desk can unpublish or request changes. Retraction is distinct from ordinary unpublishing. v1 does not silently rewrite a live story.
What we will not do
Sotwire does not auto-email companies with outreach. An outreach agent drafts messages and queues them for a human. Publishing never happens without attestation. We do not rewrite third-party coverage as if it were a first-party company statement. Paid promotion never changes attestation, correction, or source labels.