Practical guide
How to avoid reading duplicate news
Deduplicate by source lineage and claim. Resolve canonical URLs, identify the earliest evidence, group rewrites beneath it, and retain a second source only when it adds independent reporting or a material interpretation.[1][2]
Why this gets difficult
Duplicate news is hard to spot because headlines, syndication, commentary, and platform snippets make one underlying report look like several independent confirmations.[1][2]
A practical way through
- Resolve redirects, canonical pages, and the original document or report behind each item.[1][2]
- Compare the central claim and cited evidence rather than headline wording.[1][2]
- Group syndication and rewrites, recording the shared origin.[1][2]
- Keep independent confirmation, new facts, and meaningful disagreement as separate contributions.[1][2]
An example
The situation: Seven sites report one product statistic, all tracing to the same company press release, while one outlet interviews affected customers.[1][2]
What changes: The press release anchors the company claim, its rewrites collapse, and the customer reporting remains separate because it adds independent evidence.[1][2]
What you get: The reader sees two evidence streams rather than eight apparent confirmations.[1][2]
What to watch for
Sources worth keeping
How Scottie helps
Scottie groups the items it read into stories and can preserve a separate source when its evidence or conclusion materially differs.[3]