How We Decide Which News Sources to Include
Not every outlet that publishes in Sri Lanka makes it into LakFeed. Here's our criteria for evaluating sources — and why we'd rather have fewer, better sources than a firehose of low-quality content.
LakFeed Editorial
June 14, 2025 · 3 min read
When we started aggregating news for LakFeed, the easiest thing to do was pull from everything — every outlet, every blog, every social media page that calls itself a news source. More content means more pages, more keywords, more chances of showing up in search results.
We chose not to do that. Here's why, and how we actually evaluate what goes in.
The Sri Lankan Media Landscape Is Crowded
Sri Lanka has a genuinely diverse media environment: national broadcasters, independent digital-first outlets, newspaper groups with long histories, and a growing number of online-only publications. In all three languages, there's no shortage of people publishing news.
But the quality gap is wide. Some outlets have editorial teams with decades of experience, clear corrections policies, and named reporters. Others republish government press releases verbatim, have no identifiable editorial contact, and have been caught fabricating quotes.
Aggregating both equally would make LakFeed useless. A reader can't tell, from a headline card, whether the story behind it was reported or invented.
Our Evaluation Criteria
When a source is proposed for inclusion, we look at the following:
Editorial accountability. Is there a named editor or editorial contact? Is there a corrections process? When an outlet gets something wrong, do they acknowledge it?
Original reporting. Does the outlet produce its own journalism, or does it primarily republish content from wire services and other outlets? Republishing is fine — most outlets do it — but we weight sources that generate original reporting more heavily.
Source transparency. Does the outlet name its sources? Anonymous sources are sometimes necessary, but a consistent pattern of unnamed officials and unnamed experts is a signal of poor standards.
Operational history. A site that has been publishing consistently for several years and has not been caught in major fabrications is different from a site that appeared recently and has no track record.
Language quality. This is more subjective, but relevant for aggregation: Sinhala and Tamil content that is poorly formatted, uses incorrect character encoding, or is written in a register that is clearly auto-translated from English is harder to include reliably.
What We Don't Do
We don't make decisions based on political affiliation. We include sources across the political spectrum, and we don't penalise outlets for having an editorial perspective as long as they meet the standards above.
We don't exclude sources because we find their opinions inconvenient. LakFeed is an aggregator, not an editor in the sense of assigning stories. We pull what outlets publish and present it.
We don't accept payment to include a source. If anyone approaches us with that offer, we'll publish the fact that they did.
An Ongoing Process
Our source list is not fixed. We review it when we receive credible reports of a source publishing fabricated content, and we're always considering new outlets that meet our criteria. If you think we've missed a source worth including — or included one we shouldn't have — the contact form exists for exactly this reason.