Forty sites quoting one report is one report. How to count independent confirmation in 30 seconds.
A story 'everywhere' can still be a single source. Outlet B 'confirms' by citing outlet A; forty headlines later, the internet believes something exactly one newsroom actually reported. Volume is not corroboration — independence is.
The Wire counts OWNERS, not websites: forty sites under one parent company count once. Do the same by hand: trace the links backward until you hit original reporting. Often the chain has one root.
Open two or three versions of the story. Do they cite the same named source, the same anonymous 'officials,' the same single document? One root = one source = a rumor with reach. Different newsrooms with different named sources saying the same thing = now you have something.
Bonus tell: identical odd phrases across outlets means they're all rewriting the same wire copy, not re-reporting it.
The mature response to a single-source story isn't belief or dismissal — it's a tagged hold: 'interesting, unconfirmed, check back.' That's why every story here wears a certainty tag that's pure coverage math: CONFIRMED means 4+ independent owners. Not because corroborated stories are always true — but because uncorroborated ones aren't yet anything.
Next viral story: find the root source before you repeat it. If you can't find it in two minutes, that IS the finding.
Share this lesson freely — the method only works if it spreads. Watch it in action on the live Wire, where every rank shows this exact work.