Data Sources and Method

Monitors

MEF runs 7 press monitors, one per language. Each reads the outlets' public RSS feeds or listing pages once a day (honest user agent, 1 request per second per host), filters out sport, culture and lifestyle items, removes duplicates and stores a dated capture with the native headline, a machine translation, the outlet, the time and the link. The readout covers 21 capture dates from September 16, 2026 to October 6, 2026. Capture days per language are listed in the table; the Russian, Urdu and Azerbaijani monitors have 1 sample day each so far.

The tag beside each outlet is an audience or stance tag taken from the monitor's own outlet notes. It describes the outlet's usual line and readership. It is not an ownership finding and not a judgment of the outlet's reliability. BBC Persian, Radio Farda, BBC Urdu and Azadliq Radiosu are state-funded, editorially independent by charter.

Daily Readout

For each date and press a commercial hosted language model reads up to 40 candidate items, ranked by the monitor's relevance score and section, and picks 5 on Middle East policy subjects, at most 2 per outlet. For each pick it drafts one labeled line in our words, attributed to the outlet by name. It then drafts 3 to 6 key points for the day from the selected items. Automated checks run before publication: every line and key point must name the outlet it rests on; no line or key point may share a run of 8 or more consecutive words with the outlet's headline or lead outside quotation marks; the outlet's framing words (for example "eliminated", "terrorists", "martyrs", "Judea and Samaria", "linked to") appear only inside quotation marks; dashes and exclamation marks are removed; and transliterated names, places and ranks are normalised to common English forms. A line that fails is redrafted, and if it still fails it is replaced with a neutral "carried this report" line. The build stops if any problem remains. Third-party text is scanned for instruction-like content and passed to the model as fenced data. Key points, labels and lines are machine-drafted; line-by-line review by MEF staff is not yet part of this pipeline. Region links group the day's items by keyword rules on the translated headline and our line.

Our labels: Reported: the outlet reports an event or decision in its own voice.; In their words: the outlet carries a named official's or figure's statement, quoted or paraphrased.; Framing: the outlet's own interpretation, column or editorial line.; Numbers: the item turns on a figure (a count, price, sum or date) the outlet states.; Watch: a scheduled or announced next step the outlet reports.

Translation

Every translated headline is marked "Machine translation". Models: a commercial hosted language model (Persian, Turkish and Hebrew captures; Arabic headlines are translated at readout time) and open-weight models run on MEF-controlled hardware (Russian, Urdu and Azerbaijani captures, and earlier Persian and Turkish captures). The model is instructed to translate only, keep names, numbers and the outlet's quote marks, and add nothing. Each monitor back-translates a random sample of 5 items a day and records whether each is faithful. Hover the "Machine translation" tag to see which class of model translated that item. The native headline is shown under each translation so readers can check it (typographic dashes in native headlines are shown as hyphens).

Copyright

For third-party press the readout shows only the headline (in the original and in translation), the outlet's name, the time and a link to the original, plus our own one-line summary. It does not reproduce the outlet's lead or body text. Readers should consult the original for the full report.

Claims Record

Cases are chosen from the captures where an outlet tagged state, regime, pro-government or official line (IRNA, Mehr, Kayhan, ISNA and Mizan; Anadolu, Sabah, Yeni Safak and Yeni Akit; Al-Akhbar, Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Ahram and Al-Bayan; TASS, RIA Novosti and RT; APA, Trend and Report.az; ARY) stated a checkable fact about the United States, Israel or the West. "What the record shows" cites only primary records: US government documents and official statements (Federal Register, Treasury, White House, Senate roll calls), official statements of other governments and international bodies, or published MEF articles. A candidate case without such a record is not published. Each case states one of 4 record findings: consistent with the record; partly consistent (the core matches, a detail such as a figure or a quotation does not); differs from the record; or not found in the record (the cited records do not show what the outlet stated). The finding concerns the specific statement, not the outlet. UN meetings coverage is cited as an official UN publication; the UN itself notes that these summaries are not the official record. 16 cases are published.

Archived copies: for each original link the build queries the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine availability service and links an existing copy when one is found. It does not request new captures.

Update Cadence and Limits

The site is regenerated from the monitors' daily capture files by a reproducible build. Feeds change and sometimes fail; each daily page lists the outlets present in that day's capture. Selection reflects the model's reading of significance under fixed rules, and an item's presence is not an endorsement. Times are the outlets' own timestamps converted to UTC; Al-Ahram print items carry the edition date only.

Corrections

Write to info@meforum.org with the page link and the correction. Corrected items will carry a dated note.

Credits and Licences

Type: Newsreader and Inter, SIL Open Font License 1.1, served from this site. Archive lookups: Internet Archive Wayback Machine. No cookies, analytics or third-party scripts are used.