Methodology

Eye-Sea reconstructs the reporting timeline of significant stories — who put facts on the record first, who amplified them, and who added genuinely new reporting. We publish these reconstructions as Story Traces: dated, sourced and revisable.

• ▸Material consequence — the story moves markets, policy, or public understanding.
• ▸Disputed provenance — there is meaningful disagreement about who reported what, when.
• ▸Sufficient public record — enough timestamped material exists to reconstruct a chain.

We catalogue every public report in the first 72 hours of a story’s life, timestamped to the minute where possible. We separate three distinct acts: first publication, amplification, and incremental reporting. Citation chains are read literally — “according to the Financial Times” is attribution; “people familiar with the matter” without an outlet cited is not.

Confidence is our assessment of how completely the public record supports the reconstructed chain. HIGH CONFIDENCE means all key timestamps are independently verified from public sources. MEDIUM CONFIDENCE means the originator is clear but one or more timestamps are unverified. LOW CONFIDENCE means the reporting chain is partially reconstructable but gaps exist that cannot be resolved from public sources.

Every trace carries a version. When new evidence emerges, we revise the record openly and note what changed. We score publication, not access — an outlet that holds a story is not credited for reporting it.