Epistemic scoring for the modern information environment. Because trust has to be earned, measured, and maintained.
The information environment is degraded not because truth doesn't exist — but because no tool has measured epistemic quality at scale, in real time, for everyone.
Request API AccessCronkite scores any web content — news articles, social media posts, government documents, research papers, blog posts — across five epistemic dimensions using a five-model AI ensemble. Five independent models evaluate independently. Their scores are aggregated using a median, with disagreements surfaced and displayed. No single model dominates. No single bias prevails.
A crowdsourced domain trust database builds itself passively through normal browsing. The first person to read an article scores it for everyone who follows. By the time content goes viral, the epistemic signal is already cached and ready to serve at zero marginal cost to the next reader.
Cronkite addresses what global risk frameworks have consistently ranked at or near the top of the risk landscape two years running: misinformation and disinformation. Not by censoring, not by flagging, not by deciding what is true — but by making the epistemic quality of information visible, interpretable, and available to everyone.
Cronkite's most important innovation: no other epistemic scoring system asks what kind of content it is evaluating before applying standards. A papal declaration and a Reuters news article should not be scored by the same rules. Cronkite classifies the rhetorical register first — then applies appropriate epistemic standards.
"And that's the way it is."
Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News
Walter Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. He was named the most trusted man in America in a 1972 poll — not because he was infallible, but because he was consistent, transparent about what he knew and didn't know, and committed to the separation of fact from opinion.
When Cronkite returned from Vietnam in 1968 and told Americans on air that the war was a stalemate, President Johnson reportedly said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." That is epistemic authority. Not popularity, not charisma — the earned trust of an audience that knew he would tell them what was true even when it was inconvenient.
Cronkite the product is named for that standard. Not a fact-checker. Not a censor. An instrument for making epistemic quality visible — so that trust, like Cronkite's, can be earned rather than assumed.
The Chrome extension is free. The score is free. Epistemic access is not a premium feature. API access for institutions, researchers, and developers available on request.
Meridian is the independent research and applied-technology project of Mark Greenhalgh. Views, analysis, and materials published under the Meridian name are his own and do not represent the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, or any U.S. government agency or component. Meridian operates independently of his official duties.