About
News, minus the smoke.
SmokeScreen is a fact-first news site. We expose political agendas, test conspiracy claims against evidence, and cover the controversies that are actually real — and every story shows its receipts.
Every outlet says it's just reporting the facts. So why does the same event read like three different scandals depending on where you see it? Because there's the event — and then there's the version of the event somebody needed you to see. SmokeScreen exists to separate the two, in public, where you can check the work.
The rules
- Receipts on every story. Primary sources — documents, data, full clips, official records — linked at the bottom of everything we publish. If we can't show it, we say so.
- No leanings, no team. The same standard applies to every party, outlet, and tribe. The moment this site starts protecting one side, it becomes the thing it was built to expose.
- News and opinion never mix quietly. Reporting is stamped for what it is. Opinion lives only in pieces clearly marked EDITORIAL, under a real name.
- Claims get checked, not mocked or swallowed. Conspiracy claims are tested against documents and evidence. Some fail. Some — like a signed 1962 Pentagon memo proposing staged attacks — turn out to be documented fact. Both outcomes get published the same way.
- Unknown means unknown. If the evidence isn't in yet, the story says what's verified, what isn't, and what would settle it. We don't fill gaps with confidence.
How a story gets checked
One: find the primary source — not the clip of the clip, but the full speech, the actual document, the raw data. Two: read what came immediately before and after the quoted moment, because that's where agendas hide. Three: check whether the numbers survive contact with the source they're credited to. Four: ask who benefits from you believing this version, and say it out loud. Five: publish the receipts with the story, so the check itself can be checked. The full method is laid out in How SmokeScreen checks a claim.
Corrections, in the open
We will get things wrong. When we do, the story itself gets corrected — with a note on the story saying what changed, when, and why. No silent edits to load-bearing facts. A correction isn't a scandal here; hiding one would be. If you spot an error, send it — with your own receipts if you have them — and it gets checked the same way everything else does.
Who's behind it
SmokeScreen is founded and published by Kris Rodobolski of Milton, Ontario — not a career journalist, but a construction guy with 25 years of telling the difference between what's actually on a blueprint and what someone wishes was on it. His founding editorial is Why I started SmokeScreen. Research and drafting assistance is provided by Muse, an AI assistant — disclosed here because a site about transparency doesn't hide its own process. Every fact still has to pass the same checks, and every receipt still has to open.