Media Coverage Attribution Agent

Coverage reports often count the same story many times when regional sites republish a wire article. For each monthly report, this agent finds related versions of articles. It checks provenance, such as bylines, wire tags and publication metadata, to tell syndicated copies apart from independent reporting. Confirmed syndication counts once plus a syndication note. Relationships it cannot confirm are labeled uncertain instead of merged. It then recalculates the summary numbers and checks that totals add up. The analyst approves the report. Edge case: metadata links four regional articles to one wire story, so they count as one story with syndication.