Skeptical Researching in the Age of Media Mistrust: Evaluate Your News

Fake News: Sources that contain entirely fabricated information or misleading news. Fake news websites sometimes also promote hate and or conspiracy theories.

Extremely biased or highly partisan. Information is distorted or decontextualized to support a particular point of view. Usually politically motivated. Opinions are represented as facts.

Clickbait:  Sources are generally credible but use exaggerated, misleading or questionable headlines or images. These types of sources are easily passed from user to user via social media.

Satire: Sites or sources that use humor, exaggeration, ridicule and false information to comment on current events particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Resources for Evaluating Sites and their Claims​

• Media Bias Fact Check

  Browse lists of site by their political leanings or search for individual sites to see where they fall on the bias spectrum and level of factual reporting
• Snopes

  One of the longest standing websites for checking the truthfulness of viral stories, regardless of origin
• Politifact

  Focuses on fact-checking claims made by elected officials and other political figures
• Lists of Unreliable Sites

  There are many that try to maintain lists of sites that have been flagged as distributors of disinformation, such as here and here. As you can imagine, these lists are hard to keep up to date, so you still need to evaluate each site on a case by case basis.

Credible news sites use reporting practices that are consistent with traditional and ethical practices of journalism. Credible journalists generally take responsibility for the accuracy of their work, verify information before releasing it, and use original sources whenever possible. They provide context  and do not deliberately distort the facts. (https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)