THESE WEBSITES CAN HELP YOU SEPARATE FACT FROM FICTION
*******************************************************************
Internet Hoaxes, Rumors, Misinformation
Snopes: A great reference source for urban legends, rumors, and misinformation. It has been around for a long time. Snopes is usually the first to report the facts.
Hoax Slayer: A website similar to Snopes that investigates and reports on Internet hoaxes and rumors.
Truth or Fiction: This one is similar to Snopes but they tend to focus primarily on political rumors and hoaxes.
Especially High Quality Resources for Political Facts
Politifact: Checks claims made by elected officials. It is an excellent website to use when researching political facts. Its a high quality site and even won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for journalism.
Fact Check: Fact check.org aims to be a consumer advocate and works to identify deceptions from politicians. It is a little bit harder to read than Politifact.
Poynter Institute: Poynter is not a fact checking website. However, the journalists at Poynter are fastidious about checking their facts before publishing. You can have more confidence about the accuracy of the stories they post.
Focuses on Where Political Campaigns Get Their Funding
The Sunlight Foundation: Works to make our government more transparent to all. Sunlight primarily focuses on money's role in politics.
Open Secrets: A great source for focusing on where political candidates get their funding and how much funding they have. In other words, is the candidate supported by ordinary citizens or by billionaires?
Different but Useful in Understanding True News from Fake News.
Flack Check: The companion website to Fact Check.org. It helps readers to identify flaws in arguments in general but especially those from political speeches and advertisements.
Fact Checker by the Washington Post: This is an excellent website for checking out facts and lies from political campaigns. However, the Washington Post leans to the left politically and does tend to investigate right wing politicians more than left wing politicians.
DON'T SHARE UNTIL YOU'RE SURE ITS THE TRUTH!
There are evaluation forms available to help you easily get through the process of evaluating a resource:
JEHS Resource Evaluation Form: Walks you through the process. Adds up points to help you decide if your source is high quality or not.
EasyBib Resource Evaluation Form: A great form to help you remember the key parts of a website that we examine to decide if it is reputable (high quality).
According to an Ipsos Public Affairs study, 75% of Americans have been duped by a fake news report this election cycle. Can you identify the fake news stories in this quiz from Market Watch?
(scroll down on the page to take the quiz.
Here's another one: The Onion is a popular fake newspaper. Lots of people read it because it satirizes real news and can be pretty funny.
Can you tell the difference between fake news and real news? Take this quiz to find out!
The Programming Librarians Web Page has MANY resources about how to identify Fake News. Have a look!