“Fake news isn’t like a leaky pipe where you tighten it with a proper seal and then it’s fixed for 20 years. Fake news and the problem it represents are more like crime and you are a police force. You can police it better or worse, but you are fighting it perpetually. You need better techniques and better technology to do it.”
- Tom Rosenstiel, as quoted in How to Fight Fake News and Misinformation? Research Helps Point the Way.
If you read a news story online, how can you tell if it is true or untrue? This is not always easy, and has gotten even more difficult recently, in what has been called the "post truth" era. Remember, if you have a feeling a news story may not be completely true, you need to check it out. Become "News Literate". Below are some resources to help you out.
If things are still not clear, please top by, call (508-626-4654) or email the reference staff. We have extensive experience with online sources, and would be happy to give you a hand.
Check your news stories before you trust them, and especially before you pass them on through social media like Twitter and Facebook. Here are some resources to get you started checking your sources.
Was a Chinese zoo about to name a gorilla Harambe McHarambeface?
Is the Boston Leader a real newspaper? The masthead says it has been around since 1932. Let's check that out. There is no editorial information on the website, no contact information, stories are primary dated in 2016, no bylines for stories and many of the stories look questionable. All together, this news source has a number of fake news red flags.
If you look at a newspaper like the Boston Globe, you can see a staff list with photos, stories are date and time stamped as recently as today, there are multiple ways to contact the Globe, and stories have a byline, adding credibility to the source and its stories.
If you do a Google search for the news story, you will see that other news outlets did republish the story. This is how fake news spreads, and gains credibility.
This quick look at an article gives you an idea of how a fake story tries to look like a valid report, and gets spread to other sources, taking on a life of its own.
It's getting virtually impossible for the average person to realize that they're looking at a completely fake, A.I.-fabricated video...and this (2024) is a general election year.
I think you can probably see the potential problem, here....
Especially beware of videos you run into while surfing social media sites, especially if they quickly stir up your emotions. Odds are....they're there to manipulate you. Avoid sharing videos that do that; even if they might at first glance look legitimate.
(Example: a video claimed to be from a legitimate news org. or news site being passed around, even if it has what looks like a station or network identification overlay or logo somewhere on the screen. Did it really come from a true news source?)
FSU's subscription news databases provide more reliable news sources than found on the Internet for free. Look at several different sources for a story, to see if the versions are similar. If there are many different versions of the same story, even in these more reliable news sources, the story may be one which is still developing or needs some additional verification.