Fake News and How to Spot it

https://www.summer.harvard.edu/inside-summer/4-tips-spotting-fake-news-story

News articles online are everywhere, but do you know if it is actually a true news story? Fake news has been on the rise with all the current events that have been happening, and authors of the articles falsely report on it due to not knowing the facts or they intentionally mean to falsely report on it to get more people to read their articles. This can make people uneasy about reading news online because they are not sure if they are true or not. The Harvard article listed above shows 4 ways that can help someone determine if a news article is reporting the real story or if it really is fake news.

The first tip on spotting fake news is to look at the credibility of the publisher. This means that you are looking at the url to see if it ends with .com, .org, .edu, etc. This article from Harvard says to be cautious about urls that end with .com.co and other similar endings. See if the author has published other articles on their website is another good way to look at the credibility.

The second tip from this Harvard article is to look at the quality. If there are a lot of spelling errors, odd punctuation, or even grammar issues then this needs to be carefully examined. It is likely the article is not from a credible source and should not be relied on as a good source.

The third tip is to check the sources and citations used in the article. If you can look at the sources and citations used for the article that you are debating is fake or not, then chances are it might not be fake. If the information can be found somewhere else, and it correlates with the information found on the article, then it is probably and okay article to read.

The last tip that the Harvard article states is to “ask the pros”. By this, they mean to look at fact checking websites. The fact checking website does what it says – it checks to see if facts are true or not. These can help weed out the fake articles from the real ones. These are a few great tips to help someone determine whether an article is real or fake.