Research Guides: Fake News: Resources

What is Fake News?

Broadly speaking, fake news is misinformation that is disseminated for political purposes, economic gain, or entertainment. Fake news falls into a few different categories:

1) Deliberately deceptive stories (or images) intended to create confusion or division, posted on websites, blogs, or social media.

2) Click bait and native advertising - stories that present themselves as "news" but are written for the purpose of driving traffic to a website or promoting a product.

3) Satire or parody.

What is NOT Fake News?

Recently there has been a surge in accusations of "Fake News" regarding factually accurate news stories. This seems to arise for a number of reasons. First, when the news is critical of the accuser. Second, when the accuser does not support coverage of the story being reported. Third, when the accuser doesn't agree with a particular perspective.

However, just because a news story presents negative information, this does not make the story "fake news." Additionally, just because bias exists in the selection of which stories are covered in a particular news source or in the reporting, this does not categorically make those news stories "fake news." Bias is distinct from misinformation, disinformation, fabrication, etc., though one could argue there is a slippery slope in this regard.

For this reason, professional journalism standards strive to present unbiased and balanced reporting of events. By relying on media sources that adhere to professional journalism standards you are more likely to avoid bias in the reporting. Ideally, opinion oriented stories are relegated to the editorial pages of the news source and clearly labeled as opinion pieces.

For more information on journalism standards see the section of this guide called Journalism Ethics and Standards.

For where to go to find "real news" see the section of this guide called Find Real News.

For a deeper discussion of bias in the news, please see "Five Types of Bias" from the News Literacy Project.

Tips for Avoiding Fake News

Fight fake news by recognizing it, steering clear of it, and never forwarding it. Friends don’t let friends forward fake news!

Do you recognize the source? If not, read the “About” section on the website AND look up the website on Wikipedia or Snopes for more information about the source.
Are known/reputable news sites also reporting on the story? While a lack of coverage could be the result of corporate media bias and other factors, there should typically be more than one source reporting on a topic or event.
A photograph (or chart) can’t lie, right? Don’t fall into the trap of trusting a story just because it includes a photo or statistics. You need to track down and assess the source of images and figures, the same way you verify any news source.
A study can't lie, right? When an article mentions a study, go directly to the source to verify the findings.
The top hits in google are reliable, right? Don’t trust Google to evaluate your sources for you. Attempts at developing a “truth algorithm” to rank results have been elusive — it turns out that truthfulness is an exceedingly challenging thing for a computer program to measure.
Use of ALL CAPS? This is a potential sign that the source you’re looking at should be verified and/or read in conjunction with other sources. Be suspicious of the sensational.
The story makes you really angry? If the article has an exaggerated or provocative headline, it’s probably a good idea to keep reading about the topic via other sources to make sure the story you read wasn’t purposefully trying to lure you (with potentially misleading or false information) in order to generate shares and ad revenue.
What exactly are you reading? Even when you find yourself in a traditional news site, identify what type of writing you are reading. Is it news reporting, a feature story, an editorial, work by a guest blogger, a review, an op-ed, a disguised ad, or a comment? Keep in mind that some news organizations allow bloggers to post under the banner of particular news brands, but many of these posts do not go through the same editing and review process.
Confirmation Bias? Is your search language biased in any way? Are you paying more attention to the information that confirms your own beliefs and ignoring evidence that does not?
Website ends in “lo” or .co? If you are you seeing a slight variation of a well-known URL, do a little investigating. For instance, what looks like an .edu domain, followed by .co or “lo” is likely a fake or deceptive site.
Web address is odd? If the web address is unusual or unrelated to the news reported, you may be looking at an unreliable source.
Lack of author attribution? This may, but not always, signify that the news story is suspect and requires verification.
What the “dox”? If a website you’re reading encourages you to DOX individuals (i.e., search for and share private information about someone, typically with malicious intent), it’s unlikely to be a legitimate source of news.

These tips were compiled from Melissa Zimdars' list of tips, and Joyce Valenza's blog post Truth, Truthiness, Triangulation: A News Literacy Toolkit for a "Post-Truth" World.

Learn more about detecting fake news at the News Literacy Project. NLP is a nonpartisan national education nonprofit organization which provides programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy.

Fact Checking Tools

Snopes.com
A comprehensive reference source on urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.
FactCheck.org
A nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. It monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
PolitiFact.com
PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. PolitiFact is run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times, an independent newspaper in Florida.
PunditFact.com
A project of the Tampa Bay Times and the Poynter Institute, dedicated to checking the accuracy of claims by pundits, columnists, bloggers, political analysts, the hosts and guests of talk shows, and other members of the media.
Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers
by Mike Caulfield. This is a practical guide for the student fact-checker. It supplements generic information literacy with the specific web-based techniques that can get you closer to the truth on the web more quickly.
SCU Fact Checking Guide
This fact checking guide was created by a first-year honors English class at Santa Clara University in May 2017. After learning how to assess the credibility and purposes of news sources and scholarly articles, the class developed this guide to help other SCU students evaluate sources they discovered online.

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Thanks to SCU for creating this website. This site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike.
Verification Handbook
The Verification Handbook is a groundbreaking new resource for journalists and aid responders, which provides step-by-step guidelines for using user-generated content (UGC) during emergencies. While it primarily targets journalists and aid providers, the Handbook can be used by anyone. Its advice and guidance are valuable whether you are a news journalist, citizen reporter, relief responder, volunteer, journalism school student, emergency communication specialist, or an academic researching social media. The Handbook is developed and managed by the European Journalism Centre.

Lists of Fake News Websites

Politifact's Fake News Almanac
Wikipedia's List of Fake News Websites
Wikipedia's List of Satirical News Websites
Snope's List of Fake News Sites
MBFC's Satire-Fake News List
MBFC's Conspiracy-Pseudoscience List
False, Misleading , Clickbait-y , and Satirical “News” Sources
Compiled by Professor Melissa Zimdars.

Find Real News

Access World News
Through nearly 7000 news sources, find diverse global, local, regional, and national perspectives on topics related to controversial issues, the environment, health, education, science, the arts, literature, business, economics, criminal justice, and more.

Sources include a variety of current and retrospective news media: newspapers, newswires, broadcast transcripts, blogs, periodicals, and web-only content.

Also included are the following Access Modules: Business News, U.S. Newswires, Military, Government, and Defense, and Acceda Noticias. Content is easily searched and sorted through an intuitive, map-based interface.

Access World News includes many California News Sources including the current San Francisco Chronicle.

On Campus Link
Nexis Uni
Replaces LexisNexis Academic.

More than 15,000 news, business, and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790.

National and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language sources.

U.S. Federal and state case law, codes, regulations, legal news, law reviews, and international legal information.

Shepard’s Citations for all U.S. Supreme Court cases back to 1789.

Business news journals, company financial information, SEC filings and reports, and industry and market news.

On Campus Link
San Francisco Chronicle 1869-present
The San Francisco Chronicle provides researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and the world.

On-Campus Link
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times 1851-recent
The historic New York Times provides researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. It provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.
Ethnic NewsWatch
Ethnic NewsWatch covers 1990 to present and includes newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives. The publications offer both national and regional coverage

Ethnic NewsWatch is the only current database devoted to presenting multi-ethnic and multi-cultural publications in one resource. Coverage begins in 1990 and is updated daily with new content. Many of the titles are not found in any other aggregated resource.
African American Newspapers 1827-1998
African American Newspapers 1827-1998 provides online access to more than 350 U.S. newspapers published by or for African Americans, chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection, which includes historically significant papers from more than 35 states, features many rare 19th-century titles.

Hundreds of titles—all expertly selected from leading repositories. African American Newspapers was created from the most extensive African American newspaper archives in the world. Titles in Series 1 come from the Wisconsin Historical Society, Kansas State Historical Society and the Library of Congress, while titles in Series 2 come from the American Antiquarian Society, Center for Research Libraries, the Library of Congress, and New York Public Library. All selections were guided by James Danky, editor of the monumental African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography.

A Richly Detailed Record of the African American Past
African American Newspapers 1827-1998, offers researchers invaluable primary sources for such diverse disciplines as cultural, literary and social history; ethnic studies; and more. Users can compare and contrast African American views on practically every major theme of the American past.

Coverage spans life in the Antebellum South; the spread of abolitionism; growth of the Black church; the Emancipation Proclamation; the Jim Crow Era; the Great Migration to northern cities, the West and Midwest in search of greater opportunity; rise of the NAACP; the Harlem Renaissance; the civil rights movement; political and economic empowerment; and more. Teachers and students will find firsthand perspectives on notable Americans from Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington to W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as obituaries, advertisements, editorials and illustrations.

Notable Titles
Afro-Hawaii News (Honolulu, HI)
In addition to starting the 50th state’s first African American newspaper, Afro-Hawaii News founder Howard “Stretch” Johnson spearheaded a campaign to end segregation in Major League Baseball, fought for a state holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. and created the Afro-American Leadership Coalition.
• Includes 55 issues published between 1987 and 1991

Alaska Spotlight (Anchorage, AK)
Following World War II, development and population boomed in Alaska. To give the black community there a voice and an identity, publisher George Anderson created the Spotlight and continued to run it until his death.
• Includes 12 issues published between 1956 and 1968

The Appeal (St. Paul, MN)
One of the leading African American newspapers in the country by the end of the 19th century, the Appeal was reprinted in five states.
• Includes 1,086 issues published between 1903 and 1923

The Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, AR)
Published by civil-rights leader Daisy Bates, the State Press provided unequaled coverage of the 1957 desegregation crisis at Little Rock’s Central High School
• Includes 896 issues published between 1941 and 1959

The Broad Ax (Salt Lake City, UT & Chicago, IL)
Editor Julius Taylor, who founded this Democratic weekly at a time when most African Americans were affiliated with the Republican Party, earned many rivals through his active and outspoken editorials, which were likely to employ such epithets as calling a fellow editor a “pale-faced two-legged dung-hill rooster.”
• Includes 203 issues published between 1895 and 1899

The Cleveland Gazette (Cleveland, OH)
Nicknamed “The Old Reliable” for never missing a Saturday publication in 58 years, the Gazette’s causes mirrored those of managing editor Harry C. Smith. Over the years, Smith used his paper’s influence to argue against segregated schools, minstrel shows and the last of Ohio’s “Black Laws” and for college education and Republican policies. One of the most powerful voices against segregation, the Gazette was the country’s longest running African-American newspaper by World War I.
• Includes 2,588 issues published between 1883 and 1945

Freedom’s Journal (New York, NY)
As the first African-American newspaper published in the United States, the Journal provided regional, national and international information on current events; contained editorials declaiming slavery, lynching and other injustices; published biographies of prominent African Americans; and included birth, death and marriage notices as well as job listings in New York’s African American community. Despite its brief run, the Journal circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe and Canada.
• Includes 103 issues published between 1827 and 1829

The Freeman (Indianapolis, IN)
Called “the Harper’s Weekly of the Black Press” the influential Freeman was the first illustrated African-American newspaper.
• Includes 1,458 issues published between 1888 and 1916

The Langston City Herald (Langston City, OK)
Herald founder E.P. McCabe also co-founded the all-black community of Langston, and used his widely-circulated newspaper to expand African American migration to the area. The paper promoted Langston as a refuge for African Americans fleeing persecution in the South and encouraged enterprising families to stake out homesteads on the fertile prairie.
• Includes 56 issues published between 1891 and 1893

The New York Age (New York, NY)
One of the most important African American newspapers in history, the Age features W.E.B. Du Bois’ first publication—a letter to editor T. Thomas Fortune, whose career intersected with that of Du Bois on numerous occasions.
• Includes 126 issues published between 1889 and 1892

The Richmond Planet (Richmond, VA)
Lawyer Edwin Archer Randolph founded the Richmond Planet in 1883, but within a year, the newspaper was in the red and on the verge of collapse. It was resurrected by John Mitchell, Jr. and a group of black teachers who had been fired from the Virginia Public School system. Mitchell, the son of former slaves, helped bring the Planet to the zenith of its popularity in 1895 when he aggressively covered the trial of three black women charged with the murder of a white woman. When the prosecution eventually dropped the charges, the Planet’s role in the outcome was widely acknowledged.
• Includes 7 issues published between 1885 and 1900

L'Union/Union (New Orleans, LA)
L'Union was a tri-weekly, bi-lingual French and English title published in New Orleans in the years immediately after the port city was liberated by Union troops. It provided an astonishing array of political and literary information aimed toward the city’s cultured black population.
• Includes 96 issues published between 1862 and 1864

The Washington Bee (Washington, DC)
The boldest of several D.C. titles during this period, the Bee’s motto was “Stings for our enemies, honey for our friends.” This widely influential paper was read by African Americans around the world.
• Includes 1,926 issues published between 1882 and 1922

Wisconsin Afro-American/Northwestern Recorder (Milwaukee, WI)
Although this pioneering black title in an overwhelmingly white state didn’t last for long, its mission to solidify the fledgling African American community and attract impoverished southern sharecroppers to the industrial opportunities of the north was carried on by future papers.
• Includes 11 issues published between 1892 and 1893

On Campus Link

Journalism Ethics and Standards

Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics
Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough.
Accountable Journalism - Codes of Ethics
The Accountable Journalism database compiles international codes of media ethics from around the world and is the largest resource of its kind. This database can be sorted by keywords or by using the advanced search. Codes can be selected by type of organization, topic, region, year created or updated and country. This database is very much still a work in process and far from comprehensive.
Ethical Journalism Network - 5 Principles
The Ethical Journalism Network is a coalition of more than 70 groups of journalists, editors, press owners and media support groups from across the globe. The EJN aims to strengthen the craft of journalism and to promote for the public benefit high ethical standards in media through education, training and publication of useful research. This page from the EJN website lists the core principles of ethical journalism.
Seven Standards of Quality Journalism
from the News Literacy Project.

Test Your Real News Detection Skills

News Lit Quiz: How News Literate Are You?
Test your news literacy knowledge with these 12 questions. Brought to you by the News Literacy Project.
News Lit Quiz: Should You Share It?
The best way for you to help reduce misinformation online is to avoid sharing it. But can you tell the difference between social media posts that are false or misleading and those that are credible? This online quiz is brought to you by the News Literacy Project.
Factitious
A game that tests your news sense. Created by folks at American University.
Pew Research Quiz: News Fact or Opinion
Test your ability to classify 10 news statements as either factual or opinion. Then see how you did in comparison with a nationally representative group of 5,035 randomly selected U.S. adults surveyed online between February 22 and March 4, 2018.

Fake News Glossary

confirmation bias: the tendency to believe information is credible if it conforms to the reader’s/viewer’s existing belief system, or not credible if it does not conform
container collapse: my own term for our trouble discerning the original information container, format or information type–blog, book, pamphlet, government document, chapter, magazine, newspaper, journal, or section of the newspaper or magazine or journal–once publishing cues are removed and every source looks like a digital page or a printout.
content farm or content mill: a company that employs a staff of freelance writers to create content designed to satisfy search engine retrieval algorithms with the goal of attracting views and advertising revenue.
echo chamber: “In news media an echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an “enclosed” system, where different or competing views are censored, disallowed, or otherwise underrepresented.” (Wikipedia)
fact checking: the act of verifying assertions either prior to publication or after dissemination of the content
filter bubble: When search tools present with the stories we are likely to click on or share based on our past activity, potentially affirming our biases, we need may be experiencing what Eli Pariser calls a filter bubble,
herding phenomenon: as more journalists begin to cover a story, even more journalists are likely to join the herd, imitating the angle the story initially took rather than developing alternate or original approaches or angles.
native advertising: paid, sponsored content designed to look like the legitimate content produced by the media outlet
satisficing: a portmanteau of the words satisfy and suffice introduced by Herbert Simon in 1956 to refer to the tendency of people, bounded by time limitations, to select good enough information over optimal information
triangulation or cross verification: Researchers establish validity by using several research methods and by analyzing and examining multiple perspectives and sources in the hope that diverse viewpoints will can shed greater light on a topic.
virality: the rapid circulation of media from one user to another. When we forward sensational stories, often from social media without checking their credibility in other sources, we increase their virality.

Excerpted from a blog post by Joyce Valenza, Truth, Truthiness, Triangulation: A News Literacy Toolkit for a "Post-Truth" World.

Articles about Fake News

Meet the Professor Calling Out the Fake and Misleading News Sites Clogging Your Facebook Feed, Jared Keller, Pacific Standard, November 15, 2016.

Students Have ‘Dismaying’ Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds, Camila Domonoske, NPR, November 23, 2016.

Why Students Can’t Google Their Way to the Truth: Fact-checkers and Students Approach Websites Differently, Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, Education Week, November 1, 2016.

The Trouble with Truth, Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Engine Land, November 23, 2016.

We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned, Laura Sydell, NPR, November 23, 2016.

Truth, Truthiness, Triangulation: A News Literacy Toolkit for a "Post-truth" World, Joyce Valenza, NeverEnding Search (blog hosted by School Library Journal), November 26, 2016.

Stop Calling Everything "Fake News," Will Oremus, Slate.com, December 6, 2016.

How Facebook’s Fact-Checking Partnership Will Work, Mike Isaac, New York Times, December 15, 2016.

Learning to Spot Fake News: Start with a Gut Check, Anya Kamenetz, nprEd, October 31, 2017.