>> Hi everybody, and welcome
to the Sac City College Writing Center's Video Workshop
on how to spot fake news.
This workshop is going to cover a few different things.
We are going to start by talking about what fake news is,
why it exists, why we should care that it exists,
and the majority of what we will talk
about on this video is steps to spot fake news.
Ways to have concrete strategies while you're looking
at something online, to decide whether there is truth
to the information, or not.
And then we are going to look at a few different types
of fake news stories, and deconstruct, like,
how we could analyze them with those strategies.
So to start off, I think it's important to kind
of define what fake news is.
There is a lot of different definitions
that exist right now.
But in general, for the purpose of this workshop,
fake news is a type of journalism and news reporting
in which misinformation is spread intentionally.
Usually through social media, but sometimes even
through mainstream news.
So if we look at some of these examples,
German scientists prove there's life after death.
Target to discontinue the sale of the Holy Bible.
Whole Foods to charge a cover at California stores.
All of these are kind of shocking titles, and with some
of the strategies we are going to talk about, we are going
to discuss how to find that misinformation
that might be in these articles.
But that is what fake news is, in general.
It is misinformation spread intentionally.
And why does it exist?
I think this is also an important question to ask
about fake news, when you're analyzing the truth
of any source.
One reason fake news exists is because the people
who write fake news stories make money every time you click
on a story.
Through ad revenue, mostly.
But so someone who otherwise might not be able
to make money can write these fake stories,
and generate a good amount of income.
Another which we will look at is that some fake news stories
or fake news sites are put up to, as entertainment.
Which in and of itself isn't a big deal,
but when these stories are spread around and people think
that they're true, the entertainment aspect
of it can be problematic,
and the other is often fake news stories can be spread as a way
of creating divides among political lines.
So fake news stories
about right-wing things might make people
on the left really angry, or fake news stories
about the left might make the right really angry,
and it can affect things like voting.
So these are three different reasons why fake news exists,
and as I said, it's not--
each of these things by themselves isn't as big a deal,
if people aren't constantly re-tweeting, re-posting,
sharing, putting them on Facebook, so this sharing
of them has allowed, in the last decade or so, these stories
to circulate so much faster than they would have in the past.
And it's also important to pause
and ask ourselves why is it important to understand?
This isn't going to be a big part of this video,
but I'm hoping that it will be in the back of your mind
as you look at any online source.
One very real reason is that as college students,
you might be doing research, and if you find a source
that is fake, and you present it as real, because it seems real,
there's a chance that it might not hold up in terms
of your argument, or your grade, or whatever.
A larger way of looking at this is that fake news is a part
of making truth in democracy a problem.
So in a democracy, where we elect our own leaders,
based on information that we get and know to be true,
if the information we are getting is not true,
we might not have a properly functioning democracy.
So this is a larger issue,
and I'm just going to share one quote.
We won't dwell on it for very long, but this is something
that John Dewey said in his work:
"We naturally associate democracy with freedom
of action, but freedom of action without free capacity
of thought behind it, is only chaos."
So in a democracy, we are free to act, to vote,
to make decisions, to, to do things.
But if we are making those decisions
without the free capacity of thought,
because we don't know what is true or false,
what we have instead is chaos.
So keep that in mind.
That's just something about the underlying reason why this video
is going on, this website.
So in terms of ways to spot fake news, we are going to talk
about a few concrete things that you can do
in order to evaluate a source.
One is to scan.
One is to read critically.
And another is to check.
Fact check.
So, in scanning, you're looking at we are going
to go over this one first.
Scanning is looking at a source very, very quickly
in a few different ways, just to get an overview of something
and sometimes in that very, very quick process,
you can determine whether or not a source is even worth reading.
So things that you can scan are the URL, like the www,
at the top of the page that you're looking at.
The title, and author of a source.
We are going to look at examples of all of these.
Whether or not that source itself refers to other sources,
if they have proof of the research that they've done,
and then also the images on the page.
Because photos, and even video, can be altered
by whomever is posting.
And so we are going to look at examples of how all
of this stuff can be fishy on a site.
So let's start with the URL.
If you're looking at a web page, and here is just an example,
if this is the URL that you're looking at, ABCnews.com.co,
well, upon first glance,
ABC News is probably something we've all heard of.
Up here it says ABC News.
ABCnews.com, but sometimes when you have little things
like this, they can be indicators
that there might be something a little weird about the source.
And one way to run a URL to figure out if it is fake
or real is by using PolitiFact's Fake News Almanac.
This is something I have just bookmarked on my computer,
and I'll show you an example of what this is.
We are going to talk about PolitiFact when we get
to checking for facts, but I'm just going to go to the almanac.
So in looking at this fake news almanac
that PolitiFact put together, apparently they're working
with Facebook to try and dig up websites
that we should not be looking at as real news.
And so if I typed here ABC, whoops, news,
ah, here it pops up, see?
ABCnews.com.co is an imposter site registered
in Phoenix, Arizona.
We are going to talk more about what imposter stories are.
But so this is one very, very quick way by just looking
at the URL to figure out is this a real story or not.
So I encourage you to use that, if you can bookmark it,
or just keep the URL handy.
Another thing to look at is very quickly it doesn't take more
than a couple of seconds, the title of a source.
So I'm going to show you a few different examples.
I'm going to just read these.
A stranger approaches grandma's hospital bed,
when he pulls this out, I'm destroyed.
So here is this picture.
She picks up this tiny egg off the ground,
but watch what happens when it starts to hatch.
Hmm, seems intriguing.
They're selling this 1875 mansion for nearly nothing.
When I saw why, I got chills.
That sounds interesting.
The judges have no explanation for what he does.
By four minutes and five seconds, I was speechless, too.
Notice, all of these are titles
that don't tell us what actually happens in the story,
but it pulls our attention in.
It makes me wonder what is, what would I laugh
about when I watch this?
Why would these people be speechless?
And you notice these amazing, amazing, amazing!
Amazing! This is what some people would refer
to as "click bait."
So when you click on a story like this,
whoever wrote this story is making money off the ad revenue
because you clicked on it.
And so these are kind of light stories, right?
Like they're not-- I don't know that they're political
in any way, but they are an indication
that the story might not be real.
If they are pulling at our curiosity,
but not telling us what the article is about,
that is one indication that the source might not be real.
Of course you could click on it and find out.
But, another thing to watch for is when you see all caps.
Or in the case of these ones, multiple exclamation points,
like all caps, breaking, breaking, breaking!
Or a title that seems to be inciting something like anger,
or total shock, right?
Michelle Obama is a man.
Obama is a Muslim agent.
Racist Hillary trashes African Americans.
Pope Francis shocks the world, endorses Donald Trump.
These types of titles along with this breaking, right,
or amazing, might be drawing us in, and starting by getting
at our emotions rather than just presenting information.
So all caps, that kind of thing, that is something to watch
for in terms of a title.
If you're looking at the author of a source, you might look
for something like this:
Wikileaks confirms Hillary sold weapons to ISIS,
then drops another bombshell,
Cosar [assumed spelling] is the author.
Notice the author's name is vague,
and there is no information on his credentials.
He is just a breaking news editor.
This doesn't necessarily mean
that Cosar couldn't actually be an author of a source,
but you might look to see if you can click on Cosar,
and find out what else he wrote.
Or that kind of thing.
Or there may not be any author listed.
And that is also not necessarily an indication of fake news,
100%, but most reputable news sites will allow you to see
who wrote something, and when you click on that author's name,
often lead you to all the articles they may have written,
at least for that source.
So looking for the author is another thing
that you can do very quickly.
What did that take?
Two seconds.
Sources. Does an article refer to other sources
as it is presenting information?
So if you notice these, these hyperlinks in here,
when you click on one of these it's going to take you
to the information this author used in order
to present this information.
So I think this came from Sac Bee, Canada banned the sale
of mental cigarettes last fall, and a similar measure
for the European union will take effect in 2020.
So if you click on this link, presumably, this would take you
to either another article that talks about this ban,
when it happened, or it could be a government document related
to it, or something.
Whatever it was, that proves that this information is true.
And again this doesn't mean
that a fake news site may not have hyperlinks like this,
because I've seen lots of fake news sites where you click
on one of these, and it just takes you to another bogus story
or takes you to some weird other page.
So just because there are links in, doesn't mean
that it's totally legit.
But if you read a story without any, and there's no list
of sources at the end, you might think hm,
I wonder where this is coming from?
This information, this author is using.
And then finally something that you can look
at is the images in a source.
And so this is also, I think, an editorial
from the Sacramento Bee, so if you notice,
this is just the photograph that was put in,
with the caption that is there.
And I'm going to show you later how to reverse search an image
to see if it has ever been used anywhere else
on the website, or on the internet.
So if you right click on a video,
you will get this drop down, and one of your options is
to search Google for the image.
And sometimes that can give you a clue as to whether
or not this is the first time this image has been used
for a news story.
And I'll show you how to do that.
So all of this is part of scanning.
Each one of those things might take five seconds.
Right? But it could lead you in a direction
to know whether something is real or fake.
And so what I want to do is look at a way of testing this.
So this is an article from World News Daily Report dot com.
So here is an example of an article that we could use
to scan all of the things that we talked about.
So let's start with the URL.
World News Daily Report dot com.
That sounds like a news source of some kind.
What we could do is run it through here, right?
World News, I guess...Daily Report.
Okay. It's a parody site.
So...this is a, this is a website
that has been registered input facts almanac as fake.
So spoiler alert, but we're going to look at the rest of it.
So the title.
You notice the title is in all caps,
and it says Lottery Winner Arrested
for Dumping $200,000 worth of manure on ex-boss' lawn.
So that's kind of like a funny thing.
This guy is mad at his ex-boss, so he buys $200,000 of manure
and he dumps it on his lawn.
It's kind of shocking.
It's, but it's also in all caps.
That was one of the things that we looked at before
that might be an indication that it's fake.
Let's look for the author.
I don't see any author here.
I don't see any author down lower.
Sometimes I'll look at the bottom of a source to see.
Nope, no author.
And so that might be another red flag.
If we scan through and look at whether
or not this article uses sources,
you'll see there aren't really any hyperlinks offered in there.
So the sources are a little bit odd.
And here is what I meant
about doing a reverse search for Google images.
So this image that is in here,
it says the Clarendon Hills Police Department admitted
that its response time was inadequate,
and said it would keep a close eye on Mr. Morris
to avoid any more incidents.
So this is like the police officers, who presumably showed
up when he was dumping all this manure on the lawn.
But if we right click this image, and we go search Google
for image, we're going to see that, well, the first thing
that shows up is satire, Wikipedia, which is not truth,
but, and this actually has changed
since I first found this image.
But we can see fake news in Clarendon Hills,
how a satirical story
about manure duped thousands of readers.
So this image was originally in a Chicago Tribune article,
about some guy who was retiring, so if we read it,
this November 2017 doings photo of Clarendon Hills Police Chief,
Paul Daylen, and retired Chief Boyd Farmer,
was used in the fake news story.
So this is actually an article about how
that manure story is fake.
So if you follow the trail of a Google image,
you can sometimes also figure
out if something is real or fake.
And so the next step I would say, and maybe I'll just pause
and say that you can do this scanning at any stage.
You could start by reading it, if you wanted to.
Scanning is just a quicker process.
But in the reading process, it's also important
to just dive deeper in.
To see what it is that the article is saying.
So why don't we do that?
I'm just going to read a little bit of it.
Underneath the title that we just read up here, it says a man
from Illinois was arrested for getting $224,000 worth
of manure dumped on his former employer's property,
only two weeks after he won $125 million dollars
in the lottery and quit his job.
Fifty-four year old Brian Morris, presumably this guy,
from a small town of Clarendon Hills in DuPage County bought
over 20,000 tons of manure, and asked for it to be dumped
on his former boss' property pretending it was his residence.
Dozens of trucks filled with manure showed up in front
of the house around 6:00 this morning,
and began dumping their smelly cargo over the property's lawn.
George Fitzgerald, Mr. Morris' former employer, was awakened
by the sound of vehicles on his property,
and rapidly called the police.
Unfortunately it took the police more than 15 minutes to arrive
on the site, and took more than 10,000 tons
of manure had already been dumped in the meantime.
That's a lot of manure in 15 minutes, first of all.
Brian Morris was standing right across the street and laughing
when the police arrived, and he rapidly came
over to confess his responsibility
and explain his motivations.
Lt. Frank Meyers, the spokesman
for the Clarendon Hills Police Department,
met the press a few hours later
to explain the motivations behind this strange crime.
The accused told us he had worked for the victim
for 17 years and was treated like S. He says he has had
to endure this mistreatment because he needed the money,
but now that he won $125 million dollars,
it was time for revenge.
So remember these guys, from Chicago Tribune,
one guy who was just retiring or whatever?
These are supposedly the guys who showed
up to deal with the manure.
Brian Morris attracted a lot of media attention
after winning $125 million
at the Powerball Multi-State Lottery.
When asked by organizers what he'd do with the money,
he simply answered, "Just read the news, you'll see."
He was freed on bail a few hours after his arrest
and told reporters, stay alert,
claiming he had a few other pranks to pull
over the next few weeks.
So in reading this, there's a whole bunch
of problems with this, right?
Like this guy bought [laughs] over 20,000 tons of manure,
that's a lot of manure, and in the amount of time it took
for the police to get there, 10,000 to--
I mean, we're talking thousands of trucks going through.
So just the logic of it is problematic.
It is also interesting that at the end he is saying oh just
wait and see, stay alert, I have some more pranks I'm going
to pull over the next few weeks.
It's just odd.
And all of this wouldn't be a big deal
if like two million people hadn't shared it
on Facebook, right?
And maybe most, maybe people know that this is fake,
but the problem is, without reading critically,
sometimes what happens is we read a headline like this,
we think oh my gosh, what is this?
Maybe we read the first paragraph
of it, and then share it.
Re-Tweet it, do whatever, right?
and the problem with that, is that if something is false,
now two people, now 20 people, now two million people see it.
And whether or not they have time
to read the article is a different story.
So it is important to read it carefully.
A lot of fake news stories you'll see,
you'll see misspellings.
You will see like grammar mistakes.
You'll see odd things, unclear sentences.
Those types of things are important
to pay attention for as well.
So in the critical reading process dig in, actually look
to see could this have actually happened, and then along
with scanning it, you might figure things out even more.
And then finally, to check, fact check is what I mean.
There are lots of websites where you can go
to like Snopes, is one of them.
Snopes is a fact-checking website.
Not just for political purposes,
or political articles, but for all articles.
And it is important, like when you're going through here,
don't necessarily just trust Snopes either,
but when a story is, I mean, you can read about what Snopes is,
who they are, how they spend their money,
all these things are important to look at.
But if we type lottery winner arrested for dumping manure.
If you see a story like this, that seems crazy,
it might be in here in Snopes.
And when you click on it, you have a quick indication
as to whether something is true or false.
This website is run by a bunch of people who check facts,
and so you can watch this video about it,
like a man was not arrested after he used lottery money
to get revenge on his former boss.
And they explain what the original claim was,
how they rate it, then where it came from originally
and why they rate it as false or true.
So Snopes is another quick website that you can go
to to figure out if something is fake news or not.
Another that you can look at is PolitiFact.
And we will go through PolitiFact as well.
PolitiFact is another website that focuses on finding truth
in things that have been said in articles, on television,
just articles on the internet
that are politically related, to politics.
So you can check things on PolitiFact, and we will go
to PolitiFact in a little bit.
So I want to go through a few different types
of fake news stories to show you maybe some ways
that they might be similar, or different,
or why they might be created.
Again, all the reason that they're often created is
for those things, money, entertainment,
and maybe to create political divides.
But one of the types of stories is a parody story.
So I don't know if you've ever seen this one,
but this was a fake news story
about Sarah Palin, on PolitiCono.com.
So this is the story that was posted on News Low website.
Notice all these popups that start happening?
It says Sarah Palin calls to boycott Mall of America
because Santa was always white in the Bible.
It's written by Leah Vatkins [assumed spelling],
so we have an author here, this title seems pretty shocking,
but of course, there isn't, you know, all caps, right?
Like we were talking about.
And it says News Low, just enough news.
That seems a little bit weird,
because wouldn't you want all news?
And maybe what we can do is just look
at the first few lines of this.
So the announcement that Mall
of America was welcoming its first Black Santa Claus was
greeted in many corners as a good thing,
but as might be expected in a country
that has become increasingly more comfortable saying any
racist thing that comes to mind, many were highly offended.
Three years after Fox's Megan Kelly definitively explained
to America that both Jesus Christ
and Santa Claus were white men,
Mall of America dismissed her advice,
and hired Larry Jefferson, a retired U.S. Army veteran
from Irving Texas to spend four days at the mall listening
to the wish lists of children of all colors.
Among many who were offended
by this move was former half-term governor
of Alaska, Sarah Palin.
The sharp term-- the sharp tongued republican wasted no
time in condemning the company's actions, going on social media
and posting comments that called for boycotting, and running Mall
of America into the ground on the basis
of Santa having always been white in the Bible.
"No, I refuse to believe that they went this far in trying
to cater to the minorities.
I thought the company had some backbone,
but I guess I was wrong," Palin told Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Okay. So this is probably something
that would create anger in some people,
and this is really bizarre,
if you notice this show facts hide facts, I'm just going
to click on show facts.
Apparently, this site is posting this as facts,
and everything else is not.
So what this is indicating is
that Larry Jefferson actually was someone who was hired
by Mall of America to be a Santa Claus.
Maybe he is a retired U.S. Army veteran, but everything
that comes after it, that talks about what Sarah Palin says
about it, is not fact.
And something to keep in mind is if we are looking
at this website, we can look at what is this website?
Why would there be a website
that shows some facts and some not facts?
Look at all these people responding
about this article, by the way.
But sometimes if you go all the way
down to the bottom, pop ups, pop ups.
If you go to About Us, this is a way of figuring
out more about the website.
Like, who is, what is this website?
What is this thing about just enough news,
and showing facts and hiding facts?
News Low is the first hybrid news satire platform on the web.
Readers come to us for a unique brand of entertainment
and information, that is enhanced by features
like our fact button, which allows readers to find
out what is fact and what is satire.
News Low's no need to satirize brings you completely factual
stories that are so ridiculous,
they don't need our trademark touch.
Whenever you see hashtag NNTS,
you're reading a completely real news story.
So this is like a parody-- or a, yeah, a parody story.
It's something where they're looking at something
that actually happened, but they're making a parody of it
by throwing in things that are not real.
And some people who might know about this can laugh at it.
Other people who already maybe don't like Sarah Palin,
might become really enraged about it, and share it
to everyone they know.
And the fact is that a lot of people won't look at the
About Us page, on a website like this.
And might end up believing that it's true when it's not.
And so this is an example of a parody story.
If we go back and look at some other examples
of fake news stories, another is an imposter site story.
So when I searched the ABC News thing on the PolitiFact Almanac,
what we noticed was imposter site story,
and so here is an example of an imposter site fake news story.
So the headline says HIV Virus Detected in Walmart Bananas,
after 10-year-old Boy Contracts the Virus.
So again, that's a very shocking thing to see,
especially because HIV can't be contracted from a banana.
But what you will notice here is CNN breaking news.
CNN news. Breaking news.
And we know what CNN is.
Often, right?
Like, CNN is a news network, but when you actually look
at CNN's logo, you notice the difference.
This here is an imposter version of CNN,
they are not putting CNN's actual logo on this,
but it looks like it enough for us to look twice.
Maybe. And if we look at this story, so on this website,
we can see the full story.
You notice that before there is ever any mention of anything,
actually there is no mention of an author at the beginning
or the end, but at the beginning or the end,
it says "sharing is caring, re-Tweet this article," right?
Any of these ways.
Or share this article.
Any of these ways.
CNN News, a 10-year-old boy
who had eaten a banana his mother purchased at Walmart
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was rushed to the Emergency Room due
to fever, chills and fatigue,
just seven days after consumption.
Even after a thorough examination, blood tests
and scans, the young boy tested positive for HIV virus.
So here is a list of symptoms that Americans are encouraged
to discard any uneaten bananas, and contact your doctor
if you experience any of these symptoms.
There are so many problems with the information,
like the scientific information presented in this,
at the beginning and the end, it says to share the article,
and if we go to the About page on here,
we just see Number One News Source:
We bring you the most accurate news first.
There is no place for you to contact anyone, to ask, well,
again, they're showing you make sure that you share.
But there is no way to really verify what this source is.
And actually, you know what I might do also, is show you back
on that, the lottery winner one, they have an About Us thing too,
and theirs says disclaimer.
So when you're reading critically, when you're checking
to see if any of this stuff is real,
you can look at things like this.
It says World News Daily Report shall not be responsible
for any incorrect or inaccurate information, whether caused
by website users...like we assume all responsibility
for the satirical nature of the articles,
and for the fictional nature of their content,
all characters appearing in the articles in this website,
even those based on real people, are entirely fictional,
and any resemblance of them in any persons living,
dead or undead, is purely a miracle.
So they are being really obvious on their About Us page,
that in fact you can't really trust this.
You can trust it as fiction.
You can trust it as something that is not true.
And this is another example.
Sorry, this one is another example of that.
In their About page, there's just nothing here, or privacy,
contact us, there may be one, yep, it's a Gmail,
where you can [laughs], where you can email someone.
This is just so, so different from like an actual newspaper's
About Us page, or Contact Us page.
So this is what we would call an impostor site.
A website that is posing as an actual news source,
and pulling you in with maybe a logo that looks
like the site, but is, in fact, not.
And all of these imposter sites
and other stories can be politically divisive,
but some of them are specifically for the purpose
of being politically divisive.
So dividing people along political lines.
So this was a story that was, again, breaking, all caps.
Obama's mother in law charged with larceny and fraud.
This was a story saying that even after Obama was going to be
out of office, Michelle Obama's mother in law was going
to have a pension every year for babysitting their daughters.
Which was a false story.
And so when you have a political story of some kind,
often you can hit Check PolitiFact.
And so PolitiFact is-- I encourage you, again,
like go through all of this.
Look at how they rate things as true or false,
who their staff is, who pays for it, all of these things.
I encourage you to look at them.
But PolitiFact is a website,
one of the biggest fact checking websites you can find
information on.
And this is a story that you could look for like let's see,
Obama's mother, pension, you could see, and so right here,
you will see pants on fire.
They rate their stories as along the lines of this truth-o-meter.
So they fact check all these different things.
And this one actually isn't
about the story we were just looking at,
but it's somewhere in here.
They rate things as true, mostly true, half true, mostly false,
false, or pants on fire, like liar, liar, pants on fire.
And so I'm not sure that this story itself, maybe it's here,
yeah, I think it is here...uh, sorry, here it is.
Breaking, Obama's mother in law charged with--
so they walk you through why this is a fake news story.
They break down with hyperlinks, showing where it originated,
and all kinds of stuff like that.
But if you were to just even look for anything on,
on PolitiFact, any story that might be trending in the news,
if you took this away, you could see how this works.
So let's just go to all stories by--
that they've done on this truth-o-meter.
Like main democratic party.
Say main U.S. representative Bruce Poliquin voted
to gut your retirement benefits.
Oh, the main dems say that.
So this is a story that somebody was talking about, online,
and they rated it as mostly false.
I don't know anything about this story, by the way,
but if we just look at how they rate it,
they explain how they got to this ruling.
How they got to the ruling there is usually a summary at the end.
So this is something that you can use,
if a story that you find is political
in any way, shape or form.
So let's go back to here.
And so this is just a few different kinds
of fake news stories to pay attention for, to watch for,
as you are evaluating things online.
Some things to remember
as you're looking for sources to use.
Either for a paper, or just to get information
so you can vote responsibly or whatever.
Approach the steps that we've talked about in this video
in any order that makes sense to you.
You don't necessarily need to do things
in the order I've presented them here.
These are all just tools that you can kind of keep
in your tool chest, as you go through your reading life.
Just because it's on TV doesn't necessarily mean it's true.
Sometimes we think that this kind of thing can only happen
in a written article, but that's definitely not the case
in PolitiFact, there is a section
of PolitiFact called Pundit Fact.
So there are all these news networks, right?
That have people talking about things all day long,
and giving their opinions about things.
And one of the things that you can look up is TV.
You can look to see any news network, and how true the things
that are being said on that network are.
So they have like a file on a lot of different news networks.
So the majority of things said on CBS's news programs
by pundits, by political pundits, are true.
But they do have some stuff that is false.
Right? And a bunch of stuff in between.
It is good they don't have anything that is pants on fire,
but if you look at other news networks, like CNN, they do.
Right? They have some pants on fire.
Three things that were said
that were considered completely, completely false.
Their biggest is mostly true, but this is just
like an indication that just
because somebody is saying something on TV does not mean
that it's, you know, always truth.
Fox has some pants on fire as well.
Like, and theirs is mostly false.
So that is kind of-- or the longest line is false.
So these are things to just keep in mind,
and it is also important to be looking for news
from multiple different sites,
so that you are not just you know,
falling into the same trap over and over again.
So, just because it's on TV doesn't mean it's true.
If you are interested, bookmark PolitiFact,
the Fake News Almanac in your computer.
It is probably the fastest way, as you've seen us going
through stuff, to find out if something is true or not.
So that is the URL for it.
Beware of your own biases.
This is something that is extremely important.
These stories, it's not a mystery why they get circulated.
Because they're playing into things that we already believe.
Critical reading is really difficult.
It's a hard process.
It takes time.
If we see a headline, and we are moved by it emotionally,
we might fall victim to our own biases, and believe something
that is not true, just because it sounds
like what we already believe.
And so just keep that in mind as you're reading.
And slow your process down.
If it, if the outcome is something that it matters.
If you're writing a paper,
if you're considering sharing something online.
And that leads to the last one.
Think carefully before you share something.
It may not seem like a big deal,
but there are people making money off of our clicks.
And there are real world repercussions
for sharing things that are fake.
Going back to John Dewey's quote,
it's really important that truth matters.
Because if it doesn't,
a democracy can't fully function correctly.
So think carefully before you share.
And if there's anything that you have questions about,
if you have a source, and you'd like to look
at it more carefully, you're welcome to come
by the writing center on the first floor
of the library, anytime.
And we would be happy to talk with you about it.