CNN —
Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it true. It seems so simple, but if everyone knew that, Facebook and Google wouldn’t have to pull bogus news sites from their advertising algorithms and people wouldn’t breathlessly share stories that claim Donald Trump is a secret lizard person or Hillary Clinton is an android in a pantsuit.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Fake news is actually really easy to spot – if you know how. Consider this your New Media Literacy Guide.
NOTE: As we put this together, we sought the input of two communications experts: Dr. Melissa Zimdarsan associate professor at Merrimack College in Massachusetts whose dynamic list of unreliable news sites has gone viral, and Alexios Mantzarlisthe head of the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute.
First, know the different types of misleading and false news
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Second, hone your fact-checking skills
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For starters, here are 10 questions you should ask if something looks fake:
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Zimdars says sites with strange suffixes like “.co” or “.su,” or that are hosted by third party platforms like WordPress should raise a red flag. Some fake sites, like National Report, have legitimate-sounding, if not overly general names that can easily trick people on social sites.
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While Zimdars is glad her list has gotten so much attention, she also cautions that completely writng off some of the sites as “fake” is not accurate. “I want to make sure this list doesn’t do a great disservice to the ultimate goal,” she says. “It’s interesting that some of the headlines (about my list) are just as hyperbolic as the ones I am analyzing.”
