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Journalism - Evaluating News and Information: News and Media

This guide offers background on types of information and tips for analyzing sources in order to become an active information consumer and responsible journalist

Analyzing News Sources

Here are some great games to test your media literacy skills:

And here are some tips, guides, and tools to help sharpen your media literacy skills:

Video: How to Spot Fake News

An accompaniment video to the article "The Fact Checker's Guide for Detecting Fake News" which includes tips on how to spot fake news, including:

  • Determine whether the article is from a legitimate website
  • Check the ‘contact us’ page
  • Examine the byline of the reporter and see whether it makes sense
  • Read the article closely
  • Scrutinize the sources
  • Look at the ads
  • Use search engines to double-check

Source: Washington Post

Duration: 2:04 minutes

Example: Evaluating News Articles

This article appeared on November 14, 2016 claiming that Trump was instrumental in moving the manufacture of trucks from Mexico to the United States. However, Trump was not even president at that time and had no control over this issue. Below is the original article, from August 17, 2015, copied word for word for the ETF article. It is the headline that is untrue. 

 

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