There are a number of ways to determine whether or not the news story of a website is false. Below are several tips you can use whenever you feel a story or website is suspicious.
- Read the headlines as clearly as possible. Fake news titles tend to be extremely controversial, bias, and satirical. It is important to note that the goal of these heading are to incite a negative reaction within those who read them. A fake news story’s heading would probably read “Black Lives Matter thug protests President Trump with selfie… accidentally shoots himself in the face.” On the other hand, a real news story’s heading would be written as “Berlin Crash is Suspected to be a terror attack, police say.” Compared to the fake news story heading, this sounds more factual and less controversial.
- Pay attention to the authors name. According to NBC News, “If there’s no byline on a story, or there is only one author for every post on the entire website, watch out. It may be an imposter.”
- Research the name of the author on Google. Fake news websites normally create a persona with multiple accolades to their name. If you cannot find this so-called highly acclaimed person on Google, odds are they are not who they say they are.
- Read the web address of the news site. Fake news sites are known to contain odd endings such as .lo and co.com in their web address. For example, a fake news site would read as FakeNews.com.co. According to the Washington Post, this “signifies the Internet country code domain assigned to the country of Colombia.”
- Check the date of the story. Sometimes the story is actually true and has a legitimate source, but is old. Posting outdated news is a common tactic individuals on blogs and social media use. However, don’t automatically assume that the person who posted the story knew of its date. There is a possibility that they were tricked themselves.
For information on sources that can contain fake news, please visit this link.
