News ResearchPeople learn about what's going on in the world in different ways such as talking to friends and family, checking social media, watching or listening to news broadcasts, listening to podcasts, or reading newspapers or news articles online. The amount of information we come across is enormous, and can be overwhelming. Figuring out what to believe and what to question can be tricky. Knowing what questions to ask will help you become a smart consumer of the information swarming around us every day.
"Fake news" is a newer phrase for something people have been battling for ages: misinformation, or in other words, false information. You may hear people label a wide number of sources "fake news." How can you know for sure what's true or what's not? Sometimes it's relatively easy. Sometimes it takes more digging. Look at the chart below for different strategies of evaluating information.
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Here are some places you can check the truthfulness of the information you read or hear. It's a good idea to check more than one, as, again, these are sites with their own authors and may contain biases.
Even credible news sources can contain biases, or views affected by the authors' own beliefs. Take a look at the charts below to see the political leanings of widely shared news outlets. The first chart includes online content, not tv or radio. The second chart includes tv and radio broadcasts, as well, but not as many online outlets.
