Fake News: How to be a Responsible Information Consumer: Find Reliable Resources

What to do:

1. Read, watch, and listen very widely.

2. See the list below for some generally reliable sources that are mostly open access resources.  *Note that some sites have limits on the number of articles you can freely access per month.

3. Recognize that even typically reliable sources, whether mainstream or alternative, corporate or nonprofit, rely on particular media frames to report stories.  They select stories based on different notions of newsworthiness.

4. Be critical of the sources you share and engage with on social media.

What to avoid:

1. Fake, false, and regularly misleading sites that evoke an emotional response by using distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious information in order to generate likes, shares, or profits. Examples:

2. Websites that may circulate misleading and/or potentially unreliable information.  Examples:

3. Websites that use clickbait-y headlines and social media descriptions.  Examples:

4. Purposefully fake satire/comedy sites that can offer critical commentary on politics and society but have the potential to be shared as actual/literal news.  Examples: