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Includes The Sift and Checkology! High recommended!

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The News Literacy Project works with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and to know what to trust.

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Words that communicate bias lesson.

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Vocabulary

charged [chahrjd] ( adj) filled with excitement, tension or emotion

tone [tohn] ( noun) the general attitude communicated in a piece of writing

bias [ bahy-uh s] ( noun) prejudice; favoring one person or point of view more than others

point of view [point uhv vyoo] ( noun) a particular way of considering a matter; the position from which an event or topic is observed

implicit [im- plis-it] ( adj) suggested or assumed but not obvious or explicitly stated
Sources: Google Dictionary, dictionary.com, en.oxforddictionaries.com
Series Overview

As technology advances and the social landscape shifts, it is crucial for students to become digitally literate citizens. In this series, students will learn the ins and outs of media literacy, from choosing reliable sources and understanding online searches to navigating online security and participating in digital communities. More lessons in this series are listed below under "Related Resources."

Lesson Overview

This lesson addresses the importance of locating and verifying reliable sources when working with online information. Students will compare and contrast different sources on the same topic and think about what makes one source more reliable than another. They will then work collaboratively to develop a checklist of questions for source evaluation.

Students will also zero in on the significance of evaluating sources for bias. They will learn to identify the author's or designer's purpose in online information and use this skill to search out biased viewpoints. Students will react to sources presented online and identify common reasoning errors in reactions to digital information.

Procedure

1. Give students one news story about an event. Put students into groups, and ask them to collect a list of facts from the article using the exact words the author used in the article.

2. Give students the second article about the same event, ensuring that this one has a different tone. Ask the same groups to make a list of facts from the article, again using the exact words the author used in the article.

3. For the whole class, model creating a t-chart with words from each article that depict the same fact or event. For example, you might write murdered in one column and killed in the other. Ask students to complete their own t-charts independently.

4. As a class, define and discuss tone and charged as these ideas apply to word choice. Then, ask students to discuss in their groups what biases they identify in the two articles based on the tone and charge of the words. Allow them to use the Evaluating Bias in a Newscast handout to record their observations.

5. Pose two questions to the class: (1) How do we figure out what really happened? (2) Why is it important to be aware of both stories? Discuss as a group or have students write their responses to each question.

6. Tell students they will now practice writing their own "charged" article based on a given scenario that is relevant to current events. Together, review the Creating a Biased News Story handout, which they can use to guide their process.

7. Finally, have students share their pieces with each other. Ask them to highlight the charged words and identify the bias in each other's work and explain how the bias is expressed.

Alignment to Common Core State Standards CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.6
Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.1
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.6
Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

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This lesson, part of the Digital Literacy series, focuses on teaching students to identify how writers can reveal their biases through their word choice and tone. Students will identify "charged" words that communicate a point of view. Students will understand how writers communicate a point of view implicitly by writing their own charged news stories.

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A content analysis was conducted to examine how partisan media frame stories about the NFL and the silent protest during the national anthem. A total of 445 newspaper articles associated with the topic were retrieved from an extensive search of several databases. Results of the content analysis show that clear differences in the types of frames use...

... cable news networks and talk radio have continued their partisan brand of news coverage, other media have emerged as major players as well. For example, MSNBC has emerged as a major media player, along with Mother Jones, The New Yorker, Politico, and others (see Figure 1). As of this writing, the media landscape as depicted in figure one includes visible examples of extreme liberal or left-leaning and extreme conservative or right-leaning media. ...

... of this writing, the media landscape as depicted in figure one includes visible examples of extreme liberal or left-leaning and extreme conservative or right-leaning media. As Figure 1 shows, it seems as if changes in media have also influenced highly circulated, traditional papers like The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine to likely be more perceived as learning more to the right in some of their news coverage. In fact, some research suggests that the -growth of the internet in the last 20 years has also played a significant role in the advancement of partisan media‖ (Heese & Baloria, 2017). ...

As news media mainly focused on issues of nationalism, many people perceive Colin Kaepernick as unpatriotic, even though his protest was about police brutality and social justice. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate how people perceive athlete activism relative to news media framing and to examine the effects of athlete activism on endorsed brands. Two experimental design studies were conducted. Results indicate that news media influenced individuals' attitudes toward the protesting athlete. Additionally, prior perceptions of the protesting athlete and the brand were significantly associated with attitudes toward the protesting athlete and the endorsed brand regardless of the news media framing conditions. A strong positive relationship between the protesting athlete and the endorsed brand was found. Participants with more positive attitudes toward the protesting athlete had more positive attitudes toward the brand endorsed by the athlete.

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Download scientific diagram | Media Bias Chart (2018). from publication: "Oh, See What We Say:" A Content Analysis of Partisan Media's Framing of the "take a knee" silent protest by the NFL | A content analysis was conducted to examine how partisan media frame stories about the NFL and the silent protest during the national anthem.

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How to Critically Evaluate "News" from Julie Smith

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How to Critically Evaluate "News" from Julie Smith

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Is social media a valid source of information? It can be. But for us to sift through and evaluate the tremendous amount of material found online requires a huge amount of effort and work!

Social media have democratized media content production to the point where many of the most-trafficked websites contain material produced by US...not the large media companies. This is a great thing! But this also put the onus of responsibility on us to determine what is valid, meaningful and true.

This democratization of media production means that we can create our own material and share whatever we find easily at the click of a mouse. But many times, we create and share what we believe rather than what is fact.

I often wonder: do people who share false material do it deliberately? Or out of ignorance? Either way, the receiver of these messages needs to take a few steps.

1. Who is the source of this message? Determining the source can help you find out if the message was created by a reputable source (look for the blue checkmark on Twitter!) or by a valid Facebook group. But remember - there are many sites out there that can create very believable images.

2. What's the purpose or intent of the message? What techniques, images or hashtags are used to get your attention?

Using a tool like to convey a particular message. Sometimes the photo might be valid, but actually relates to a completely different (and older) story. Google's 'reverse image search' can help you find an original photo that perhaps has been 'repurposed' This photo is legit, but it is NOT from the scene described here.

3. Use your internal 'BS' Many times I've seen these messages fly around and think: 'If this was legit, wouldn't we see it on CNN?' If it seems too inflammatory, it probably is.

4. Be aware that the construction of a message sometimes leads to an increase in that message's credibility. e all have the tools to create messages, true or not. We have access to photos, photo-editing software, meme generators, etc. We can create social media accounts with any photos or names to make it look more credible. Anyone with an internet connection can create a very believable message.

Snopes website is your friend. Get to know it well, and don't be afraid to call out anyone on social media who perpetuates hoaxes and falsities. Also, don't be afraid to call out Snopes if they make a mistake!

The good news about the internet is that anything goes. The bad news about the internet is that anything goes. And we can find statistics online to back up basically ANY proposition. So it's time for us to activate our filters and become media literate when it comes to information on social media!

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How to Critically Evaluate "News" on Social Media - Julie Smith

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Is social media a valid source of information? It can be. But for us to sift through and evaluate the tremendous amount of material found online requires a huge amount of effort and work! Social media have democratized media content production to the point where many of the most-trafficked websites contain material produced by US...not the large media companies.

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Tools for Verifying Online Information from Julie Smith

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Tools for Verifying Online Information from Julie Smith

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Want to verify stories you see online and in social media?

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Lessons in Digital literacy! from Teaching Tolerace. add 11/18

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Lessons in Digital literacy! from Teaching Tolerace. add 11/18

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The internet is an amazing tool for teaching and learning. But, before we can teach students to harness its power and become good citizens of the web, we need to understand the intricacies of how it works and how it can be manipulated to mislead and even harm users.
Learning the Landscape of Digital Literacy

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Digital and Civic Literacy Skills The internet is an amazing tool for teaching and learning. But, before we can teach students to harness its power and become good citizens of the web, we need to understand the intricacies of how it works and how it can be manipulated to mislead and even harm users.

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NewseumED

NewseumED

NewseumED

Newseum Education has raided the reporter's toolbox to create a collection of newsroom-tested tips and strategies that help students find the information they need to avoid the fakes, hoaxes and misinformation clogging their news feeds.

Fact Finder: Your Foolproof Guide to Media Literacy is the newest EDCollection, or curated set of resources, on the NewseumED website that is free with registration.

"Fact Finder recognizes where students are - on Google, Snapchat, Instagram, wherever - and gives them the tools they need to recognize different types of content on those platforms, analyze search results, and objectively evaluate reports on controversial topics," said Anna Kassinger, NewseumED curriculum director.

These tools and more are tackled in Fact Finder's 11 flexible, multimedia lesson plans with teacher keys and worksheets. Eight skill-building lesson plans introduce essential media literacy concepts, such as bias and sources, through engaging explainer videos and colorful infographics that help students revisit, retain and apply the key concepts. Three reporting lessons help students take what they've learned and apply it to their own content creation, inspired by the issues that matter to them.

In addition, a News or Noise? media map provides a collection of reports - some factual or credible, some not - on six topics, ranging from the Pok é mon Go craze to Hurricane Harvey to the Children's Crusade, ready for students to analyze and evaluate with the support of worksheets and discussion prompts.

Fact Finder was made possible through the generous support of an anonymous donor and the Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable.

NewseumED, part of the Freedom Forum Institute, provides free, quality resources that learners of all ages need to cultivate an understanding of First Amendment freedoms and media literacy skills essential to civic life. It has a digital reach of more than 12 million people and presents free classes at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., for some of the 200,000 students who visit each year.

In addition to the 1,100-plus online primary sources, videos, lesson plans and artifacts, NewseumED has EDCollections on the civil rights and woman suffrage movements, civil liberties versus public safety, elections, media literacy, and an upcoming collection on free speech. Each EDCollection provides an immersive learning experience and is aligned to national standards, including Common Core, ISTE and NCSS C3 frameworks.

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Newsroom to News Feed: NewseumED Unveils New Media Literacy Resources

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Newseum Education has raided the reporter's toolbox to create a collection of newsroom-tested tips and strategies that help students find the information they need to avoid the fakes, hoaxes and misinformation clogging their news feeds. Fact Finder: Your Foolproof Guide to Media Literacy is the newest EDCollection, or curated set of resources, on the NewseumED website that is free with registration.

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10,000 + off the mark cartoons by Mark Parisi

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Own a signed print of this cartoon!

Suitable for framing and perfect for home or office and signed & personalized by the cartoonist at no extra charge.

Paper size: Daily cartoons - 8 1/2" x 11", Sunday cartoons - 8 1/2" x 11"
Image Size: Daily cartoons (portrait) are 5" x 6", Sunday cartoons (landscape) are 9.25" x 4.5"

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Dog Fod Fake News - off the mark cartoons

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Suitable for framing and perfect for home or office and signed & personalized by the cartoonist at no extra charge.

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Great resources for students

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Resources for Teachers The resources listed here are intended as a convenience to teachers, parents and students. These websites are operated independent of Media Literacy Now. If you have a resource to add to this page, please let us know! Tools for teachers Media Literacy Now is partnering with

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Yikes

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WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials did not seize thousands of pounds of imported rat meat prior to the Super Bowl and they never issued a warning saying restaurants and food stores could be selling it as chicken wings, despite reports shared widely on multiple websites.

The stories posted last month claim federal customs officials at the Port of San Francisco seized several thousands of pounds of rat meat imported from China. They also mention an FDA warning that some 300,000 pounds of rat meat could still be in circulation as Super Bowl parties approached.

FDA spokesman Peter Cassell told The Associated Press that the agency "is not aware of the seizure of rat meat referenced" and the FDA never issued such a warning. The stories quote two agency officials, but the FDA has no record of any current or past employees with those names, Cassell said.

The account appears to have originated on World News Daily Report, a website that creates fictional news. Versions of the account were shared on other sites, including Urban Image Magazine.

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FDA: Warning on "rat meat" chicken wings was fake news

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WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials did not seize thousands of pounds of imported rat meat prior to the Super Bowl and they never issued a warning saying restaurants and food stores could be selling it as chicken wings, despite reports shared widely on multiple websites.

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LibGuides: Fake News: Separating Truth From Fiction: 4. Fake News Examples

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Examples of viral fake news, shared in social media

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Fake News

Fake news is information that is clearly and demonstrably fabricated and that has been packaged and distributed to appear as legitimate news. This narrow definition seeks to distinguish fake news from other types of misleading information by clarifying that the former is patently false and was created and presented in a way meant to deceive consumers into thinking it is real. Fake news refers to a specific piece of information; it does not refer to any particular type of news outlet, individual, or other actor.

Fake News Purveyor

Fake news purveyors are websites, social media pages and accounts, or individuals who share or aggregate fake news stories. Purveyors may attempt to spread fake news stories on purpose, and unknowing purveyors may share fake news without realizing it's fake. The vast majority of purveyors do not exclusively share fake news, but instead push some combination of fake news and other types of content, including real news or misleading information. Most -- but not all -- fake news purveyors are hyperpartisan in nature. Only the small number of sites and pages that exclusively post fake news should be considered "fake news sites" or "fake news pages."

Fake News Creator

Fake news creators are entities responsible for conceiving of, writing, and disseminating fake news. This can include the owners and operators of sites that publish fake news stories and affiliated social media accounts, as well as the manufacturers of the fake news stories -- whether they are publicly identified or remain anonymous.

Hyperpartisan Websites, Facebook Pages, and Social Media Accounts

These are websites, social media pages, or accounts designed to spread information presented through a highly partisan, biased lens. Hyperpartisan websites or Facebook pages may share a combination of fake news and partisan content (misleading stories, partisan memes and videos, et cetera) that is not considered fake news, but could still contain misleading or out-of-context information designed to confirm a particular ideological view. Hyperpartisan pages and accounts are often fake news purveyors that generate shares and clicks in order to either push a particular political view or profit from user engagement on social media platforms.

Misleading Information

Misleading or out-of-context information does not on its own constitute fake news. This kind of information is not wholly fabricated, and it can exist within a news report that is based on actual events that occurred. Hyperpartisan sites often share a combination of fake news and posts that simply contain misleading information or lack proper context. Widely shared stories that contain misinformation but do not rise to the level of fake news can feed the larger ecosystem by creating a friendly audience for fabrications.

Clickbait

Clickbait pieces are articles that feature headlines designed to get people to click on them, often by presenting a misleading or warped sense of what the post is about. This does not necessarily constitute fake news, as these types of headlines or accompanying posts can be technically factually true (not fabricated) but nevertheless misleading. Fake news itself also often uses a clickbait format, particularly since its goal is to spread to the maximum number of consumers for ideological or financial gain. Clickbait headlines are often paired with fake news, as well as with content from hyperpartisan sites that contains misleading or out-of-context, but not necessarily fake, information.

Satire

Satire is writing or art designed to make social commentary based on mockery and imitation of real-life events or actors. Satire is different from fake news in that its purpose is to entertain or inspire consumers, rather than to deceive them. Some fake news sites may claim to be satirists but do not openly advertise themselves as satire, therefore suggesting an intent to deceive. An example of legitimate satire is The Onion, which is widely known and transparently presented as such.

Propaganda

Propaganda is misleading or highly biased information that is specifically designed to confirm or promote a particular ideological viewpoint. Propaganda is distinct from fake news in that it originates from politically motivated actors with the intention of driving public discussion, apart but not separate from financial and ideological gain. It is not necessarily completely fabricated, and it is not always -- though most of the time -- designed to appear as legitimate news. Propaganda can be packaged as fake news, with the result is both (a) patently false and (b) designed to appear real.

Conspiracy Theory

A conspiracy theory is an explanation or interpretation of events that is based on questionable or nonexistent evidence of a supposed secret plan by a group -- often governments and mainstream media outlets -- to obscure events. Like propaganda, conspiracy theories -- which are almost always completely fabricated, even if individual elements of the theories contain nuggets of fact -- can be presented as fake news when they are packaged as factual news stories.

Mistakes In Reporting

A legitimate news outlet that makes an error in reporting is not creating fake news. Journalists may sometimes lack necessary facts, be misled by a source, or choose poor wording to convey news stories. Instances of erroneous reporting do not reveal an intent to deceive on their own, nor do they imply the complete fabrication of a story.
Image created by Sarah Wasko.

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The fake news universe is vast and ephemeral, and to some extent its dimensions are unknowable. But Media Matters' research team spent hundreds of hours trying to map out as much of it as possible. Below is what we've learned and how we've come to define many of the moving parts that create an ecosystem for fake news to spread and thrive.

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Background reading on the state of disinformation in the United States. Many of these appeared around the time of the 2016 election, and we've included other more recent reports as well.

Fake news and the spread of misinformation
From the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, links to peer-reviewed articles.

NiemanReports: Election '16: Lessons for Journalism
From the Nieman Foundation at Harvard; several articles on fake news and news literacy

Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning
Stanford University study on high school and college students' (lack of) news literacy

Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content: How News Websites Spread (and Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims and Misinformation
Report from Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University

The Science of Fake News
Science, March 9 2018 ($)
Multi-author article on the science behind why disinformation campaigns are effective. Unfortunately, this is behind a paywall; the link will work for Harvard affiliates.

Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics (2018, Oxford University Press)
A book from the Berkman Klein Center on media coverage of the 2016 US Presidential election; the online version is free of charge.

The Global Disinformation Order: 2019 Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation
University of Oxford report on the use of disinformation campaigns by national governments.

A Guide to Anti-Misinformation Efforts Around the World
2018 report on steps countries around the world are taking to combat disinformation campaigns.

Disinformation and the 2020 Election
One in a series of report from NYU's Stern Center on Business and Human Rights, on the role of social media in the 2020 election.

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Background reading on the state of disinformation in the United States. Many of these appeared around the time of the 2016 election, and we've included other more recent reports as well. Fake news and the spread of misinformation From the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, links to peer-reviewed articles.

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duPont Library: Fake News: What is Fake News?

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duPont Library: Fake News: What is Fake News?

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Lesson Plan

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This lesson provides an opportunity for high school students to learn what fake news is, differentiate it from other types of news, develop strategies for spotting fake news and consider what can be done about the proliferation of fake news.

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The Reason Your Feed Became An Echo Chamber - And What To Do About It

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At the outset, the Internet was expected to be an open, democratic source of information. But algorithms, like the kind used by Facebook, instead often steer us toward articles that reflect our own ideological preferences, and search results usually echo what we already know and like.

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In the early days of social media, idealists dreamed of a digital market place for ideas, the kind that might help rejuvenate a democracy too often given over to distractions. If communication were nearly effortless, the reasoning went, people would have much less to lose by listening to those of different ideological stripes. Today, however, sociologists have concluded that social media often entrench people's ideological positions and even make those positions more extreme. Witness the age of a bitterly divided America.

Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein has studied this phenomenon at length, finding that deliberation among a group of likeminded people moves the group toward a more extreme point of view.

"The mere discussion of, or deliberation over, a certain matter or opinion in a group may shift the position of the entire group in a more radical direction. The point of view of each group member may even shift to a more extreme version of the viewpoint they entertained before deliberating."

Thus individuals, companies, and other organization looking to understand the world in new ways must develop tools to deliberately include opinions that they do not agree with. The problem of general agreement to the exclusion of new ideas is particularly a problem in our universities, explains Harvard english professor Louis Menand in his Big Think interview:

Read more at the Conversation

Photo credit: Shutterstock

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How Social Media Created an Echo Chamber for Ideas

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In the early days of social media, idealists dreamed of a digital market place for ideas, the kind that might help rejuvenate a democracy too often given over to distractions. If communication were nearly effortless, the reasoning went, people would have much less to lose by listening to those of different ideological stripes.

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Here are some tips on implementing media literacy across the curriculum to reach CCSS

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As librarians everywhere will attest, fake news is not new; fabricated stories have been presented as truth for centuries. But take a divided electorate and add a social media landscape where misinformation is shared with a click, and interest in the topic has soared.

Learning to decipher fact from fiction is a key skill for all news consumers, and libraries across the country are stepping up to help patrons gain the information literacy skills they need. With that in mind, Programming Librarian has compiled the following round-up of resources* to help libraries deliver their best programming about fake news.

Do you have other go-to resources that are not listed below? Please share them in the comments or email us at programminglibrarian@ala.org.

Webinars

"Don't Get Faked Out by the News," American Association of School Librarians, Feb. 23, 2017; available for free viewing to all until March 2, 2017; available to AASL members and eCOLLAB subscribers thereafter

"Fake News Workshop," University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of information Sciences, Feb. 1, 2017; select "Slides/Audio"

LibGuides and resources

"Fake News," Indiana University East Campus Library

News

Further reading
*Thanks to Nicole A. Cooke of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign iSchool for providing several of these resources. Check out Dr. Cooke's Programming Librarian webinar, "Post-Truth: Fake News and a New Era of Information Literacy."

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As librarians everywhere will attest, fake news is not new; fabricated stories have been presented as truth for centuries. But take a divided electorate and add a social media landscape where misinformation is shared with a click, and interest in the topic has soared.

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Recently California State Assemblyman Gomez introduced AB 155, which states: " This bill would require the Instructional Quality Commission to develop, and the state board to adopt, revised curriculum standards and frameworks for English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science that incorporate civic online reasoning, as defined."

The impetus of this bill is the proliferation of fake news, as evidenced in 2016. While fake news has always been part of the (dis)information picture, social media and campaign documents have highlighted its impact. The 2016 Stanford report on evaluating information found that most students, even in higher education, have difficulty discerning online media such as fake news.

Schools need to insure that their students become information and communications technology (ICT) literate. Especially as fake news and other misinformation can occur in all parts of the curriculum and daily life (e.g., get rich scams, science, fad diets), critical thinking should be integrated strategically into their program's scope and sequence. As information professionals, school librarians are well positioned to help their school communities become information literate. Some basic strategies that students should practice include:

Use criteria to evaluate news and other information sources

Use fact-checking sites

Read reputable sources

Look for different perspectives to discern alternative claims and evidence

Practice media literacy

Minimize sharing questionable news

Support and engage in high-quality journalism.

As part of my work, I manage California State University's ICT Literacy Project, which facilitates faculty incorporation of ICT literacy into the curriculum. The home base of this project is MERLOT, which collects learning objects and fosters educational community. The ICT Literacy portal contains resources and training, and links to relevant bookmark collections such as Fake News and Media Literacy.

Want to get the ball rolling with your faculty? Share this story by Scott Shane in the New York Times Jan. 18, 2017: From headline to photograph, a fake news masterpiece.

Here are some specific resources that may be useful in helping students become discerning news consumers.

University of Washington LibGuide on evaluating fake news.

Stanford History Education Group. (2016). Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University.

Pew Research Center. (Dec. 15, 2016). Many Americans believe fake news is sowing confusion.

DeWitt, P. (Nov. 22, 2016). Do educators need media literacy as much as students do? Ed Week.

Greller, J. (Jan. 1, 2017). Can your students spot fake news? Here are 48 Links to Help.

Schulten, K. (Oct. 2, 2015). Skills and strategies / fake news vs. real news: Determining the reliability of sources. New York Times.

Valenza, J. (Nov. 26, 2016). Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world. NeverEnding Search.

More Professional Development on Fake News
Watch Lesley's webinar, Don't Get Faked Out by the News, available now on AASL eCOLLAB. Access is open to all members of the profession through end of day March 2, 2017. After March 2, the webinar will be available to AASL members and eCOLLAB subscribers. Not an AASL member or eCOLLAB subscriber? Join or subscribe today to access Don't Get Faked Out by the News and more than 200 pieces of AASL professional development!

Watch the archived webinar Post-Truth: Fake News and a New Era of Information Literacy from Programming Librarian, a website of the ALA Public Programs Office. The webinar is presented by Nicole A. Cooke, MS/LIS Program Director of the iSchool at Illinois and an assistant professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Categories: Blog Topics, Professional Development

Tags: Fake news, information literacy, information skills

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Don't Get Faked by the News | Knowledge Quest

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Recently California State Assemblyman Gomez introduced AB 155, which states: "This bill would require the Instructional Quality Commission to develop, and the state board to adopt, revised curriculum standards and frameworks for English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science... Read More ›

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Compare how headlines are written by different media outlets...

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People are getting different news and it's tearing the country apart. To find out the facts, we need to read between the headlines.

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Explanation and examples of online advertising

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Explanation and examples of online advertising

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Despite all the hype, native advertising remains a fuzzy concept for most marketers.

According to our 2014 status report:

49 percent of respondents don't know what native advertising is

24 percent are hardly familiar with it

Another 24 percent are somewhat familiar

Only 3 percent are very knowledgeable

So, given the lack of awareness (and people mistaking it for other things, like sponsorship), we thought it would be a good idea to walk you through about a dozen examples of native advertising - and why they work.

Let's get going.

1. Print advertorials ... starting with this classic example

Let's start with the basics: the advertorial.

David Ogilvy's "Guinness Guide to Oysters" is the quintessential advertorial - like the "Guinness Guide to Cheese" above. When people talk about advertorials they usually mention this ad - like Brian Clark did.

Quick glance and it looks like editorial content:

Last week I explained what made this an advertorial (and next week I'll go in depth on how to create an online advertorial that converts), so let me just say that for this to work it should appear among editorial content and match the context design.

In other words, if you removed the brand name, it would fit the style of the publication.

The Guinness Guide, however, is a print ad, which leads to this question: would an advertorial work online? Let's see.

2. Online advertorials

This is IBM on Atlantic:

As you can see it's labeled "Sponsor Content." And except for the header and navigation bar, it is embedded among other IBM content.

Furthermore, the article is written by David Laverty, Vice President of Marketing, Big Data, and Analytics at IBM. Yet it matches the editorial and design style of Atlantic.

Is this an advertorial? No. There is not a clear call to action. It is, therefore, sponsored or branded content.

This piece from Gawker is a better example.

The article sits on the Gawker root domain and the design and editorial style match Gawker's.

It is labeled "Sponsored."

And just two paragraphs in, the intention of the sponsor is clear: WATCH OUR SHOW!

That is a clear call to action. The link drives you to the TBS website for King of the Nerds. This is an advertorial.

3. Online video advertorials

Naturally you can't talk about online advertising and not talk about videos.

Yes, an advertorial can be a video, which is exactly what The Onion has done through their Onion Labs creative agency.

Last week I showed you one of their videos for Southwest Airlines. Here's another one for a small, unknown outfit called Microsoft.

Microsoft gets the Onion treatment through this hilarious parody - but also gets its message across.

The call to action: give Explorer 9 a shot.

4. Advertorial ... gone wrong

I think it is safe to say the Atlantic's failed Scientology experiment embedded the term "native advertising" into our collective advertising consciousness.

Before their experiment, the earliest search for the term "native advertising" appears in February 2011, and it didn't climb into double digit searches until November 2012.

Here's the advertorial in question, one they pulled shortly after it was published:

Why did they pull it? This is what the critics claim Atlantic did wrong:

Used a mushy expression "Sponsor Content." It's an expression Dan Gilmour, writer for the Guardian, says publishers use when they don't want ads to look like ads.

The design layout looked too much like the design of Atlantic.

The editorial looks too much like Atlantic editorial.

They also forgot a clear call to action.

The joke, however, is on Scientology and not Atlantic. The religious organization is just a poor advertiser. In fact, I'm surprised Atlantic bowed to the pressure. If the ad was so sneaky, why did so many people complain?

Let's look at sponsored content now.

5. Sponsored content

Sponsored content is what a publisher creates and then a brand pays for. This is what The Onion did for H&R Block.

There is no clear call to action, so this content serves as brand awareness.

However, the article is embedded on a page surrounded by H&R Block banner ads.

Those banner ads contain calls to action, but good luck getting people to click them.

An offline example of sponsored content is Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. The insurance company Mutual of Omaha footed the bill for production. No call to action, just brand awareness.

6. Single-sponsor issues

In the print world a single-sponsor issue is when a single advertiser sponsors an entire issue of a magazine.

The most famous example occurred in August 2005 when Target bought all the ad space (about 18 pages, including the cover) in the August 22 issue of The New Yorker.

As Stuart Elliot wrote when he originally reported on the campaign, "The goal of a single-sponsor issue is the same as it is when an advertiser buys all the commercial time in an episode of a television series: attract attention by uncluttering the ad environment."

Again, in this case, no clear call to action, just brand awareness.

The way this works online is similar: a single sponsor buys all of the ad inventory on a website (or network of related websites) for a certain time period - a day, half a day, or even just an hour. Subway, for example, does this often on sports websites, usually timed to coincide with specific noteworthy events.

When our Director of Content Jerod Morris was running the sports blog Midwest Sports Fans, he would get such opportunities about once a month via the site's affiliation with the sports blog network YardBarker.

All it took to make happen was inserting a special code into the header, which would control the already-in-place YardBarker ads. Then all sites in the network that chose to take part would show the same ads from the same sponsor, and only those ads.

7. Branded content

The only difference between sponsored and branded content is that the brand creates the content for the publisher.

Here is a post by Dell on NYTimes.com. Notice all the signals that it is paid content.

As you can see, being precise about our terms is confusing because there is not an advertising standard when it comes to paid content labels.

On all the examples I've shared above so far, and the examples I'll share below, you'll see a variety of labels placed on native advertising. David Rodnitzky thinks they might violate FTC rules on deceptive advertising. But that's for another time.

You could lump branded playlists on Spotify into this category, too.

While the brand doesn't always create the music ( Sesame Street, however, did), they do curate the songs around a theme.

Jaguar USA, Abercrombie + Fitch, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (you knew he was a brand, right?) are great examples.

8. Product placement

A classic example of product placement was the bottle of Red Stripe in the 1993 film The Firm.

Or the Coke cups American Idol judges drink from.

Or the Reese's Pieces in the movie E.T.

But what about online examples?

I don't make it a point to read Vice (for reasons that will be clear here in a minute), but at one point in my research I wondered what they were doing in the native advertising landscape.

That's when I hit upon this gem (NSFW): Talking to Girls About the Good Ol' Number Two Taboo. It's a slideshow that amounts to a runway show for American Apparel, and a few other clothiers.

The clue was a comment on page one (otherwise I would've ignored the slide show and moved on):

Hmm. Ericha might be onto something. So I emailed the author of the article to find out.

She was a very polite Swede, Caisa Ederyd. I said I am a writer working on a series for native advertising and couldn't help noticing all the photos in her "article" were mostly of models wearing American Apparel clothes. I asked if American Apparel had paid for the slideshow.

She said American Apparel did not pay for the editorial.

"It's a Swedish editorial," Ederyd added, "And due to no budget in this project we had to turn to labels who lend us their clothes for free. Beyond Retro and American Apparel happened to have most items that our stylist wanted to use."

Okay, but then I followed up and asked her what she meant by "no budget in this project." As of publication, she has not responded.

This was a clear example of product placement.

While money may not have exchanged hands, favors did. There is a cost to American Apparel for giving away free clothes, albeit small. And in exchange they got exposure - the article was a popular post for at least 24 hours).

I've seen product placement in Onion pieces, too, like this one for the Canon PowerShot S1100 IS digital camera:

Did Canon pay for this ad? According to their advertising department, no. So why the precision?

If there was no commercial intent, why not just say "a Canon," or simply "a camera" for that matter? They have not responded yet.

Again, product placement is more about building brand awareness. There is no clear call to action. And unlike the H&R Block example, the content is not surrounded by Canon banner ads.

And now, a native advertising intermission

In the 2014 native advertising report I said that I didn't consider promoted content like we're about to cover below - such as sponsored posts in Facebook or promoted tweets - to be native advertising. I'd include in-feed ads and Google AdWords text ads in that claim, too.

The answer is in my native advertising definition:

Native advertising is paid content that matches a publication's editorial standards while meeting the audience's expectations.

Facebook and Twitter fail this definition because neither are publishers. The same is true with Google AdWords. They do not have a conventional editorial branch to speak of.

In Twitter's and Facebook's case, this is user-generated content that brands pay to reshare. None of these are pretending to be publisher-produced editorial content. In Google's case, it's just an advertiser paying to get in front of an audience.

That's plain ol' advertising.

On this point Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, would disagree with me. I confess, after further research, he's got a point.

There is a sense that this species of advertising - sponsored posts and promoted tweets - is native because it appears in the social stream or among search listings. So, in the advertising taxonomy, promoted content would be related to advertorials. But, in my opinion, it has to be a different genus because it's not editorial.

In other words, I'm admitting I was wrong. Sort of. 😀

So, with that said, this intermission ends, and we get back to our last four approaches.

9. In-feed ads

You've seen these widgets that recommend content from "Around the Web."

For example, on Slate:

All these links do is push you to content on other publishing sites, with a few commercial mixed in.

Companies like Sharethrough, Outbrain, and Respond provide the network to run such ads, and advertisers pay for the clicks.

The following in-feed ad, however, is different. It has clear commercial intent.

The headline matches the editorial style of Slate, yet it is labeled "Sponsored." Click the link and you land on a British Airways branded page with videos about the evolution of the airlines as the best in class.

And finally there are the in-feed ads that drive you to another website. You know what I'm talking about.

The one simple exercise that burns belly fat.

The arrest records of your local city.

The words sit underneath the bold black title "Trending Around the Web" with "ADVERTISEMENT" sitting quietly to the right in a light grey font.

These ads have an editorial feel about them, as do the websites they drive you to - but clearly they have a commercial intent. Despite our distaste for these, I have a hunch they work for the advertiser. Because they have not gone away.

10. Sponsored posts (Facebook)

I could not find a good example of a sponsored post on Facebook. Is this because I am NEVER there? You more than likely know what I'm talking about, though.

Here's my best shot:

You can read up on Sponsored posts here.

11. Promoted Tweets

Pretty basic stuff here. Nice one from the same company who created Twitter.

Learn more about promoted Tweets here.

12. Google Text Ads (Search Listings)

Can you spot the ads?

Life on Bing is no different.

Learn more about Google text ads here.

Where does content marketing fall in respect to native advertising?

They are born of the same stock and have the same goal in mind, but the main difference is this: with content marketing the brand becomes the publisher.

Exquisite examples of content marketers:

We like to think we do a pretty decent job at Copyblogger Media, as well. Let's just say our business results consistently meet or exceed our expectations.

In each case the brand creates content that informs, educates, or entertains. It's how you build an audience that builds your business.

Native advertising, therefore, is paid content that drives traffic to that content.

And for a final comparison, guest posting is non-paid content that drives traffic to the content on your domain.

What's next?

Here's what you can expect next in this series.

First, an article on how to create an advertorial that converts.

Then, research concluding whether native advertising is profitable or not. We know it's profitable for the publisher, but is it profitable for the advertiser? I aim to find out.

And let me close with a recent quote from Brian:

Good native ads are content that's about the reader, watcher, or listener. But ultimately there's an actionable goal for the advertiser, like opt-in to get a free report from New Rainmaker (you'll see this happen from us soon)."

Want to discuss anything about this article? Share other examples of native advertising? Then join the discussion over on Google+.

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12 Examples of Native Ads (And Why They Work)

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Despite all the hype, native advertising remains a fuzzy concept for most marketers. According to our 2014 status report: 49 percent of respondents don't know what native advertising is 24 percent are hardly familiar with it Another 24 percent are somewhat familiar Only 3 percent are very knowledgeable So, given the lack of awareness (and people mistaking it for other things, like sponsorship), we thought it would be a good idea to walk you through about a dozen examples of native advertising - and why they work.

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The sharp increase in popularity of social media networks (primarily Facebook) has created a predatory secondary market among online publishers seeking to profitably exploit the large reach of those networks and their huge customer bases by spreading fake news and outlandish rumors. Competition for social media's large supply of willing eyeballs is fierce, and a number of frequent offenders regularly fabricate salacious and attention-grabbing tales simply to drive traffic (and revenue) to their sites.

Facebook has worked at limiting the reach of hoax-purveying sites in their customers' news feeds, inhibiting (but not eradicating) the spread of fake news stories. Hoaxes and fake news are often little more than annoyances to unsuspecting readers; but sometimes circulating stories negatively affect businesses or localities by spreading false, disruptive claims that are widely believed.

So long as social media allows for the rapid spread of information, manipulative entities will seek to cash in on the rapid spread of misinformation. Perhaps the most egregious of the many nonsense peddlers on social media are fake news sites, so here we offer a guide to several of the most frequent (and unapologetic) hoax purveyors cluttering up newsfeeds everywhere.

National Report

No list of shameless misinformation would be complete without a mention of National Report (and its omnipresent former lead writer, Paul Horner), as the site is (or was) perhaps the most prominent example of its genre.

Among National Report's most widespread hoaxes were claims that notorious street artist Banksy was arrested and unmasked (as Paul Horner, naturally), that a teen was imprisoned over a " swatting prank," and that a U.S. company was hiring mercenaries to kill ISIS militants. While most of the site's efforts have been relatively benign, their fake story about an Ebola outbreak's prompting a quarantine in Purdon, Texas, caused headaches for local officials at the height of coverage and anxiety about the virus.

National Report (and its "satirical" brethren) have sustained huge losses of traffic in the wake of Facebook's algorithm changes intended to limit the reach of fake news. In response, sites have been established that spoof the domain names of legitimate news outlets such as the Washington Post and which mirror the National Report 's content in order to more efficiently dupe readers and work around Facebook's restrictions.

(The ubiquitous Paul Horner has since moved on to the equally fake News Examiner site, continuing to offer fictitious stories about subjects such as the world's first successful head transplant.)

World News Daily Report

Straddling the line of fake news and the occasional seed of truth is World News Daily Report. By cobbling together misattributed stolen photographs (and often using extant, long-circulating rumors), World News Daily Report has published several viral claims often preying upon readers' religious beliefs, including hoaxes about a newly-discovered eyewitness account of Jesus' miracles, an ancient rumor about chariot wheels found at the bottom of the Red Sea, and a very old yarn about the discovery of giant skeletons reworked as the tale of a coverup perpetrated by the Smithsonian Institution. However, World News Daily Report frequently branches out to science-based fakery, including japes about the destruction of the world's oldest tree and another about the discovery of a Megalodon shark in Pakistan.

Political conspiracy is another favored topic of World News Daily Report, evidenced by articles claiming that a CIA agent confessed to killing Marilyn Monroe and that Yoko Ono disclosed she once had an intimate partnering with Hillary Clinton.

While National Report and World News Daily Report often take advantage of politically, socially, or religiously divisive issues to drive outrage-based traffic, Huzlers employs a markedly different approach to fake news hoaxes, often invoking the names of popular brands and restaurants in its quest to snare readers with gross-out stories.

Among Huzlers' most prominent yarns: Chipotle was caught using cat and dog meat in their dishes, Starbucks was discovered to be using semen in their beverages, Arizona iced tea tested positive for urine, and McDonald's was outed for including human meat in their products.

Like its fellows, Huzlers tailors its scope to leverage topical news trends. A popular claim made by the site (at the apex of an Ebola outbreak) involved zombies, and another alleged that a man had traded his toddler to buy an Apple Watch.

Empire News

Empire News (spun off from what was initially a sports-related fake news site) is another outlet responsible for the propagation of fabricated claims that spread on sites like Facebook. Some of their stories are apolitical and simply compelling to readers, such as a claim the Netflix entertainment streaming service would be shuttering due to the negative impact of piracy, or one that Las Vegas planned to legalize dog fighting to boost casino revenues.

Other Empire News hoaxes were somewhat news-based, such as one predicting massive national snowfalls for the winter of 2014-2015. Some articles targeted political or social controversies, such as one claiming a protestor in in Ferguson, Missouri, had accidentally burned down his own house. Separate rumors included one holding that Facebook was spying on gun owners for Homeland Security and one claiming that food stamp recipients would be awarded free cars (or that the food stamp program would be discontinued entirely).

When Empire News created a rumor about a WalMart shoplifter reportedly caught with $100 worth of groceries stashed in her vagina, the claim was spread not only by social media users but also by other sites of dubious credibility (such as Huzlers and Daily Viral Stuff).

Fake news sites often play to users' existing beliefs to spread their claims, but Stuppid (a site that truly lives up to its name) is less focused in its contribution to the avalanche of fakery on the Internet. Efforts by Stuppid largely encompass morally offensive fabrications, such as a claim parents admitted to having sex in front of their kids to teach them about procreation, another about a Florida man marrying a baby, and a salacious tale of an incestuous mother-daughter relationship.

Stuppid frequently swipes publicly-available photographs such as mugshots and deliberately misattributes them, as they did in a story about two Floridians allegedly arrested for selling golden tickets to Heaven. Another such story involved a death row inmate's purported request for a last meal of kittens illustrated with a photograph of deceased serial killer Dorothea Puente.

News Examiner

Paul Horner, the prolifically puerile online troll and ubiquitous fake news character (he inserts his name into all his articles) whose work previously appeared on the National Report fake news site, has since started the News Examiner. The News Examiner skirts Facebook's crackdown on fake news sites by mixing real news and listicle items in with its fake news reports, but the site neither identifies its fake news items as "satire" nor carries a disclaimer to that effect.

Fake stories from the News Examiner that have circulated widely enough as real news to prompt numerous inquiries from our readers include articles about the world's first successful head transplant and President Obama's limiting churches to offering twice-monthly services.

Newswatch28 (now Newswatch33)

Newswatch28 i s a relative newcomer to the fake news world, bursting onto the scene in late April 2015 with a site that simulates a TV news web site and likewise skirts Facebook's crackdown on fake news by mixing real news articles in with its completely made-up stories.

The site's "Quest" page unhelpfully informs readers that Newswatch28 presents "Shocking news and stories, celebrity news and gossip. Whether currently occurring, interesting, controversial, abnormal, thought provoking or satirical, we only wish to inform and entertain with the content we publish."

Fake stories from the Newswatch28 that have circulated widely enough as real news to prompt numerous inquiries from our readers include articles about a 76-year-old woman expelled from a KFC for breastfeeding her 42-year-old son, the FDA's approving the sale of tranquilizer guns for use on children, and an Al Pacino death hoax.

In later incarnations, the hoax-purveyor became Newswatch33; among its newer pieces were items claiming that suspected Charleston shooter Dylann Roof raised $4 million in donations, that a study was paying subjects an exorbitant sum of money to smoke pot, that a man killed himself over black actors in Star Wars, and an iteration of the popular fake news claim that NASA confirmed a 15-day period of total darkness.

The Naha Daily appears to be defunct, but during that site's brief lifespan from September 2014 to January 2015 it published several fake news pieces that continue to pop up regularly on social media and web sites - most notably an article claiming that fashion CEO Michael Kors said he is tired of "pretending to like blacks."

That item gained enough traction to prompt calls that Michael Kors be boycotted over his fictitious racist remarks:

#BOYCOTTMK Michael Kors CEO stated "I'm tired of pretending I like blacks" MK said "he doesn't want his purses filled with synthetic hair"

- Cheryl Nidoy (@TLV_Cher) January 7, 2015

Naha Daily also made the pages of snopes.com with fake news pieces about Jaden Smith's plans to have his penis removed on his 18th birthday, Michael Jordan's indifference to kids dying over his sneakers, and Oprah Winfrey 's accusing Bill Cosby of raping her.

The Stately Harold

The Stately Harold shouldn't be fooling anyone, given the deliberate misspelling in its name, a front page filled with articles by "feminist Cassidy Boon" about such hard-hitting topics as "Redefining beauty: Why cankles are hot!" and an introduction from the Chief Editor that states "Hi! My nme is Clive Pebble. I have Dyslexia but my drem evre sens I was a litl boy has ben to strat a newspapr. Nwo I have!!"

Nonetheless, now that social media users often never visit a site's main page, the Stately Harold has since its November 2014 start managed to fool readers with fake news articles about Hillary Clinton's wanting to ban beards, President Obama's referring to Baltimore rioters as "black heroes," a 9-year-old boy's being suspended from school for saying that he "didn't like Obama," and President Obama's pardoning Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The Stately Harold unhelpfully identifies itself as a "satire" site in a manner that is deliberately difficult for readers to find, requiring them to highlight the solid black background of a page footer to disclose the site's "satire" tag:

NewsBuzzDaily

NewsBuzzDaily is pretty low-rent for a fake news site: it doesn't display a logo or masthead on its pages, and it mainly traffics in lame, made-up, exclamation point-driven celebrity gossip items (e.g., "Lebron James Admits To Hair Transplant!!" and "Woman's Lips Explode After Doing Kylie Jenner Challenge!!") along with that lowest form of fake news, celebrity death hoaxes.

Nonetheless, the site has scored a few social media hits with puerile articles about Wendy's restaurants using rat and horse meat to make their chili, and the Fox Network's cancelling the popular TV series Empire after only a single season.

NewsBuzzDaily at least scores some points for carrying a (somewhat less than clear) disclaimer on all their pages advising readers that the site is "a combination of real shocking news and satire news" and that "articles written on this site are for entertainment and satirical purposes only."

Now8News burst onto the fake news scene in mid-2015, racking up an impressive number of successful social media hoaxes despite the barely plausible premise upon which most were based: a man was arrested for having sex with a pig at Walmart, an obese woman was arrested for starving her kids so she could eat their food, a woman was arrested for " trying on" tampons in an aisle at Walmart, a separate woman was arrested for using a sausage to sexually gratify herself (also at Walmart), a man was found cannibalizing a teen in a Texas haunted house attraction, KFC was busted breeding mutant chickens, and McDonald's closed 17,000 locations because the minimum wage was raised.

The site was also responsible for rumors that an old lady was arrested making cat fur coats, a man fed his cheating fiancee's remains to her parents, President Obama lowered the age of consent to 13, a lottery winner died after gold-plating his testicles, a couple was busted running a meth lab in the "attic" of a Walmart, hair elastics presented a grave health threat because they were manufactured from used condoms, a sitter discovered a " clown doll" was actually a tiny rapist, a tube of cookie dough "exploded" inside a female shoplifter's body cavity, and finally, that a woman caused a riot after experiencing gastric distress during a round of " vodka butt shots."

The Reporterz

Man Kills His Date After She, Inspired By Twitter #WasteHisTime2016 Trend, Wasted His Time: https://t.co/iS1KhkSZXu pic.twitter.com/1IJMa3dWob

- The Reporterz (@TheReporterz) January 8, 2016

A fairly new entrant to the fake news round-up in early 2016, The Reporterz started a popular hoax claim that a man killed a woman over her behavior following the #WasteHisTime Twitter trend. In addition, the site started a rumor that the state of Delaware was introducing a "child support card" that limited what mothers can and cannot buy with their stipends.

Empire Herald

Another 2016 contender on the fake news scene was Empire Herald, which among other wild fabrications reported that a meth-addled couple ate a homeless man in Central Park. Created on 24 January 2016, the site managed to spread several (often recycled) fake news claims in the span of a few short weeks.

Satira Tribune

The name Satira Tribune clued many readers in to this web site's intent, and its tagline ("satirical news for satirical folks") certainly drove the point home to those who scrolled down to the bottom of the page. But that didn't stop the site's claims (that MMA fighter Ronda Rousey fought off several muggers, that Jimmy Carter said medical marijuana cured his cancer, that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined Bill Maher for smoking a joint on Real Time, or that Donald Trump paid Sarah Palin $10 million for endorsing him) from spreading on social media.

NC Scooper (Nevada County Scooper)

NC Scooper (or Nevada County Scooper) was one of the few ostensibly humor-based fake news sites whose items floated around social media. Most articles published by NC Scooper were clearly satirical in nature and not intended to deceive readers by spreading false information; nevertheless, a few efforts genuinely confused social media users. Among NC Scooper's crossover bits were pieces claiming official " gun confiscation units" were taking people's weapons, that Merle Haggard left his estate to an LBGT group, that Meg White of the White Stripes was joining Rush, and that Sen. Bernie Sanders called for " chemtrail reform."

Associated Media Coverage

Associated Media Coverage was yet another fresh face on the fake news scene in early 2016. After its February 2016 creation, Associated Media Coverage swiftly leapt into the hoaxmongering business with bits about a motorcycle curfew, an e-juice ban, a two-pet maximum ordinance, and a fabricated claim that a transgender woman was shot in a Colorado department store bathroom.

Associated Media Coverage also has apparently spawned sites that appear to be legitimate local news bearing shocking (but fake) stories: Boston Tribune, Boston Leader, Baltimore Gazette, and Seattle Tribune are four that we have been able to identity so far.

React365 isn't a fake news site per se, but rather a generator for user-created hoax articles. Although the site's stated purpose involved "prank[ing] your friends," articles about mandatory babysitting by grandparents and great white sharks in the Mississippi River escaped into the social media wild.

The Burrard Street Journal

Like Nevada County Scooper, the Burrard Street Journal appeared to be largely comedic in nature and not an intentional purveyor of hoaxes. Although most social media users seemed to recognize the site's purpose, Burrard Street Journal items were occasionally mistaken for real news. Those included claims Donald Trump opined America ought not to have "given Canada its independence," President Trump declared Canadian women the States' largest threat after ISIS, and President Obama asserted he refused to leave office were Donald Trump elected.

The Last Line of Defense (The Resistance)

Although The Last Line of Defense ( The Resistance) carries a disclaimer, it is frequently mistaken for legitimate news about a bevy of topical controversies. Items published by this site which have duped social media users included claims the Obama girls were arrested in Hawaii, that George Soros was arrested for "hate crimes against America," and President Trump " billed " former First Lady Michelle Obama for several billion dollars.

As American As Apple Pie and Freedum Junkshun

Like The Last Line of Defense ( The Resistance), As American As Apple Pie and Freedum Junkshun carry clear disclaimers warning readers they are fake news sites:

When no one can trust the lying fake news liberal media anymore because they hate us and guns and Harley Davidson and meat and OUR president, As American as Apple Pie is here to be your beacon of something you can kinda rely on sometimes, but not really. God Bless America and Amen.

We believe that there is nothing more precious than the mind of an aging conservative. Here we gather a boatload of bullhonkey, works of pure satirical fiction, to give the fist-shakers of the world a reason to hate. Reality is often in the eye of the beholder. You won't find any of it here.

Join the fun in the comments on our Facebook page where you too can watch David Hasselhoff running over someone's poodle magically transformed into a crime against humanity by Barack Obama or yet another murder the Clintons got away with.

Nevertheless, their material is regularly shared as "real news." Items from As American As Apple Pie mistaken for legitimate news included claims Alec Baldwin was arrested for threatening President Trump and a Muslim mayor " outlawed Christmas" within city limits. And like Last Line of Defense, As American As Apple Pie and Freedum Junkshun leverage topical controversies to accumulate social media shares using "outrage bait," as did the latter with a phony story about a flight crew "taking a knee" rather than transporting New Orleans Saints players who engaged in the referenced protest. A 27 October 2017 post to Last Line of Defense's Facebook page confirmed Freedum Junkshun is another of its operations.

BreakingNews365.net and BreakingNews247.net

Like React365, BreakingNews365.net and BreakingNews247.net are not fake news sites. Another series of prank generators, they enable anyone to create any headline and description complete with fabricated shares:

Action News 3 (ActionNews3.com)

Like Now8News, Action News 3 (ActionNews3.com) advances topical fake news items under the guise of a small local news affiliate. Specializing in death hoaxes (phony news items about Morgan Freeman, Bob Barker, and George Zimmerman went viral), the site also leverages social media fads like " creepy clowns " to spread its falsehoods.

abcnews-us.com

Much like abcnews.com.co, this site generates traffic by passing itself off as the actual website for ABC News. As we noted in December 2017, the site's front page, featuring a story about former Today Show host Matt Lauer, was designed to mimic that of ABC News:

Beyond imitating ABC's page design, we found that abcnews-us.com also copied their actual reporting.

While the myriad sites referenced here represent only a small sample of the overall "satire" nuisance on social media, many widely-dispersed fake news claims have originated with them. All of the sites mentioned above exist solely to spread false information, and none can be trusted as legitimate sources, no matter how compelling their claims might be.

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Snopes' Field Guide to Fake News Sites and Hoax Purveyors

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The sharp increase in popularity of social media networks (primarily Facebook) has created a predatory secondary market among online publishers seeking to profitably exploit the large reach of those networks and their huge customer bases by spreading fake news and outlandish rumors.

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VELES, Macedonia - Dimitri points to a picture on his Instagram showing a bar table decked with expensive champagne and sparklers.

It's from his 18th birthday just four months ago - a lavish party in his east European hometown that he says wouldn't have been possible without President-elect Donald Trump.

Dimitri - who asked NBC News not to use his real name - is one of dozens of teenagers in the Macedonian town of Veles who got rich during the U.S. presidential election producing fake news for millions on social media.

The articles, sensationalist and often baseless, were posted to Facebook, drawing in armies of readers and earning fake-news writers money from penny-per-click advertising.

Dimitri says he's earned at least $60,000 in the past six months - far outstripping his parents' income and transforming his prospects in a town where the average annual wage is $4,800. He is one of the more successful fake news pushers in the area.

His main source of cash? Supporters of America's president-elect.

"Nothing can beat Trump's supporters when it comes to social media engagement," he says. "So that's why we stick with Trump."

Even with the presidential contest over and Google and Facebook's plans to crack down on fake news makers, money continues to pour in.

Posts about Hillary Clinton are also a hit - but only negative ones.

"I have mostly written about her emails, what is contained in her emails, the Benghazi tragedy, maybe her illness that she had," Dimitri adds, but now he's moved on to headlines like: "Trey Gowdy Revealed His EPIC Plan To Imprison Hillary Now That Election's Over, SHE IS DONE!"

Dimitri's sole aim is to make his stories go viral.

His most popular headlines during the election included: "JUST IN: Obama Illegally Transferred DOJ Money To Clinton Campaign!" and "BREAKING: Obama Confirms Refusal To Leave White House, He Will Stay In Power!"

The teenager is unrepentant about any influence his stories may have had on swaying public opinion.

"I didn't force anyone to give me money," he says. "People sell cigarettes, they sell alcohol. That's not illegal, why is my business illegal? If you sell cigarettes, cigarettes kill people. I didn't kill anyone."

The same weekend that NBC spent with Dimitri, a gunman opened fire in a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. The shooter told police he was motivated by a fake news story. The pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, was accused online of hosting a pedophile ring run by Democratic leaders.

Asked about the incident this week, Dimitri claimed he wasn't familiar with the story nor the people who had spread it online.

The small, rust-belt town of Veles has found itself in the international spotlight after investigations by BuzzFeed and the Guardian traced more than 100 fake news domain names here.

The fake news bonanza couldn't have come against a more jarring backdrop.

Once part of communist Yugoslavia, the Republic of Macedonia has a population of 2.1 million in a landlocked area about the size Vermont. Blanketed by rugged mountains, parts of the country have enjoyed a tourism surge in recent years.

But vacationers won't find Veles in many travel guides. The town of 50,000 is almost an hour's drive down a lonely, crumbling highway from the capital, Skopje.

Visitors are greeted by a distressed mosaic of red-roofed buildings, densely stacked onto a steep mountainside. Industrial smokestacks add to a wintry fog settling over the valley - though even their output has diminished after several recent factory closures.

Almost a quarter of Macedonians are currently unemployed - a rate around five times higher than in the U.S.

But the burdens that weigh on Veles might also explain why it's become a global hotbed for fake news.

High unemployment and a close-knit community meant that when Dimitri and others started making money, word quickly spread and everyone wanted a piece of the action.

Most teens here speak fluent English, allowing them to quickly navigate through reams of Western news sites and pinpoint potentially viral content.

Dimitri estimates there are now 300 locals dabbling in fake news, with at least 50 making "decent money," and around a dozen making "a lot." He says he's not quite at the top of the pecking order, but not far off.

But he is no scrappy teenager. Dimitri is bright, with an obvious aptitude for business.

He won't show NBC News his profile on Google AdSense, an online advertising service that allows websites to make money, to protect five other teenagers who asked him not to reveal aspects of their shared interests. He's also wary of revealing his full income, worried it will make him a target for thieves, or worse.

However, he does show NBC News a digital receipt from Google showing he earned more than $8,000 from the web giant in September. He says this was just one of several advertising accounts, and claims his most successful streak - in the run-up to the election - saw him rake in $27,000 in just one month.

When asked for comment about the persistence of fake news even after the election, Facebook directed NBC News to a post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month in which he laid out the company's plan to tackle the phenomenon.

In an interview with TODAY on Thursday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged "there's a lot more to do."

Google outlined steps last month that it said would restrict advertising on websites that "misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information." The company did not respond to NBC News' requests for comment on this apparently still-flourishing industry.

Dimitri says even after the election, while business is less brisk, his fake news is still highly profitable. Like any business, he's aware of the need to adapt.

"This business updates every hour, every ten minutes, every minute," he says. "There are always news ideas, new types of generating new visitors and that's the thing we all want."

So while newspapers across the globe are losing advertising revenue, Dimitri's empire of lies is thriving.

He says he now employs three 15-year-olds, paying them the equivalent of $10 per day. As well as buying new laptops and paying cash to boost his posts on social media, he has also invested some of his earnings into real estate - a joint venture with his parents, who are more than happy with his success.

As with many regular journalists, Dimitri starts his day by trawling the web looking for trending topics that he can harness to drive traffic to his websites.

He copies his posts from other fake news websites, including many in the U.S., or takes content from mainstream media organizations before peppering them with invented details. He also posts provocative online polls such as: "Should Trump Deport All Refugees?" and: "Do you consider Donald Trump, the Jesus of America?"

Most of this content is published on websites Dimitri has built to look like NBC News, Fox News, the Huffington Post and others.

To the untrained eye, fake headlines such as: "BREAKING: Obama Confirms Refusal To Leave White House, He Will Stay In Power!" look genuine. The only giveaway is the imitation URL.

From then on, it's a case of throwing as much mud at the wall and seeing what sticks.

"The most-read news articles are usually the ones containing the click-bait words," Dimitri says. "The click bait words, as you know, are, 'Oh my god, breaking news, wow,' and usually something that has never been aired before. Because if the title just says, 'Today this happened, today that happened,' no one will open that."

He and his collaborators post these stories to their Facebook pages dozens of times a day. Again, he would only show NBC News a Facebook page that he runs on his own, which has an impressive 86,000 likes. But he said the six pages run by his collective have amassed more than 3 million likes between them.

"Say you produce ten lies a day, [the audience] is not going to believe ten lies, they are going to believe probably one or maximum two," he says. "Usually the lies about [Clinton's] emails and the lies about Hillary. The anti-Hillary posts were really good."

Dimitri says he has set up more than 50 domain names in six months, all in a bid to please Facebook's algorithm and get the maximum number of eyeballs on his posts. He claims in that time his posts have achieved some 40 million page views.

"We stay up late and we don't sleep that much - I haven't slept good for a couple of months now," he says. "I have to go to school and then at night I have to work."

He and his colleagues see the process as an art. At first they worked on a basis of trial-and-error. Now it comes naturally.

"You see what people like and you just give it to them," he explains. "You see they like water, you give water, they like wine, you give wine. It's really simple."

The challenge of engaging readers on social media is one familiar to most journalists. They have a formidable opponent in Dimitri and his peers; analysis by BuzzFeed after the election showed that fake news websites actually performed better than conventional press and television.

Dimitri is unequivocal about why the mainstream couldn't compete: "They're not allowed to lie."

The influx of money has created a thriving party culture in Veles.

On Saturday, one local nightclub was barely keeping up with demand, as dozens of teens and young adults ordered ice buckets filled with large $35 bottles of vodka.

In this new era, the purveyors of fake news are the coolest kids in the schoolyard.

"Since fake news started, girls are more interested in geeks than macho guys," says one 17-year-old girl standing at the bar.

The most successful fake-news publishers have "bought themselves houses, apartments, maybe invested in some real estate or in some businesses," according to Dimitri. "They have bought themselves cars, they have bought ... their girlfriends better cars, better places to live," he says.

Keen to feed off this gold rush, the nightclub even plans to organize a club night on the same day that Google pays out its advertising money.

Following Google and Facebook's vow to clamp down on fake news, Dimitri says he knows people have lost tens of thousands after their accounts were shuttered.

"When they started to shut down webpages, business went down," says 20-year-old Kiko, a bartender at the nightclub.

The impact appears to have been short lived, however, judging by the healthy flow of local currency, the Macedonian denar, being shoved into the club's cash registers.

Most people are cagey about admitting any direct involvement in fake news. But Tony, a 40-year-old taxi driver, says that every young person he knows - including his own son - is in on the act.

"I've been doing this job for 18 years and I know everyone in the city," he says. "I know kids who are minors, 16 or 17 years old, and they bought BMWs after running these websites."

Is he worried about his son making money from selling hoaxes online? "It's better to do this job than to go into the drug business," he says.

Also unperturbed is Veles' mayor, Slavcho Chadiev.

"Is it criminal activity? Not according to the law of Macedonia," he says during an interview in his office. "All that money went through the state system and everyone paid their taxes."

He isn't bothered by accusations that Veles' teens swayed the U.S. election. In fact, he welcomes the idea.

"Not as a mayor, but as a man and as a citizen, I'm glad if Veles contributed to the Republicans' victory and Trump's victory," he says.

Like many Macedonians, he blames recent Democratic administrations in Washington for not doing more to help their country's attempts to join the European Union and NATO. (Greece has blocked these efforts in a dispute over Macedonia's name - the country's official title at the United Nations is the cumbersome Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.)

On the flip side, the mayor still remembers fondly when Republican President George W. Bush recognized his country's new title in 2004.

What would he do if he encountered one of these fake news tycoons?

"I would ask him, 'Are you looking for a job?' Because I have a lack of IT guys," he says, before admitting that the salary of less than $400 might not be attractive.

Dimitri says his goal is to earn $1 million, and it's no surprise the young entrepreneur sees Trump as "a small role model."

There's only one question that sees doubt creep into Dimitri's cocksure demeanor. When he copies posts from other fake news websites, does he worry he's being used as a pawn to spread propaganda?

"When you buy a certain product, you don't know who created it," he says. "You don't know who creates your shoes, and there are rumors that small children in Africa create them."

He adds: "Maybe I don't want to find out, because if I find out maybe I'm going to feel bad. Right now I'm feeling OK."

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How Macedonian teens earn - and spend - thousands from fake news

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Fake news ran wild during the presidential election - and even though the contest is over, the gold rush continues for dozens of enterprising teens in a remote Macedonian town. Their main cash cow: president-elect Donald Trump.

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Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning

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Over the last year and a half, the Stanford History Education Group has prototyped, field tested, and validated a bank of assessments that tap civic online reasoning-the ability to judge the credi...

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How to avoid getting conned by fake news sites

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You don't need Socrates to tell you that some websites spin crazy, made-up yarns just so you'll click a link. False information and fake news have been a problem on the internet almost since the beginning. The situation is so bad, one website, Snopes.com, is dedicated to debunking crazy internet tales and rumors that pop up like digital cockroaches.

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Update: Please also see our new, 2017 lesson, Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News

_________

How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care?

We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct. 6, and try to answer them with resources from The Times as well as from Edutopia, the Center for News Literacy, TEDEd and the NewseumEd.

Although we doubt we need to convince teachers that this skill is important, we like the way Peter Adams from the News Literacy Project frames it in a post for Edutopia.

As he points out, every teacher is familiar with "digital natives" and the way they seem to have been born with the ability to use technology. But what about "digital naïveté" - when students trust sources of information that are obviously unreliable?

Even though they know how easy it is to create and distribute information online, many young people believe - sometimes passionately - the most dubious rumors, tempting hoaxes (including convincingly staged encounters designed to look raw and unplanned) and implausible theories.

Below, a roundup of tools, questions, activities and case studies we hope can help reduce this digital naïveté. Tell us what you think - or what we missed.
Getting Started: What is News Literacy and Why Do You Need It? Video and a related lesson plan from TEDEd.
The concept of " media literacy " has been around for decades, but "news literacy" is a new field that is growing as fast as the boundaries around old definitions of journalism are being dismantled.

The Center for News Literacy explains it this way:

The most profound communications revolution since the invention of Gutenberg's printing press seems to make it harder, not easier, to determine the truth. The digital revolution is characterized by a flood of information and misinformation that news consumers can access from anywhere at any time.

News aggregators, bloggers, pundits, provocateurs, commentators and "citizen journalists" are competing with traditional journalists for public attention. Uninformed opinion masquerades as news. Lines are blurring between legitimate journalism and the propaganda, entertainment, self-promotion and unmediated information on the Internet.

This superabundance of information has made it imperative that citizens learn to judge the reliability of news reports and other sources of information that is passed along their social networks.

Teachers can check out Edutopia's Five-Minute Film Festival on News Literacy to find more resources on the concept, or, to explore it in much greater depth, visit the Center for News Literacy's Digital Resource Center to access a comprehensive curriculum series "From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg in 14 Lessons."

Before you embark on a full unit, however, we suggest two exercises.
First, Ask Your Students to Weigh In

More people have died from selfies than shark attacks this year: //t.co/0IcHpOaWgY pic.twitter.com/1Ij5cG6iMs

- Mashable (@mashable) September 27, 2015

Mashable claims that, in 2015, selfies have killed more people than sharks. The Washington Post's Intersect says that's ridiculous. What do you think?
A couple of years ago, we asked students on our blog, How Do You Know if What You Read Online Is True?

One of our daily Student Opinion questions, it was inspired by a Times article that week, "If a Story Is Viral, Truth May Be Taking a Beating," that noted, "viral trumps verified ... as long as the clicks keep coming."

Here are some of the questions we posed in the course of that discussion. You might invite your own students to talk about them in pairs, small groups or as a whole class before you begin a news literacy curriculum - and then revisit their answers after you finish. And since all of our Student Opinion questions are still open to comment, they can also post their thoughts to our blog:

1. How many viral posts - whether articles, videos or photographs - do you click on each week? How many on average do you share on social media?

2. How often do you check to make sure what you are sharing or commenting on is real? How do you go about finding that out?

3. How much do you care if a story purporting to be real actually is?

4. How much more careful are you with online sources when you are doing work for school than when you are simply surfing the web for fun? How do you decide what is a reliable source for your schoolwork?

5. What sources of news do you usually trust? What sources do you rarely trust? Why?

6. What responsibility do journalists and news outlets who post or link these stories have to make sure they are true? Is it their job to make sure something is not a hoax before they cover or link to it? How do you think they go about verifying information?

7. Can embellished, or outright fake, stories have real-world consequences? What examples can you give?

8. In a world where news can be reported by anyone with a cellphone, how do you decide what is true? What questions should you ask to find out? What personal rules might you develop to decide what news you post and when you post it? What harm might be done by not following those rules?
Then, Impose a 48-Hour News Blackout
Another introductory exercise that can help students examine their media habits and show them why and how news matters comes from the Center for News Literacy, as described in a 2007 Times article about its work:

At the outset of the course, students are required to impose a 48-hour news blackout on themselves. They are not to watch, read or listen to the news, including weather reports and sports scores. The idea is to emphasize the role that such information plays in their lives, often without students' realizing it.

You can find more about that idea here.
Tools and Strategies: How to Tell Fake News From Real News Worst Twerk Fail EVER - Girl Catches Fire Mexican Red Rump Tarantula Missing in Brooklyn Post a Facebook Copyright Status to Protect Your Information
These stories all went viral on social media, but if you click the links, you'll see all of them turned out to be hoaxes. And yet, sometimes something that sounds fake - like this story about West Point cadets who "weaponized" a pillow fight - isn't.

How can you tell? Before you hit "share," what questions should you ask?

First, suggests Chad Lorenz in a piece for Slate that explores the need for news literacy curriculums, consider the places from which you routinely get information:

Today a tour through your social media news feed might take you to Mental Floss, Dadaviz, Colossal, Cracked, Dangerous Minds, Uproxx. How is a reader to know what from this assortment of blogs and webzines can be trusted? What about a site like Inquisitr? ( Approach with caution.) What about Before It's News? (Trick question: That one is definitely not to be trusted.) While it might seem easy to distinguish real news from fake news, many people, including experienced journalists, get suckered more often than you would think. Students, as heavy users of social media, where fake news and hoaxes proliferate, should think about their own responsibility to share reliable information and not perpetuate misinformation.

Once you've done that, you might next consult the Newseum's popular Believe It Or Not? lesson plan that walks teachers and students through basic news literacy. Students learn to ask these six "consumer questions" when vetting a story:

Who made this?

How was this made?

Why was this made?

When was this made?

What is this missing?

Where do I go from here?

Another method for questioning sources of information is the mnemonic the students at Intermediate School 303 in Coney Island use: IMVAIN.

Independent sources are preferable to self-interested sources.

Multiple sources are preferable to a report based on a single source.

Sources who Verify or provide verifiable information are preferable to those who merely assert.

Authoritative and/or Informed sources are preferable to sources who are uninformed or lack authoritative background.

Named sources are better than anonymous ones.

Watch a video and learn more about how they use this technique, from the Center for News Literacy, here, then try it yourself with this checklist.

Finally, here are some guidelines specifically about breaking news from NPR's On The Media:
More Sites and Tools for Fact-Checking What You Read Going Further: Applying Your Skills, Reading Case Studies and More Practice With Content From Your News Feeds
Go through your social media feeds or your daily newspaper or both, and choose one news story, then try asking the six questions the Newseum suggests. (To learn more about how to apply each individual question, consult this resource.)

Or, compare two or more news reports on the same topic but from different news outlets to see how the same story is covered in each. You might compare lead stories or, via the Newseum's daily gallery, compare newspaper front pages from around the world, whether from that day or from big news events of years past. Or, pick a divisive or controversial topic and look at how different news sources have handled the subject.

Remember as you read that news outlets feature both straight news reporting as well as opinion about the news, and that sometimes those distinctions can blur. How can you tell the difference?

If you are a teacher doing this with an entire class, you and your students might eventually create a full classroom gallery walk of news items that highlight some of the issues raised in this post.
Learn From Some Famous Case Studies
So far most of the examples we've provided have been fairly silly - pigs rescuing goats, twerking problems - but there can be serious consequences to inaccurate news reporting, and to contributing to viral stories by sharing them yourself.

And sometimes, even generally reliable sources will make mistakes.

For instance, just after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, the F.B.I. released pictures and video of two young men who officials believed may have been responsible for the explosions, and the Internet quickly offered to help find them. Nick Bilton writes about what happened next:

In a scene metaphorically reminiscent of a movie in which vigilantes swarm the streets with pitchforks and lanterns, people took to Reddit, the popular community and social news Web site, and started scouring images posted online from the bombings.

One Reddit forum told users to search for "people carrying black bags," and noted that "if they look suspicious, then post them. Then people will try and follow their movements using all the images."

In the process, each time a scrap of information was discovered - the color of a hat, the type of straps on a backpack, the weighted droop of a bag - it was passed out on Twitter like "Wanted" posters tacked to lampposts. It didn't matter whether it was right, wrong or even completely made up (some images posted to forums had been manipulated) - off it went, fiction and fact indistinguishable.

Some misinformation online landed on the front page of The New York Post, incorrectly identifying an innocent high school student as a suspect.

Later in the week, the Web wrongly identified one of the suspects as a student from Brown University who went missing earlier this month.

Read Mr. Bilton's article, as well as " The Pressure to Be the TV News Leader Tarnishes a Big Brand" and " Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear? " to understand the real-life consequences of the race to be first with news.

During Hurricane Sandy, news and images circulated quickly via social media. ( Poynter reported, for instance, that Instagram users were posting 10 Hurricane Sandy pictures every second at one point.)

Reports that the New York Stock Exchange was underwater and that sharks were swimming in front yards in New Jersey spread widely.

This article from The Atlantic, " InstaSnopes: Sorting the Real Sandy Photos From the Fakes, " explores the stories and photos that circulated, helping readers understand which were real and which weren't.

Why might it be dangerous to rely on social media during a crisis or disaster? What did we learn about social media from Hurricane Sandy?

Finally, you might also consider The Times's Retro Report series, documentaries exploring major news stories of the past and their lasting impact. This one looks at "a moment in 1999 so searing that it is still instantly evoked with a single word: Columbine."

As the related article says, "much of what the public came to believe about Columbine was flat-out wrong. Myths took root from the start, nurtured by frightened and confused students and amplified by news outlets running hard with rumor and conjecture" - and the way the media reports on school shootings today is still affected by those early reports.

To find many more examples of news reporting gone awry, and to consider questions of accuracy and bias in far more depth then this post has room for, we again recommend the Center for News Literacy's 14 lesson series.
News or Satire?
If you spend a lot of time on social media, you've most likely been tricked, or nearly tricked, by taking at face value a story from The Onion or some other satirical news site. In fact, in 2012 the Chinese Communist Party's news outlet may have fallen for an Onion story calling Kim Jong-un, the young, chubby North Korean ruler, the "Sexiest Man Alive for 2012."

Every week in our News Quiz, we save the 10th question for news literacy. Each lists four recent news headlines - three from The Times and one from The Onion - and asks which is which. Though we often feature wacky news as "distractors," these are not trick questions: Close reading should reveal fairly quickly which headline just can't be true.

Try it. Here are two from recent quizzes. You'll notice that not only is the "news" from The Onion improbable, the humor in it is almost always a riff on real news, so keeping up with what's going on in the world in general should make the exercise even easier:
What About The New York Times?
Though most people consider The New York Times, with its reporters, editors, fact-checkers, and ethical reporting guidelines, to be among the most reliable news sources, the paper can still make mistakes - sometimes very important ones.

In 2003, after the Jayson Blair scandal rocked the institution, The Times added more safeguards, including a public editor. This person writes about The Times and its journalism, investigates matters of journalistic integrity and works independently, outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper. The position is now held by Margaret Sullivan.

In her column, you can read her take on everything from the paper's coverage of Iraq in 2003 to its current use of anonymous sources and recent dubious reporting on hipster trends like "man buns." Anyone who has a concern about The Times can write to her at public@nytimes.com.
Related Learning Network Resources 50 Ways to Teach With Current Events News and 'News Analysis': Navigating Fact and Opinion in The Times Three Teacher-Tested Ways to Encourage Your Students to Follow Current Events This School Year Skills Practice | Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion Guest Post | Practical Tools for Teaching News Literacy Guest Post | News Literacy Is Not Optional if You Need to Be Well-Informed

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Skills and Strategies | Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources

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Update: Please also see our new, 2017 lesson, Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News _________ How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care? We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct.

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NewsELA

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Newsela | Real news reports on fake news as people try to figure out the difference

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Understanding the source is the first fake-news step.

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Opinion

Fact-checkers and students approach websites differently

Did Donald Trump support the Iraq War? Hillary Clinton says yes. He says no. Who's right?

In search of answers, many of us ask our kids to "Google" something. These so-called digital natives, who've never known a world without screens, are the household's resident fact-checkers. If anyone can find the truth, we assume, they can.

Don't be so sure.

True, many of our kids can flit between Facebook and Twitter while uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to using the Internet to get to the bottom of things, Junior's no better than the rest of us. Often he's worse.

In a study conducted by Eszter Hargittai and her colleagues at Northwestern University, 102 college students went online to answer questions about things that matter to them-like how to advise a female friend who's desperate to prevent pregnancy after her boyfriend's condom broke. How did students decide what to believe? One factor loomed largest: a site's placement in the search results. Students ignored the sponsoring organization and the article's author, blindly trusting the search engine to put the most reliable results first.

Research we've conducted at Stanford University supports these findings. Over the past 18 months, we administered assessments that tap young people's ability to judge online information. We analyzed over 7,804 responses from students in middle school through college. At every level, we were taken aback by students' lack of preparation: middle school students unable to tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story; high school students taking at face value a cooked-up chart from the Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee; college students credulously accepting a .org top-level domain name as if it were a Good Housekeeping seal.

One task asked students to determine the trustworthiness of material on the websites of two organizations: the 66,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics, established in 1930 and publisher of the journal Pediatrics, vs. the American College of Pediatricians, a fringe group that broke with the main organization in 2002 over its stance on adoption by same-sex couples. We asked 25 undergraduates at Stanford-the most selective college in the country, which rejected 95 percent of its applicants last year-to spend up to 10 minutes examining content on both sites. Students could stay on the initial web page, click on links, Google something else-anything they would normally do to reach a judgment.

More than half concluded that the article from the American College of Pediatricians, an organization that ties homosexuality to pedophilia and which the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled a hate group, was "more reliable." Even students who preferred the entry from the American Academy of Pediatrics never uncovered the differences between the two groups. Instead, they saw the two organizations as equivalent and focused their evaluations on surface features of the websites. As one student put it: "They seemed equally reliable to me. ... They are both from academies or institutions that deal with this stuff every day."

Ironically, many students learned so little because they spent most of their time reading the articles on each organization's site. But masking true intentions and ownership on the web has grown so sophisticated that to rely on the same set of skills one uses for print reading is naive. Parsing digital information before one knows if a site can be trusted is a colossal waste of time and energy.

This became clear to us when we gave our tasks to professional fact-checkers. Three strategies separate checkers from the rest of us:

* Landing on an unfamiliar site, the first thing checkers did was to leave it. If undergraduates read vertically, evaluating online articles as if they were printed news stories, fact-checkers read laterally, jumping off the original page, opening up a new tab, Googling the name of the organization or its president. Dropped in the middle of a forest, hikers know they can't divine their way out by looking at the ground. They use a compass. Similarly, fact-checkers use the vast resources of the Internet to determine where information is coming from before they read it.

* Second, fact-checkers know it's not about "About." They don't evaluate a site based solely on the description it provides about itself. If a site can masquerade as a nonpartisan think tank when funded by corporate interests and created by a Washington public relations firm, it can surely pull the wool over our eyes with a concocted "About" page.

* Third, fact-checkers look past the order of search results. Instead of trusting Google to sort pages by reliability (which reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how Google works), the checkers mined URLs and abstracts for clues. They regularly scrolled down to the bottom of the search results page in their quest to make an informed decision about where to click first.

None of this is rocket science. But it's often not taught in school. In fact, some schools have special filters that direct students to already vetted sites, effectively creating a generation of bubble children who never develop the immunities needed to ward off the toxins that float across their Facebook feeds, where students most often get their news. This approach protects young people from the real world rather than preparing them to deal with it.

After the vice presidential debate, Hillary Clinton's campaign tweeted, "Unfortunately for Mike Pence and Donald Trump, Google exists (and we aren't stupid)." Yes, Google puts vast quantities of information at our fingertips. But it also puts the onus for fact-checking on us. For every political question swirling in this election, there are countless websites vying for our attention-front groups and fake news sites right next to legitimate and reliable sources.

We agree with the tweet from the Clinton campaign. We're not stupid. But when we turn to our screens for information and answers, we need to get a lot smarter about how we decide what's true and what's not.

Published in Print: November 2, 2016, as What Students Don't Know About Fact-Checking

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Why Students Can't Google Their Way to the Truth

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Opinion Did Donald Trump support the Iraq War? Hillary Clinton says yes. He says no. Who's right? In search of answers, many of us ask our kids to "Google" something. These so-called digital natives, who've never known a world without screens, are the household's resident fact-checkers.

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Editor's Note: The negative effects of so-called fake news were felt in the 2016 presidential election and a subsequent dangerous situation at a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, highlighting the need for news and media literacy. A recent by the Stanford Graduate School of Education found that young people are particularly susceptible to fake news: the majority could not tell the difference between fake news and real news. Part of the solution will involve providing students with the media literacy skills they need to evaluate sources, according to the lead author of the study Sam Wineburg. NewsHour Extra's teacher resource website also provides this study lesson plan .
Did Donald Trump support the Iraq War? Hillary Clinton said yes. He said no. Who was right?

In search of answers, many of us ask our kids to "Google" something. These so-called digital natives, who have never known a world without screens, are the household's resident fact-checkers. If anyone can find the truth, we assume, they can.

Don't be so sure.

True, many of our kids can flit between Facebook and Twitter while uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to using the Internet to get to the bottom of things, teens are no better than the rest of us. Often they are worse.

In a study conducted by Eszter Hargittai and her colleagues at Northwestern University, 102 college students went online to answer questions about things that matter to them-like how to advise a female friend who's desperate to prevent pregnancy after her boyfriend's condom broke. How did students decide what to believe? One factor loomed largest: a site's placement in the search results. Students ignored the sponsoring organization and the article's author, blindly trusting the search engine to put the most reliable results first.

Research we've conducted at Stanford University supports these findings. Over the past 18 months, we administered assessments that tap young people's ability to judge online information. We analyzed over 7,804 responses from students in middle school through college. At every level, we were taken aback by students' lack of preparation: middle school students unable to tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story; high school students taking at face value a cooked-up chart from the Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee; college students credulously accepting a .org top-level domain name as if it were a Good Housekeeping seal.

When it comes to using the Internet to get to the bottom of things, Junior's no better than the rest of us. Often he's worse.

One task asked students to determine the trustworthiness of material on the websites of two organizations: the 66,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics, established in 1930 and publisher of the journal Pediatrics, vs. the American College of Pediatricians, a fringe group that broke with the main organization in 2002 over its stance on adoption by same-sex couples. We asked 25 undergraduates at Stanford-the most selective college in the country, which rejected 95 percent of its applicants last year-to spend up to 10 minutes examining content on both sites. Students could stay on the initial web page, click on links, Google something else-anything they would normally do to reach a judgment.

More than half concluded that the article from the American College of Pediatricians, an organization that ties homosexuality to pedophilia and which the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled a hate group, was "more reliable." Even students who preferred the entry from the American Academy of Pediatrics never uncovered the differences between the two groups. Instead, they saw the two organizations as equivalent and focused their evaluations on surface features of the websites. As one student put it: "They seemed equally reliable to me. ... They are both from academies or institutions that deal with this stuff every day."

Ironically, many students learned so little because they spent most of their time reading the articles on each organization's site. But masking true intentions and ownership on the web has grown so sophisticated that to rely on the same set of skills one uses for print reading is naive. Parsing digital information before one knows if a site can be trusted is a colossal waste of time and energy.

This became clear to us when we gave our tasks to professional fact-checkers. Three strategies separate checkers from the rest of us:

* Landing on an unfamiliar site, the first thing checkers did was to leave it. If undergraduates read vertically, evaluating online articles as if they were printed news stories, fact-checkers read laterally, jumping off the original page, opening up a new tab, Googling the name of the organization or its president. Dropped in the middle of a forest, hikers know they can't divine their way out by looking at the ground. They use a compass. Similarly, fact-checkers use the vast resources of the Internet to determine where information is coming from before they read it.

* Second, fact-checkers know it's not about "About." They don't evaluate a site based solely on the description it provides about itself. If a site can masquerade as a nonpartisan think tank when funded by corporate interests and created by a Washington public relations firm, it can surely pull the wool over our eyes with a concocted "About" page.

* Third, fact-checkers look past the order of search results. Instead of trusting Google to sort pages by reliability (which reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how Google works), the checkers mined URLs and abstracts for clues. They regularly scrolled down to the bottom of the search results page in their quest to make an informed decision about where to click first.

None of this is rocket science. But it's often not taught in school. In fact, some schools have special filters that direct students to already vetted sites, effectively creating a generation of bubble children who never develop the immunities needed to ward off the toxins that float across their Facebook feeds, where students most often get their news. This approach protects young people from the real world rather than preparing them to deal with it.

After the vice presidential debate, Hillary Clinton's campaign tweeted, "Unfortunately for Mike Pence and Donald Trump, Google exists (and we aren't stupid)." Yes, Google puts vast quantities of information at our fingertips. But it also puts the onus for fact-checking on us. For every political question swirling in this election, there are countless websites vying for our attention-front groups and fake news sites right next to legitimate and reliable sources.

We agree with the tweet from the Clinton campaign. We're not stupid. But when we turn to our screens for information and answers, we need to get a lot smarter about how we decide what's true and what's not.

The PBS NewsHour'sTeachers' Lounge blog, written by teachers or school-related staff, gives the public a glimpse into how current issues affect life inside schools.
This story was produced by Education Week, a nonprofit, independent news organization with comprehensive pre-K-12 news and analysis. Read the original post here.

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Column: Most teens can't tell fake from real news

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Editor's Note: The negative effects of so-called fake news were felt in the 2016 presidential election and a subsequent dangerous situation at a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, highlighting the need for news and media literacy. A recent by the Stanford Graduate School of Education found that young people are particularly susceptible to fake news: the majority could not tell the difference between fake news and real news.

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We were guaranteed a free press, We were not guaranteed a neutral or a true press. We can celebrate the journalistic freedom to publish without interference from the state. We can also celebrate our freedom to share multiple stories through multiple lenses.

But it has always been up to the reader or viewer to make the reliability and credibility decisions. It is up to the reader or viewer to negotiate truth.

News literacy is complicated. In our attempts to discern truth, we are confounded by a 24/7 news cycle. News hits us across media platforms and devices, in a landscape populated by all degrees of professional journalists and citizen journalists and satirists and hoaxers and folks paid or personally moved to write intentionally fake news. All of this is compounded by the glories and the drawbacks of user-generated content, citizen journalism, and a world of new news choices.

Professional journalists themselves face new practical and ethical challenges relating to anonymity, privacy and safety, as well as reliability in their attempts to verify sources of breaking news from social media and user-generated content in all media formats. (The Verification Handbooks are a wonderful lens into this complicated process.) The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics lists four guiding principles; the first of which is seek truth and report it.

Even news that is vetted by editors and publishers sometimes emerges from that process a bit processed, perhaps leaning in a particular direction.

And word choice itself is connected to truth. Over the course of the last decade we've seen professional news organizations and governments struggle with the politics and potential loadedness of words, notably terrorist and illegal immigrant. (See the AP Stylebook Blog and Reuters Handbook of Journalism.)
On news literacy
In its glossary, Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy defines news literacy as:

The ability to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports, whether they come via print, television or the Internet.

Our kids need new types of filters. Beyond larger notions of information literacy, I see the case for a specific focus on news literacy. Not as a lesson of good vs. bad. Not as an attempt to pitch traditional media against social media or peer review against popular publication. Not through the examination of hoaky hoax sites. And certainly not as a one-of, checklist type of lesson for a 9th grade social studies teacher in September.

We need to teach the important lessons of everyday civics for new consumption and production landscapes. These lessons involve sustained critical thinking, a practice to engage in regularly as we read and view and inquire with learners of all ages acros s disciplines.

A recent Stanford Graduate School of Education report, Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Literacy assessed the news literacy of students from middle school through college.

Students were asked to perform such tasks as: determine the trustworthiness of tweets, distinguish between news articles and opinion columns, identify ads on a news website, compare and evaluate posts from a newspaper's comment section, identify the blue checkmark that distinguishes a verified Facebook account from a fake one, consider the relative strength of evidence presented by two posters in a Facebook exchange, decide whether or not to trust a photo on a photo-sharing website, determine whether a website can be trusted in an open web search, search to verify a claim about a controversial issue, assess the reliability of a partisan website, identify the strengths and weaknesses of an online video. (p. 6) (Note: Most of these tasks could authentically be taught in our libraries during the natural course of any inquiry project.)

The Executive Summary shared disturbing results:

By high school, we would hope that students reading about gun laws would notice that a chart came from a gun owners' political action committee. And, in 2016, we would hope college students, who spend hours each day online, would look beyond a .org URL and ask who's behind a site that presents only one side of a contentious issue. But in every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students' lack of preparation . . .

Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our awareness of this problem and our educational response to it. At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish. (pp. 5-6)

I see a serious need for librarians to build a few seaworthy arks from the news media flood to aid students in discerning credibility, reliability, and bias in context of their information needs and the context of the text itself. I can see us introducing the broad notion of triangulation to children for whom the word may be difficult to say.
What's going on? Fake news
In the weeks leading up to the election we were drawn to stories about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump and WikiLeaks' confirmation that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS.

Fake news is not new. But its potential for virality is and our awareness of it is newly awakened. Some suggested it played a role in the outcome of the election. Google and Facebook both announced that they would try to eliminate fake news from appearing in their result lists and newsfeeds by blocking fake news sources from using their ad networks.

This video TEDEd by Damon Brown offers a student-friendly explanation as well as strategies for analyzing news sources:

And fake news is but one flavor of news that is less than accurate. It is but one bucket into which readers and viewers should sort types of truthiness.

Fake news itself comes in a variety of flavors:

Pure fake news sites use fabricated stories to lure traffic, encourage clicks (click bait), influence or profit using intentionally deceptive, but highly intriguing, often sensational information.

Hoax sites also share false information with the intention to trick readers/viewers

Satirical sites present news with a comical, often exaggerated spin

Born digital images and edited images alter and often misrepresent visual reality

In addition, sometimes journalists just get things wrong. Their sources they choose to interview may not offer truth or a full picture. Stories reported in process lack the wisdom of hindsight and may be missing full context.
Post-truth or truthiness
Oxford Dictionaries recently announced post-truth as its 2016 international Word of the Year. Oxford defines the word as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

It is well worth noting that the concept is not new. Oxford traces post-truth's history from a peripheral term simmering for at least a decade to its dramatic spike this year: in the context of the Brexit referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US, and becoming associated overwhelmingly with a particu lar noun, in the phrase "post-truth politics."

Back in 2005, Stephen Colbert introduced the Word truthiness, now defined by Wikipedia as a quality characterizing a "truth" that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

While we need to reject the notion of relying solely on from-the-gut verification systems, it is important to recognize that we are not always looking at a binary situation.

Credibility decisions are complicated. Most news is not simply fake or true. News from traditional sources can be suspect as well. Professional journalists engage in rigorous fact-checking and adhere to sets of professional ethics, but they are not entirely immune to bias or agenda or the pressures of a deadline. A single story may tell a part of a larger story at the moment of its publishing. Of course, traditional newspapers feature writing of all sorts-straight reporting, editorials, features, columns, advertisements and comments in their digital versions. Several traditional news sources are to various degrees either right or left leaning. While some admit their bias, others do not.

It is impossible to dismiss the complication that our political news consumption habits have shifted. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr played huge roles in disseminating political information during the past election season. A May 2016 Pew Research Center study found that a majority of U.S. adults - 62% - get news on social media, and 18% do so often. In terms of the total population, this translates to social media news reaching 67% of U.S. adults. The two-thirds of Facebook users who get news there, then, amount to 44% of the general population. Consider this results of this report in the context of with the decline of the newspaper industry also documented by recent Pew Research Center data.

Some Rules of thumb:

Check About and About me pages: Clicking on or investigate authors names to consider their credentials in context should be a regular part of the research journey. (See other tricks below.)

Interrogate urls: We see quite a bit of domain manipulation these days. For instance, what looks like an .edu domain, followed by .co or "lo" is likely a fake or deceptive site. If you are you seeing a slightly variant version of a well-known URL, do a little investigating.

Suspect the sensational: When we see something posted that looks sensational, it is even more important to be skeptical. Exaggerated and provocative headlines with excessive use of capital letters or emotional language are serious red flags.

Go back to the source: When an article mentions a study, if you can, go directly to the source and check its bona fides as well.

Go back to the story again (and again): When was the story written? What is its context? Breaking news will continue to break. Early reports are built from limited information so you'll want to watch a story grow into a fuller picture.

Think outside the reliability box: The old checklist-type tools we used to evaluate websites do not necessarily work. ACRL's Framework reminds us that the notion of reliability can be fluid. Experts know how to seek authoritative voices but also recognize that unlikely voices can be authoritative, depending on need. On Twitter's 10th birthday this year, Poynter, the respected journalism portal, listed 10 Twitter How Tos -guides for using Twitter for journalism from its own archive. Students can benefit from these tips too.

Triangulate: Try to verify or corroborate the information in multiple sources, including traditional media and library databases. You can begin to rule out the hoaxes by checking out sites like the nonprofit, nonpartisan FactCheck.org, or popular sites like Snopes or Hoax-Slayer.

What exactly are you reading?: Even when you find yourself in a traditional news site, identify what type of writing you are reading. Is it news reporting, or a feature story, or an editorial, or work by a guest blogger, or a review, or an op-ed or a disguised ad, or a comment?

Check your own search attitude and biases: Is your search language biased in any way? Are you paying more attention to the information that confirms your own beliefs and ignoring evidence that does not?

Use a little energy: Have you simply satisficed or have you done your due diligence in seeking and validating the best possible sources across media sources?

Stop before you forward (or use): When you see a widely shared or forwarded link, be suspicious of a hoax or a fake story. Can you verify the information outside of the social media platform on which you discovered it?

Be suspicious of pictures!: Not all photographs tell truth or unfiltered truth. Images are normally edited or process, but sometimes they are digitally manipulated. Some are born digital. A Google reverse image search can help discover the source of an image and its possible variations.

Remember Time Magazine's darkening of the OJ mugshot?

Remember Sandy?

Infographics are carefully constructed visual media messages. The data, the evidence, the sources, and the arguments they present beg careful deconstruction, scrutiny and analysis. (See my post.)
Some news literacy vocabulary to introduce in talking about credibility:

cloaked sites appear unbiased and professional but actually advocate on behalf of an organization or cause while concealing their true sources of funding and purpose.

confirmation bias: the tendency to believe information is credible if it conforms to the reader's/viewer's existing belief system, or not credible if it does not conform

container collapse: my own term for our trouble discerning the original information container, format or information type-blog, book, pamphlet, government document, chapter, magazine, newspaper, journal, or section of the newspaper or magazine or journal-once publishing cues are removed and every source looks like a digital page or a printout.

content farm or content mill: a company that employs a staff of freelance writers to create content designed to satisfy search engine retrieval algorithms with the goal of attracting views and advertising revenue.

In news media an echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an "enclosed" system, where different or competing views are censored, disallowed, or otherwise underrepresentedecho chamber: "." (Wikipedia)

fact checking: the act of verifying assertions either prior to publication or after dissemination of the content

filter bubble: When search tools present with the stories we are likely to click on or share based on our past activity, potentially affirming our biases, we need may be experiencing what Eli Pariser calls a filter bubble,

herding phenomenon: as more journalists begin to cover a story, even more journalists are likely to join the herd, imitating the angle the story initially took rather than developing alternate or original approaches or angles.

native advertising: paid, sponsored content designed to look like the legitimate content produced by the media outlet

satisficing: a portmanteau of the words satisfy and suffice introduced by Herbert Simon in 1956 to refer to the tendency of people, bounded by time limitations, to select good enough information over optimal information

sockpuppet: an online identify created to pose as a party unaffiliated with the media puppeteer in order to deceive.

triangulation or cross verification: Researchers establish validity by using several research methods and by analyzing and examining multiple perspectives and sources in the hope that diverse viewpoints will can shed greater light on a topic.

virality: the rapid circulation of media from one user to another. When we forward sensational stories, often from social media without checking their credibility in other sources, we increase their virality.

Resources for a post truth teaching toolkit:

ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Authority Is Constructed and Contextual: Though aimed at university students, this important document reframes the way we consider authority and is well worth examining with high school students and faculty. The Framework recommends the following student dispositions:Learners who are developing their information literate abilities

develop and maintain an open mind when encountering varied and sometimes conflicting perspectives;

motivate themselves to find authoritative sources, recognizing that authority may be conferred or manifested in unexpected ways;

develop awareness of the importance of assessing content with a skeptical stance and with a self-awareness of their own biases and worldview;

question traditional notions of granting authority and recognize the value of diverse ideas and worldviews;

are conscious that maintaining these attitudes and actions requires frequent self-evaluation.

False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical "News" Sources: a dynamic Google Doc filled with tips from Melissa Zimdars, Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at Merrimack College.

The Center for News Literacy from Stony Brook University's School of Journalism, offers an impressive Digital Resources Center that includes

Ripped from the Headlines: Fresh news literacy lessons, based on the latest news, ready to use in class

Course Pack: organized around eight major concepts, the 14-module curriculum takes students from the first information revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the Digital Age of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. Each lesson stands alone or can easily be integrated into your program. Don't miss the very useful new Glossary.

Get a Global View: Instructional resources from the Center's international partners

DIY News Literacy Lessons: Inspiration and lessons templates for creating your own instruction around news literacy concepts.

News Literacy Project: Begun by an LA Times investigative reporter and supported by several newspapers and news organizations, the NLP is an innovative national education program that equips middle school and high school students with the tools to be smart, active consumers of news and information and engaged, informed citizens. Don't miss the four modules, lessons and Check Tool in the Checkology Virtual Classroom.

NewseumED: Learning tools on media literacy. Don't miss the Resources for Promoting Dialogue Post Election and Today's Front Pages

Center for Media Literacy: Dedicated to leadership, education and professional development, the pioneering CML offers a free Global OnRamp (in multiple languages) built around its research-based framework and five key questions for deconstructing and constructing media.

Media Education Lab: Teaching Resources: The University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication and Media offers a wealth of resources. Don't miss Mind Over Media, a crowdsourced website that contains diverse examples of contemporary propaganda on a wide range of social, political, economic and environmental topics, as well as the six-lesson CCSS-aligned high school curriculum unit on contemporary propaganda.

Frank Baker's Media Literacy Clearinghouse: Don't miss the Media's Role in Politics

Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting: Aimed at professional journalists, but very useful for high school, this companion to the Verification Handbook for Emergency Coverage, which addresses breaking news, provides the fundamentals of online search and research techniques for investigations and takes a deeper into techniques for user generated content investigations

Time For Kids shares a video News Matters in which 6th graders discuss what they are learning about critical thinking and the news. critically about the information they come across.

Project CORA: Community of Online Research Assignments an open access resource for faculty and librarians

Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources NYTimes Learning Network

SchoolJournalism.org: News, Journalism and Media Literacy: This rich portal, administered by the Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, contains a wealth of resources and suggested tools for teachers of journalism and the rest of us. Check out the interdisciplinary News Literacy Model Curriculum and Lesson Plans as well as the Six Principles of News Literacy

Teaching Information Literacy Now, from SLJ Librarian of the Year finalist, Laura Gardner

Fake 'News' in a 'Post-truth' World from reflection from Professor Judi Moreillon who shares: Fake "news" and a "post-truth" world call all school librarians to step up and lead

Resources for building a news literacy toolkit

FactCheck.org: Annenberg Public Policy Center's nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Check out the post That Chain E-Mail Your Friend Sent to You is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously, for its Key Characteristics of Bogusness and the Viral Spiral page for claims previously checked

Washington Post's Fact Checker: The purpose of this Web site, and an accompanying column in the Sunday print edition of The Washington Post, is to "truth squad" the statements of political figures regarding issues of great importance, be they national, international or local.

PolitiFact.com: a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics, run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times. (Note: I discovered their truth-o-meter after I created the little image for this post.)

Snopes: Since way back in the 90s, Snopes has been dispelling urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.

Hoax-Slayer: Australian Brett Christensen has been debunking email and social media hoaxes and spam since 2003

Craig Silverman's BuzzFeed blog: The founding editor for BuzzFeed, Canada has been writing for many years for a variety of publications on media accuracy and verification issues.

Whois Lookup: This tool allows you to investigate the domain behind a website

CRAAP Test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose posted by the Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.

Kathy Schrock's 5W's of Website Evaluation

Does This Website Smell Funny to You? Amy Gillespie's FART test posted in Knowledge Quest will grab middle schoolers' attention

Evaluating Sources Using the RADAR Framework: RADAR stands for relevance, authority, date, relevance, rationale. Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470-478.

Previous NeverEnding Search posts: Other favorite resources:

Abilock, Debbie. (2012). True-or not?. Educational Leadership, 69(6), 70-74. Debbie shares her quick and dirty rules of thumb-digital reading strategies, in fact-that will intrigue students, spark their curiosity, and serve as sensible entry points to more sophisticated analyses of ideas. Don't miss the section on Weighing Truths in Wikipedia.

Stanford History Education Group. (2016). Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Literacy.

Stebbins, Leslie F. (2015). Finding Reliable Information Online: Adventures of an Information Sleuth. Rowman & Littlefield.

Stevenson, Sara. (2016). Information Literacy Lessons Crucial in a Post Truth World. Knowledge Quest.
And finally . . .
Nurturing information literate, responsible, active citizens is what librarians do. There are no guarantees of truth from any source. We teach students to be discerning consumers of information. We teach them to deconstruct media messages and construct their own messages. We teach them to interrogate their sources. As the landscape continues to shift, librarians must update our own skill sets and toolkits to guide students in navigating a growingly nuanced universe of news. We must also examine and recognize our own biases so that we are open to contrary and conflicting ideas. This is our banner to wave, our curriculum to co-teach.

Of course, following the paths I've described for critical vetting of the news is work!

This is a new landscape from the one we taught in even five years ago. We need new compasses for navigation.

I do not believe we can stem the tide of fake news and truthiness and political memes and viral rumors and quick rushes to judgment. I do believe that together we can build a few arks.

Welcome to the brave new world of truth.

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Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world

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We were guaranteed a free press, We were not guaranteed a neutral or a true press. We can celebrate the journalistic freedom to publish without interference from the state. We can also celebrate our freedom to share multiple stories through multiple lenses.

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Fake news stories can have real-life consequences. On Sunday, police said a man with a rifle who claimed to be "self-investigating" a baseless online conspiracy theory entered a Washington, D.C., pizzeria and fired the weapon inside the restaurant.

So, yes, fake news is a big problem.

These stories have gotten a lot of attention, with headlines claiming Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump in November's election and sites like American News sharing misleading stories or taking quotes out of context. And when sites like DC Gazette share stories about people who allegedly investigated the Clinton family being found dead, the stories go viral and some people believe them. Again, these stories are not true in any way.

Stopping the proliferation of fake news isn't just the responsibility of the platforms used to spread it. Those who consume news also need to find ways of determining if what they're reading is true. We offer several tips below.

The idea is that people should have a fundamental sense of media literacy. And based on a study recently released by Stanford University researchers, many people don't.

Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and history at Stanford and the lead author of the study, said a solution is for all readers to read like fact checkers. But how do fact checkers do their job?

Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter, says fact checkers have a process for each claim they deal with.

"You'll isolate a claim that has something that can be objectively verified, you will seek the best primary sources in that topic. Find whether they match or refute or prove the claim being made, and then present with all limitations the data and what the data says about the claim being made," Mantzarlis says.

That's the framework for professionals, but there are ways for everyone to do a bit of fact checking themselves.

Melissa Zimdars is an assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. When she saw her students referencing questionable sources, she created and shared a document with them of how to think about sources, as well as a list of misleading, satirical and fake sites.

Both Mantzarlis and Zimdars agreed there are a few best practices people can use when reading articles online.
Pay attention to the domain and URL
Established news organizations usually own their domains and they have a standard look that you are probably familiar with. Sites with such endings like .com.co should make you raise your eyebrows and tip you off that you need to dig around more to see if they can be trusted. This is true even when the site looks professional and has semi-recognizable logos. For example, abcnews.com is a legitimate news source, but abcnews.com.co is not, despite its similar appearance.
Read the "About Us" section
Most sites will have a lot of information about the news outlet, the company that runs it, members of leadership, and the mission and ethics statement behind an organization. The language used here is straightforward. If it's melodramatic and seems overblown, you should be skeptical. Also, you should be able to find out more information about the organization's leaders in places other than that site.
Look at the quotes in a story
Or rather, look at the lack of quotes. Most publications have multiple sources in each story who are professionals and have expertise in the fields they talk about. If it's a serious or controversial issue, there are more likely to be quotes - and lots of them. Look for professors or other academics who can speak to the research they've done. And if they are talking about research, look up those studies.
Look at who said them
Then, see who said the quotes, and what they said. Are they a reputable source with a title that you can verify through a quick Google search? Say you're looking at a story and it says President Obama said he wanted to take everyone's guns away. And then there's a quote. Obama is an official who has almost everything he says recorded and archived. There are transcripts for pretty much any address or speech he has given. Google those quotes. See what the speech was about, who he was addressing and when it happened. Even if he did an exclusive interview with a publication, that same quote will be referenced in other stories, saying he said it while talking to the original publication.
Check the comments
A lot of these fake and misleading stories are shared on social media platforms. Headlines are meant to get the reader's attention, but they're also supposed to accurately reflect what the story is about. Lately, that hasn't been the case. Headlines often will be written in exaggerated language with the intention of being misleading and then attached to stories that are about a completely different topic or just not true. These stories usually generate a lot of comments on Facebook or Twitter. If a lot of these comments call out the article for being fake or misleading, it probably is.
Reverse image search
A picture should be accurate in illustrating what the story is about. This often doesn't happen. If people who write these fake news stories don't even leave their homes or interview anyone for the stories, it's unlikely they take their own pictures. Do a little detective work and reverse search for the image on Google. You can do this by right-clicking on the image and choosing to search Google for it. If the image is appearing on a lot of stories about many different topics, there's a good chance it's not actually an image of what it says it was on the first story.

These tips are just a start at determining what type of news an article is. Zimdars outlined these and others in a guide for her students.

If you do these steps, you're helping yourself and you're helping others by not increasing the circulation of these stories.

And you won't be the only one trying to stop the spread of this false content. The company leaders behind the platforms these stories are shared on are trying to figure out how to fix the issue from their side, but they are also trying to make sure not to limit anyone's right to freedom of speech. It's a tricky position to be in, but they've said they'll try. In the end, it really does depend on taking responsibility and being an engaged consumer of news.

Here's one last thing. Satirical publications exist and serve a purpose, but are clearly labeled as exaggerated and humorous by the writers and owners. Some of the more well-known ones like The Onionand ClickHole use satire to talk about current events. If people don't understand that, they might share these articles after reading them in the literal sense.

If this happens or if you see your friends sharing blatantly fake news, be a friend and kindly tell them it's not real. Don't shy away from these conversations even if they might be uncomfortable. As said, everyone has to help fix the fake news problem.
Wynne Davis is a Digital News intern.

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Fake Or Real? How To Self-Check The News And Get The Facts

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Your friend shares a story on Facebook. You read the headline and you think it's too good to be true, but it looks like it's from a news site. Experts offer tips to help you sniff out fact from fake.

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Digital Resource Center | Stony Brook Center for News Literacy

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Learn the basics of the Stony Brook Model of News Literacy through our online short course

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Update: Please also see our new, 2017 lesson, Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News

_________

How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care?

We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct. 6, and try to answer them with resources from The Times as well as from Edutopia, the Center for News Literacy, TEDEd and the NewseumEd.

Although we doubt we need to convince teachers that this skill is important, we like the way Peter Adams from the News Literacy Project frames it in a post for Edutopia.

As he points out, every teacher is familiar with "digital natives" and the way they seem to have been born with the ability to use technology. But what about "digital naïveté" - when students trust sources of information that are obviously unreliable?

Even though they know how easy it is to create and distribute information online, many young people believe - sometimes passionately - the most dubious rumors, tempting hoaxes (including convincingly staged encounters designed to look raw and unplanned) and implausible theories.

Below, a roundup of tools, questions, activities and case studies we hope can help reduce this digital naïveté. Tell us what you think - or what we missed.
Getting Started: What is News Literacy and Why Do You Need It? Video and a related lesson plan from TEDEd.
The concept of " media literacy " has been around for decades, but "news literacy" is a new field that is growing as fast as the boundaries around old definitions of journalism are being dismantled.

The Center for News Literacy explains it this way:

The most profound communications revolution since the invention of Gutenberg's printing press seems to make it harder, not easier, to determine the truth. The digital revolution is characterized by a flood of information and misinformation that news consumers can access from anywhere at any time.

News aggregators, bloggers, pundits, provocateurs, commentators and "citizen journalists" are competing with traditional journalists for public attention. Uninformed opinion masquerades as news. Lines are blurring between legitimate journalism and the propaganda, entertainment, self-promotion and unmediated information on the Internet.

This superabundance of information has made it imperative that citizens learn to judge the reliability of news reports and other sources of information that is passed along their social networks.

Teachers can check out Edutopia's Five-Minute Film Festival on News Literacy to find more resources on the concept, or, to explore it in much greater depth, visit the Center for News Literacy's Digital Resource Center to access a comprehensive curriculum series "From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg in 14 Lessons."

Before you embark on a full unit, however, we suggest two exercises.
First, Ask Your Students to Weigh In

More people have died from selfies than shark attacks this year: //t.co/0IcHpOaWgY pic.twitter.com/1Ij5cG6iMs

- Mashable (@mashable) September 27, 2015

Mashable claims that, in 2015, selfies have killed more people than sharks. The Washington Post's Intersect says that's ridiculous. What do you think?
A couple of years ago, we asked students on our blog, How Do You Know if What You Read Online Is True?

One of our daily Student Opinion questions, it was inspired by a Times article that week, "If a Story Is Viral, Truth May Be Taking a Beating," that noted, "viral trumps verified ... as long as the clicks keep coming."

Here are some of the questions we posed in the course of that discussion. You might invite your own students to talk about them in pairs, small groups or as a whole class before you begin a news literacy curriculum - and then revisit their answers after you finish. And since all of our Student Opinion questions are still open to comment, they can also post their thoughts to our blog:

1. How many viral posts - whether articles, videos or photographs - do you click on each week? How many on average do you share on social media?

2. How often do you check to make sure what you are sharing or commenting on is real? How do you go about finding that out?

3. How much do you care if a story purporting to be real actually is?

4. How much more careful are you with online sources when you are doing work for school than when you are simply surfing the web for fun? How do you decide what is a reliable source for your schoolwork?

5. What sources of news do you usually trust? What sources do you rarely trust? Why?

6. What responsibility do journalists and news outlets who post or link these stories have to make sure they are true? Is it their job to make sure something is not a hoax before they cover or link to it? How do you think they go about verifying information?

7. Can embellished, or outright fake, stories have real-world consequences? What examples can you give?

8. In a world where news can be reported by anyone with a cellphone, how do you decide what is true? What questions should you ask to find out? What personal rules might you develop to decide what news you post and when you post it? What harm might be done by not following those rules?
Then, Impose a 48-Hour News Blackout
Another introductory exercise that can help students examine their media habits and show them why and how news matters comes from the Center for News Literacy, as described in a 2007 Times article about its work:

At the outset of the course, students are required to impose a 48-hour news blackout on themselves. They are not to watch, read or listen to the news, including weather reports and sports scores. The idea is to emphasize the role that such information plays in their lives, often without students' realizing it.

You can find more about that idea here.
Tools and Strategies: How to Tell Fake News From Real News Worst Twerk Fail EVER - Girl Catches Fire Mexican Red Rump Tarantula Missing in Brooklyn Post a Facebook Copyright Status to Protect Your Information
These stories all went viral on social media, but if you click the links, you'll see all of them turned out to be hoaxes. And yet, sometimes something that sounds fake - like this story about West Point cadets who "weaponized" a pillow fight - isn't.

How can you tell? Before you hit "share," what questions should you ask?

First, suggests Chad Lorenz in a piece for Slate that explores the need for news literacy curriculums, consider the places from which you routinely get information:

Today a tour through your social media news feed might take you to Mental Floss, Dadaviz, Colossal, Cracked, Dangerous Minds, Uproxx. How is a reader to know what from this assortment of blogs and webzines can be trusted? What about a site like Inquisitr? ( Approach with caution.) What about Before It's News? (Trick question: That one is definitely not to be trusted.) While it might seem easy to distinguish real news from fake news, many people, including experienced journalists, get suckered more often than you would think. Students, as heavy users of social media, where fake news and hoaxes proliferate, should think about their own responsibility to share reliable information and not perpetuate misinformation.

Once you've done that, you might next consult the Newseum's popular Believe It Or Not? lesson plan that walks teachers and students through basic news literacy. Students learn to ask these six "consumer questions" when vetting a story:

Who made this?

How was this made?

Why was this made?

When was this made?

What is this missing?

Where do I go from here?

Another method for questioning sources of information is the mnemonic the students at Intermediate School 303 in Coney Island use: IMVAIN.

Independent sources are preferable to self-interested sources.

Multiple sources are preferable to a report based on a single source.

Sources who Verify or provide verifiable information are preferable to those who merely assert.

Authoritative and/or Informed sources are preferable to sources who are uninformed or lack authoritative background.

Named sources are better than anonymous ones.

Watch a video and learn more about how they use this technique, from the Center for News Literacy, here, then try it yourself with this checklist.

Finally, here are some guidelines specifically about breaking news from NPR's On The Media:
More Sites and Tools for Fact-Checking What You Read Going Further: Applying Your Skills, Reading Case Studies and More Practice With Content From Your News Feeds
Go through your social media feeds or your daily newspaper or both, and choose one news story, then try asking the six questions the Newseum suggests. (To learn more about how to apply each individual question, consult this resource.)

Or, compare two or more news reports on the same topic but from different news outlets to see how the same story is covered in each. You might compare lead stories or, via the Newseum's daily gallery, compare newspaper front pages from around the world, whether from that day or from big news events of years past. Or, pick a divisive or controversial topic and look at how different news sources have handled the subject.

Remember as you read that news outlets feature both straight news reporting as well as opinion about the news, and that sometimes those distinctions can blur. How can you tell the difference?

If you are a teacher doing this with an entire class, you and your students might eventually create a full classroom gallery walk of news items that highlight some of the issues raised in this post.
Learn From Some Famous Case Studies
So far most of the examples we've provided have been fairly silly - pigs rescuing goats, twerking problems - but there can be serious consequences to inaccurate news reporting, and to contributing to viral stories by sharing them yourself.

And sometimes, even generally reliable sources will make mistakes.

For instance, just after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, the F.B.I. released pictures and video of two young men who officials believed may have been responsible for the explosions, and the Internet quickly offered to help find them. Nick Bilton writes about what happened next:

In a scene metaphorically reminiscent of a movie in which vigilantes swarm the streets with pitchforks and lanterns, people took to Reddit, the popular community and social news Web site, and started scouring images posted online from the bombings.

One Reddit forum told users to search for "people carrying black bags," and noted that "if they look suspicious, then post them. Then people will try and follow their movements using all the images."

In the process, each time a scrap of information was discovered - the color of a hat, the type of straps on a backpack, the weighted droop of a bag - it was passed out on Twitter like "Wanted" posters tacked to lampposts. It didn't matter whether it was right, wrong or even completely made up (some images posted to forums had been manipulated) - off it went, fiction and fact indistinguishable.

Some misinformation online landed on the front page of The New York Post, incorrectly identifying an innocent high school student as a suspect.

Later in the week, the Web wrongly identified one of the suspects as a student from Brown University who went missing earlier this month.

Read Mr. Bilton's article, as well as " The Pressure to Be the TV News Leader Tarnishes a Big Brand" and " Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear? " to understand the real-life consequences of the race to be first with news.

During Hurricane Sandy, news and images circulated quickly via social media. ( Poynter reported, for instance, that Instagram users were posting 10 Hurricane Sandy pictures every second at one point.)

Reports that the New York Stock Exchange was underwater and that sharks were swimming in front yards in New Jersey spread widely.

This article from The Atlantic, " InstaSnopes: Sorting the Real Sandy Photos From the Fakes, " explores the stories and photos that circulated, helping readers understand which were real and which weren't.

Why might it be dangerous to rely on social media during a crisis or disaster? What did we learn about social media from Hurricane Sandy?

Finally, you might also consider The Times's Retro Report series, documentaries exploring major news stories of the past and their lasting impact. This one looks at "a moment in 1999 so searing that it is still instantly evoked with a single word: Columbine."

As the related article says, "much of what the public came to believe about Columbine was flat-out wrong. Myths took root from the start, nurtured by frightened and confused students and amplified by news outlets running hard with rumor and conjecture" - and the way the media reports on school shootings today is still affected by those early reports.

To find many more examples of news reporting gone awry, and to consider questions of accuracy and bias in far more depth then this post has room for, we again recommend the Center for News Literacy's 14 lesson series.
News or Satire?
If you spend a lot of time on social media, you've most likely been tricked, or nearly tricked, by taking at face value a story from The Onion or some other satirical news site. In fact, in 2012 the Chinese Communist Party's news outlet may have fallen for an Onion story calling Kim Jong-un, the young, chubby North Korean ruler, the "Sexiest Man Alive for 2012."

Every week in our News Quiz, we save the 10th question for news literacy. Each lists four recent news headlines - three from The Times and one from The Onion - and asks which is which. Though we often feature wacky news as "distractors," these are not trick questions: Close reading should reveal fairly quickly which headline just can't be true.

Try it. Here are two from recent quizzes. You'll notice that not only is the "news" from The Onion improbable, the humor in it is almost always a riff on real news, so keeping up with what's going on in the world in general should make the exercise even easier:
What About The New York Times?
Though most people consider The New York Times, with its reporters, editors, fact-checkers, and ethical reporting guidelines, to be among the most reliable news sources, the paper can still make mistakes - sometimes very important ones.

In 2003, after the Jayson Blair scandal rocked the institution, The Times added more safeguards, including a public editor. This person writes about The Times and its journalism, investigates matters of journalistic integrity and works independently, outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper. The position is now held by Margaret Sullivan.

In her column, you can read her take on everything from the paper's coverage of Iraq in 2003 to its current use of anonymous sources and recent dubious reporting on hipster trends like "man buns." Anyone who has a concern about The Times can write to her at public@nytimes.com.
Related Learning Network Resources 50 Ways to Teach With Current Events News and 'News Analysis': Navigating Fact and Opinion in The Times Three Teacher-Tested Ways to Encourage Your Students to Follow Current Events This School Year Skills Practice | Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion Guest Post | Practical Tools for Teaching News Literacy Guest Post | News Literacy Is Not Optional if You Need to Be Well-Informed

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Skills and Strategies | Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources

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Update: Please also see our new, 2017 lesson, Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News _________ How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care? We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct.

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Wondering how to start the conversation with your students about fake news? TED-Ed (ed.ted.com) is a great place to begin the dialogue.

"Lessons worth sharing" at TED-Ed are created around a TED talk or a YouTube video. See all Choose your level of involvement: share and discuss the video, share a lesson idea, or get involved with the organization itself.

You can use any or all of the 8 TED-Ed videos below to launch discussions with your students.

Note: The Think link will take you to a quiz and Dig Deeper has additional resources for study. Discuss leads to online discussions already started, and if you join the TED-Ed community, you and your students can add your own discussion.

Damon Brown

YouTube description: "With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart."

Noah Tavlin

YouTube description: "In previous decades, most news with global reach came from several major newspapers and networks with the resources to gather information directly. The speed with which information spreads now, however, has created the ideal conditions for something called circular reporting. Noah Tavlin sheds light on this phenomenon."

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Eli Pariser

YouTube description: "http://www.ted.com As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy. Read our community Q&A with Eli (featuring 10 ways to turn off the filter bubble)"

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

4. "Not all scientific studies are created equal"
David H. Schwartz
(4:26)
YouTube description: "Every day, we are bombarded by attention grabbing headlines that promise miracle cures to all of our ailments -- often backed up by a "scientific study." But what are these studies, and how do we know if they are reliable? David H. Schwartz dissects two types of studies that scientists use, illuminating why you should always approach the claims with a critical eye."

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5. "Capturing authentic narratives"

Michele Weldon

YouTube description: "Journalism can be much more than reporting. An authentic, human narrative touches audiences and keeps them reading. Learn how to shape a human-centered news story, and the importance of facts, context and heart."

"The key to media's hidden codes"
Ben Beaton
(6:00)
YouTube description: "Colors, camera angles and logos in the media can all prompt immediate associations with emotions, activities and memories. Learn to decode the intricate system of symbols that are a part of everyday life -- from media messages to traffic signs."

| Think Dig Deeper

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7. "How algorithms shape our world"

Kevin Slavin

(15:24)

YouTube description: "Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. Slavin also warns that we are writing code we can't understand with implications we can't control."

Think | Dig Deeper

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8. "How statistics can be misleading"

Mark Liddell

(4:18)

YouTube description: "Statistics are persuasive. So much so that people, organizations, and whole countries base some of their most important decisions on organized data. But any set of statistics might have something lurking inside it that can turn the results completely upside down. Mark Liddell investigates Simpson's paradox."

Conclusion: "All we can do is carefully study the actual situations the statistics describe and consider whether lurking variables may be present."

Think | Dig Deeper | Discuss

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

I added this TED talk as a bonus. Perhaps you can create a lesson for it? It is most definitely worth your students' time and consideration.

TED talk: "Battling bad science"
Ben Goldacre
(14:19)
YouTube description: "Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry."

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

A YouTube Playlist of the above videos is HERE.

#stayvigilant

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Fact or Fiction? 8 TED-Ed Videos and a TED Talk to Show To Your Students

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Wondering how to start the conversation with your students about fake news? TED-Ed (ed.ted.com) is a great place to begin the dialogue. "Lessons worth sharing" at TED-Ed are created around a TED talk or a YouTube video. See all Choose your level of involvement: share and discuss the video, share a lesson idea, or get involved with the organization itself.

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If the children are the future, the future might be very ill-informed.

That's one implication of a new study from Stanford researchers that evaluated students' ability to assess information sources and described the results as "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy."

As content creators and social media platforms grapple with the fake news crisis, the study highlights the other side of the equation: What it looks like when readers are duped.

The researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Education have spent more than a year evaluating how well students across the country can evaluate online sources of information.

Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected.

In exercise after exercise, the researchers were "shocked" - their word, not ours - by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information.

The students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a "reasonable bar" of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles.

More than 80 percent of middle schoolers believed that 'sponsored content' was a real news story.

"Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there," the researchers wrote. "Our work shows the opposite."

A professional appearance and polished "About" section could easily persuade students that a site was neutral and authoritative, the study found, and young people tended to credulously accept information as presented even without supporting evidence or citations.

The research was divided by age group and used 15 different assessments. Here's a sample of some of the results:
Most middle school students can't tell native ads from articles.
The researchers showed hundreds of middle schoolers a Slate home page that included a traditional ad and a "native ad" - a paid story branded as "sponsored content" - as well as Slate articles.

Most students could identify the traditional ad, but more than 80 percent of them believed that the "sponsored content" article was a real news story.

"Some students even mentioned that it was sponsored content but still believed that it was a news article," the researchers wrote, suggesting the students don't know what "sponsored content" means.
Most high school students accept photographs as presented, without verifying them.
The researchers showed high school students a photograph of strange-looking flowers, posted on the image hosting site Imgur by a user named "pleasegoogleShakerAamerpleasegoogleDavidKelly. The caption read "Fukushima Nuclear Flowers: Not much more to say, this is what happens when flowers get nuclear birth defects."

Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and history at Stanford University and the lead author of the study, spoke to NPR on Tuesday.

"The photograph had no attribution. There was nothing that indicated that it was from anywhere," he said. "We asked students, 'Does this photograph provide proof that the kind of nuclear disaster caused these aberrations in nature?' And we found that over 80 percent of the high school students that we gave this to had an extremely difficult time making that determination.

"They didn't ask where it came from. They didn't verify it. They simply accepted the picture as fact."
Many high school students couldn't tell a real and fake news source apart on Facebook.

They didn't ask where it came from. They didn't verify it. They simply accepted the picture as fact.

One assessment presented two posts announcing Donald Trump's candidacy for president - one from the actual Fox News account, with a blue checkmark indicating it was verified, and one from an account that looked like Fox News.

"Only a quarter of the students recognized and explained the significance of the blue checkmark, a Stanford press release noted. "And over 30 percent of students argued that the fake account was more trustworthy."
Most college students didn't suspect potential bias in a tweet from an activist group.
The researchers sent undergraduate students a link to a tweet by MoveOn about gun owners' feelings on background checks, citing a survey by Public Policy Polling.

They asked students to evaluate the tweet and say why it might or might not be a good data source.

More than 30 percent of students thought a fake Fox News account was more trustworthy than the real one.

"Only a few students noted that the tweet was based on a poll conducted by a professional polling firm," which might make it a good source, the researchers wrote.

At the same time, less than a third of students cited the political agenda of MoveOn.org as a reason it might be a flawed source.

And more than half of the students didn't even click on the link within the tweet before evaluating the usefulness of the data.
Most Stanfordstudents couldn't identify the difference between a mainstream and fringe source.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, which publishes the journal Pediatrics, has more than 65,000 members and has been around since 1930.

Less than a third of students thought MoveOn.org has a political agenda that might justify skepticism about its data on gun owners.

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) split from AAP in 2002, over objections to parenting by same-sex couples. ACPeds claims homosexuality is linked to pedophilia. It's classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which estimates that ACPeds has about 200 members.

In an article in Education Week, Wineburg and his colleague Sarah McGrew explain that they directed Stanford undergrads to articles on both organizations' sites. The students spent up to 10 minutes evaluating them, and were free to click links or Google anything they liked.

"More than half concluded that the article from the American College of Pediatricians ... was 'more reliable,' " the researchers wrote. "Even students who preferred the entry from the American Academy of Pediatrics never uncovered the differences between the two groups."

You can see in-depth examples of some of the exercises - including sample responses - at the study's executive summary.

The project began before the recent uproar over the prevalence of fake news online. But its relevance is immediately clear.

Wineburg told NPR on Tuesday that the study demonstrates that U.S. classrooms haven't caught up to the way information is influencing kids daily.

"What we see is a rash of fake news going on that people pass on without thinking," he said. "And we really can't blame young people because we've never taught them to do otherwise."

In fact, as Wineburg and McGrew wrote in Education Week, some schools have filters directing students to valid sources, which doesn't give them practice learning to evaluate sources for themselves.

The solution, they write, is to teach students - or, really, all Internet users - to read like fact checkers.

That means not just reading "vertically," on a single page or source, but looking for other sources - as well as not taking "About" pages as evidence of neutrality, and not assuming Google ranks results by reliability.

"The kinds of duties that used to be the responsibility of editors, of librarians now fall on the shoulders of anyone who uses a screen to become informed about the world," Wineburg told NPR. "And so the response is not to take away these rights from ordinary citizens but to teach them how to thoughtfully engage in information seeking and evaluating in a cacophonous democracy."

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Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds

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If the children are the future, the future might be very ill-informed. That's one implication of a new study from Stanford researchers that evaluated students' ability to assess information sources and described the results as "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy."

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We are a passionate group with a shared dedication to enhancing learning through media literacy. As a collective, we have extensive expertise in teaching about curriculum design, research, media production, psychology, social studies, environmental education, and project management.

Staff Members

Cyndy Scheibe, Ph.D.

Cyndy is the co-author of the book The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy: Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World (2012, Sage/Corwin) and the reference guide Media Literacy in Every Classroom (2017, ASCD). She is also a Professor of Psychology at Ithaca College where she has taught courses in developmental psychology, media research, and media literacy for more than 30 years, and serves as the Director of the Center for Research on the Effects of Television Lab and Archive. Cyndy was a founding board member of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, and is author of several articles on media literacy education and practice. She is a contributing editor to Project Look Sharp curricula, and co-author of the Critical Thinking and Health kit. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development (1987) from Cornell University.

Chris Sperry

Chris has taught middle and high school social studies, English and media studies for over 40 years in Ithaca, New York. He is the author of numerous curriculum kits related to global studies and U.S. history and articles about integrating media literacy and critical thinking into the curriculum. He is the recipient of the National Council for the Social Studies 2008 Award for Global Understanding, and the 2005 National PTA and Cable Leaders in Learning Award for Media Literacy. He has also delivered hundreds of media literacy workshops, classes and keynotes for educators in the US, Turkey, Iran, India, Kenya, and Bhutan.

Sox Sperry

Sox began his career as a teacher and curriculum designer for a school devoted to engaging students in critical reflection and action on social issues. He spent the next several decades teaching nonviolence with teens and adults who had been arrested for violence. His curriculum work at Project Look Sharp has focused on helping teachers to explore hot-button issues related to social justice, identity and climate disruption.

Josh Solomon

Josh serves as the primary administrative coordinator for Project Look Sharp, working on tasks ranging from budgeting to curriculum editing. His background is in the law, but he greatly enjoys working towards Project Look Sharp's important mission in his new position. In his spare time, Josh enjoys watching movies, hiking, and playing Scrabble.

Student Workers

Kaitlyn Sevilla

Kaitlyn is a senior Physical Therapy Major at Ithaca College with a Women's and Gender Studies minor. She is also a Leadership Scholar and a member of the Honors program. At Project Look Sharp, Kaitlyn helps edit, design, and publish curriculum, as well as manage databases and organize office files.

Benjamin Koch

Ben is a senior Sports Media major at Ithaca College from New York City. Since high school, Ben has had a passion for filmmaking, producing, and video editing. He is involved with ICTV and works with Cornell Athletics. At Project Look Sharp, Ben helps edit and design the website, create Project Looksharp logos, and digitize videos.

Jackson Bernhard

Jackson is a sophomore Cinema and Photography and Computer Science Double major from New Tripoli, Pennsylvania. Jackson has always had a passion for filmmaking and has recently become interested in computer science. This year he became a Resident Assistant in the HHH cluster. At Project Look Sharp, Jackson edits and captions videos, updates the PLS website, and digitizes footage for kits and activities that can be found on the PLS website.

Leighanne Sullivan

Leighanne is a junior Integrated Marketing Communications major at Ithaca College with a minor in Psychology. She is a member of the Honors Program and the Women's Crew team. At Project Look Sharp, Leighanne helps with marketing, media analysis, and market research.

Jacob Cornelio
Office Editor & Assistant
jcornelio@ithaca.edu
Jake Cornelio is a sophomore Integrated Marketing and Communications Major at Ithaca College with a Graphic Design Minor. He is a member of Students Today Alumni Tomorrow and helps market events on campus. Jake has a passion for calligraphy, art, and graphic design. At Project Look Sharp, Jake helps organize office files and calendars, as well as design, edit, review and upload curriculum.
Media Literacy Education Maven
InsightersEducation.com
Collaborators

Faith Rogow, Ph.D.

I was the founding President of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, a founding editorial board member of the Journal for Media Literacy Education, and a co-author of NAMLE's Core Principles for Media Literacy Education in the U.S. I've been an advisor to Project Look Sharp since before it was born, and, over the years, have served as both a formal and informal consultant and evaluator. Together with Cyndy Scheibe, I wrote The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy: Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World ( Corwin 2012), and Media Literacy in Every Classroom (an ASCD Quick Reference Guide, 2017).
Media Literacy Educator

In my day job I'm a curriculum developer, professional development provider, and media literacy strategist, known for creative yet practical approaches to teaching, and for groundbreaking work in developing media literacy education that is developmentally appropriate for early childhood. I've also written a number of book chapters and articles on media literacy education, and I occasionally blog at TUNE IN, Next Time (as in "pay more attention" next time). In the world of independent documentary film, I'm a discussion guide writer with a reputation as a "go to" person for handling controversial topics like racism, social justice, homophobia, human rights abuses, and more. My favorite discussion prompt for films is: "What did you learn that you wish everybody knew? What would change if everyone knew it?" The questions reflect my core pedagogy which, like PLS's is centered around inquiry and reflection, and connecting insight to action.

Kelsey Greene

I work with individuals and organizations to advance learning experiences, business operations, and marketing efforts. I have served on the Leadership Council for the National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and taught media literacy curriculum throughout the country and abroad.
8th Grade Social Studies Teacher, Eagle Hill Middle School, Fayetteville-Manlius, NY
I acquired my love of media literacy while interning at Project Look Sharp (PLS) as an undergraduate student and continued to stay involved as a contractor over the years, helping with lessons, webinars, and conferences. From 2018-2019, I served as the Manager of Promotions & Professional Development for PLS where I helped strengthen PD offerings, internal operations, and marketing strategies. I deeply believe that media literacy can be a pedagogical approach to enhance people's inquiry, reflection and empathy and I continue to keep it at the heart of all my work.

Mary Kate Lonergan

I have taught students to critically engage with media and information for twelve years, and believe that media literacy is a civic necessity. By teaching media literacy, students are empowered to think critically, ask questions, reflect, and use their voice to take informed action.

I was first introduced to Project Look Sharp as an undergraduate student in social studies adolescent education at SUNY Fredonia, and have come to embrace the Project Look Sharp philosophy which revolutionized my teaching. I attended Project Look Sharp's summer training seminar "Constructivist Media Decoding in the Social Studies" in Washington, DC and also completed Look Sharp's online professional development course titled "Learn to Confidently Facilitate Challenging Topics in the Classroom Using the Skills of Media Literacy."
Teacher Librarian, Fall Creek School, Ithaca, NY
Media literacy is now the heartbeat of my social studies curriculum. I created a cross-curricular project-based unit called "Are You Falling For It?" for the beginning of the school year with one of my ELA colleagues, which is designed to teach media literacy skills while students research a controversial topic and then create media to share their findings. I also developed constructivist media decoding lessons for each unit in the New York State 8th grade social studies curriculum and encourage learning through the creation of media throughout the school year. I have presented workshops on weaving media and news literacy into social studies classrooms at a News Literacy Project "NewsLitCamp" sponsored by WBEZ Chicago and the National Council for the Social Studies, as well as at both the New York State Council of the Social Studies convention and the Central New York Council of the Social Studies conference, where I've presented sessions titled "Is Media Literacy History?!: Making Media Literacy the Heartbeat of the Curriculum" and "Historical Thinking Skills and Media Literacy in an Inclusive Classroom." I have served as Foreign Policy Research Institute teacher research fellow during a Japan cultural exchange and study tour, and I currently serve on the board for the Central New York Council for the Social Studies. I also conducted and published an action research study in my classroom titled, "Discerning or Duped: What Are Students' Capabilities of Assessing Media Messages After an Academic Year of Direct Instruction in Historical Thinking Skills?"

Maureen Gilroy

I am a teacher-librarian at Fall Creek Elementary School and teach weekly classes to students Pre-K to grade 5. I work closely with classroom teachers in order to connect what they are doing in the classroom to the lessons I teach in the library. I teach Literature, STEM ( Science, Technology, Math and Engineering), Research skills, Digital Citizenship and Social Studies, depending on the focus of the class I am working with. I became fascinated with the work Project Look Sharp was doing when I came to the Ithaca City School district seven years ago and went to a presentation given by Project Look Sharp for the ICSD district librarians. I followed up that summer with an intensive week-long workshop that was one of the best Professional Development opportunities I have ever had.

My passion is to get students to ask questions about what they read and about what is happening in the world around them. Project Look Sharp gave me the skills and language to look at media with a different lens and showed me how interesting and fun and dynamic it is to do this with colleagues and students. Now I am able to use this training and lens to work with teachers in my school to teach students to reflect on what they see and hear and to have strategic questions at the ready when viewing, reading and listening to media.

Using what I learned from Project Look Sharp's workshops and website has enhanced my knowledge about what goes on in the world and sharpened my teaching skills. Because of the skills and knowledge I have gained from Project Look Sharp I am able to engage students and teach them to ask pointed questions about a range of topics we are studying in Elementary school that Project Look Sharp has provided lessons for, from the Environment ( Throwaway Culture: to Buy or Reuse? ) to the Revolutionary War ( Phillis Wheatley's Poem about Freedom and Slavery during the Revolutionary War ). Questions that include: Who made this message? Who was this message made for? Who was harmed or helped by this message? Who was left out of this message? Whose stories are included? Whose stories are forgotten? The work that we do to answer these basic questions have opened up a world of research, discussion and reflection for my students, the teachers I work with and for me.

David Rhodes

I am currently pursuing a masters degree in education policy and management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and my goal is to learn how to enhance access to quality civic education for all young people. For the last seven years, I taught 8th-grade social studies and Spanish in Corning, NY, and I consistently integrated the pedagogy of Project Look Sharp in helping students to build media literacy skills and habits of mind associated with thoughtful inquiry and informed civic action.

My first exposure to Project Looks Sharp (PLS) was a week-long summer institute in 2013 where I learned the fundamental skills associated with constructivist media decoding. From my experience at the Institute, I was inspired to support the work of PLS by helping to facilitate an online course and coordinate a collaborative workshop that brought together PLS and Facing history and Ourselves. I also supported the development of an online course focused on difficult conversations in the classroom, and have developed several media literacy lessons that are posted on the PLS website.

In the context of middle school education and professional development with adults, I have consistently seen how PLS pedagogy and resources foster strong-sense critical thinking grounded in deep reflection on bias, blindspots, and credibility. In my classroom, constructivist media decoding and independent research projects related to pressing issues of social justice were the vehicles for participants to build an awareness of meaning-making processes, contribute their own voices to the meaning making process, and seek to understand the diverse perspectives of others. I believe this sort of learning experience is transformative for teachers and students alike because it is truly grounded in inquiry and curiosity, illuminating ways to engage more thoughtfully with the world around us.

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We are a passionate group with a shared dedication to enhancing learning through media literacy. As a collective, we have extensive expertise in teaching about curriculum design, research, media production, psychology, social studies, environmental education, and project management.

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Fake news spreads easily on Facebook. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic)

For years, I have rolled my eyes at news headlines on Facebook. Even respected mainstream news institutions were marketing their articles for clicks, shares and an ever-dwindling piece of the advertising-revenue pie.

But lately, some more questionable outlets have started appearing in feeds, mimicking the attention-starved style that bothered me when real news organizations used it. These other sources - with names such as 100percentfedup.com and Natural News - started showing up as citations in my students' papers and referenced as authoritative in classroom discussions, too. These days, as more and more people turn to Facebook to stay informed, it's hard to tell the difference between news and "news," especially when the "news" is posted by people you trust.

So this past Monday morning, I put together a resource for students in my media class, " False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical 'News' Sources." I populated it using some notes I've been taking in recent weeks, a site that recently tricked me with a too-good-to-be-true story about Aaron Rodgers, my observations of websites I follow on Facebook relying more and more on hyperbole and outrage to drive traffic, suggestions and resources provided by my own Facebook friends (many of whom are also media and communication scholars) and emails from strangers who stumbled on the growing list. Shortly after creating it, I set it to be visible to the general public. My own Facebook friends were already asking to share it with other teachers or professors whom I didn't know.

And by coincidence, fake news was in the real news, too.

About the same time, I was alerted to and alarmed by reporting that the top Google News item about the winner of the popular vote in this month's election had come from a fake news site: 70news.wordpress.com. I can't tell if that site is trolling conservatives or the alt-right with fake news or creating fake news in twisted support of those ideologies. But it claimed, without any actual data or shred of truth, that Hillary Clinton had lost the popular vote when, in fact, she won it, and by a margin that's been steadily increasing as more votes are tallied. Immediately, I added this website to the list while hundreds of additional suggestions began flooding my email inbox and Facebook shares started racking up beyond anything I could have imagined. The last time I checked, which was Thursday evening, it had been shared about 25,000 times.

That a list of sources you should be skeptical of when you encounter their stories on social media would go viral on social media might be a sign that the problem goes deeper than just the fake news.

Facebook fake news writer: 'I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me'

Nearly 40 percent of adults, and 100 percent of my class, get their news online. It's hard to tell how much fake news there is on Facebook, specifically, or across the Internet as a whole, but there is evidence that fake news drew more engagement on Facebook than real news did during the closing weeks of the election. I'm hesitant of claims saying without a doubt that this influenced the election - we need way more research on the topic - but I am sure it played a role in shaping and, especially, reinforcing political beliefs.

And I've noticed, with some concern, that the same techniques that get people to click on fake or overhyped stories are also being used to get people to read about my own list. It's routinely described in headlines as a "fake news list," but it's not just that - most of the sites on it don't publish intentionally false stories. Many publish news that exists in a liminal area - akin to "Truthiness" - or present their content on Facebook with a headline or description that poorly represents the actual article. I wanted to help my students navigate a cluttered, complicated and often overwhelming media environment by alerting them to be skeptical and rigorous at all times. It's not that I think every source or website listed was "bad." I love the Onion, for example, and believe it often serves an important political purpose. Nor was I calling sites out for political bias one way or the other, as I'm not inherently skeptical of political bias. I just want my students to read stories from sites on my list in conjunction with other news sources (as they should with all of the media they consume, ideally).

I'm not convinced that a majority of people who shared my list actually read my list, much as I'm not convinced that many people who share or comment on news articles posted to Facebook have actually read those articles. ( One study found that nearly 60 percent of links posted to social media are never clicked; that tracked with the less scientific, informal poll I did of my 64 students.) For instance, people emailed me outraged that MSNBC was on the list but Fox News Channel wasn't. But in reality, MSNBC was not on the list at all. A fake version of the network was, specifically MSNBC.com.co. There are many more sites that could or should be included, and hundreds of suggestions (including the New York Times, The Washington Post and the Boston Globe) currently awaiting evaluation in my inbox. But I'm honestly not sure whether I'll get to them or what the next iteration of this document will be. Clearly, we need solutions beyond the educational resource I gave to my students, and somewhat inadvertently, the world.

Obviously, fake news is a major problem. We need to make sure people have the tools to detect it, and we need to understand why people may purposefully share news they know to be fake - maybe they're being malicious, they think it's funny or it aligns with what they want to be true. And we definitely need to find ways to discourage the production of non-comedy, non-satire fake news. We need to do all of this while making sure that alternative voices and robust exchange of information are not stifled.

Fake news is cheap to produce - far cheaper than real news, for obvious reasons - and profitable. The profitability of these sites is precisely why Facebook and Google are looking for ways to prevent them from receiving advertising revenue. It's a "starve the beast" strategy, so to speak. But another reason fake (or unreliable, questionable, potentially misleading or "truthy") news has become such a huge problem is the growing distrust and flaws of our actual news media.

The real reason Trump is winning: No one thought it was possible

Studies show a significant portion of the population distrusts "the media." The level of distrust varies widely by news outlet and by reader, but in the aggregate, people no longer believe press reports the way they once did, especially if the news challenges their preexisting beliefs. Too many news organizations focus on short-term stories - horse-race election coverage, the daily twists of the stock market - and not enough deal consistently and seriously with issues that affect people's lives in a way that explores not only what's happening but also why and what can be done about it.

I teach my students about how daily newspapers are folding in communities across the country and foreign bureaus closing around the world. I teach them that the number of people working for newspapers has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years thanks to concentration, conglomeration and greater emphasis on profits. I teach them why "If It Bleeds, It Leads" and other categories of newsworthiness are problematic. I teach them not only about political bias in the media but also about entertainment bias (a focus on celebrities and human-interest stories) and corporate bias (a focus on businesses and profits over workers and stagnant wages), an issue I am much more concerned with.

We are inundated with media - whether fake, real or somewhere in the middle - on an hourly basis. I'm not sure whether the best way to manage it all is with browser plug-ins, app filtering technologies or databases that can help people easily find information about the sources they are reading or watching. I don't yet know what kind of impact my Google document will have on the world - to say nothing of my 60-person "Introduction to Mass Communication" class. But I do know that while we think about fake news, we need to start thinking about how to make our actual news better, too.

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My 'fake news list' went viral. But made-up stories are only part of the problem.

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For years, I have rolled my eyes at news headlines on Facebook. Even respected mainstream news institutions were marketing their articles for clicks, shares and an ever-dwindling piece of the advertising-revenue pie. But lately, some more questionable outlets have started appearing in feeds, mimicking the attention-starved style that bothered me when real news organizations used it.

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Engaging, interactive lessons help educators equip their students with the tools to evaluate and interpret the news and to learn how to decide what news and other information to trust, share and act on.

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Engaging, interactive lessons help educators equip their students with the tools to evaluate and interpret the news and to learn how to decide what news and other information to trust, share and act on.

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Teaching and Learning about fake news from the NY Times Learning Network

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Teaching and Learning about fake news from the NY Times Learning Network

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In November 2016, Stanford University researchers made an alarming discovery: across the US, many students can't tell the difference between a reported news article, a persuasive opinion piece, and a corporate ad. This lack of media literacy makes young people vulnerable to getting duped by " fake news" - which can have real consequences.
Want to strengthen your own ability to tell real news from fake news? Start by asking these five questions of any news item:
Who wrote it? Real news contains the real byline of a real journalist dedicated to the truth. Fake news (including "sponsored content" and traditional corporate ads) does not. Once you find the byline, look at the writer's bio. This can help you identify whether the item you're reading is a reported news article (written by a journalist with the intent to inform), a persuasive opinion piece (written by an industry expert with a point of view), or something else entirely.

What claims does it make? Real news - like these Pulitzer Prize winning articles - will include multiple primary sources when discussing a controversial claim. Fake news may include fake sources, false urls, and/or "alternative facts" that can be disproven through further research. When in doubt, dig deeper. Facts can be verified.

When was it published? Look at the publication date. If it's breaking news, be extra careful. Use this tipsheet to decode breaking news.

Where was it published? Real news is published by trustworthy media outlets with a strong factchecking record, such as the BBC, NPR, ProPublica, Mother Jones, and Wired. (To learn more about any media outlet, look at their About page and examine their published body of work.) If you get your news primarily via social media, try to verify that the information is accurate before you share it. (On Twitter, for example, you might look for the blue "verified" checkmark next to a media outlet name to doublecheck a publication source before sharing a link.)

How does it make you feel? Fake news, like all propaganda, is designed to make you feel strong emotions. So if you read a news item that makes you feel super angry, pause and take a deep breath. Then, doublecheck the item's claims by comparing it to the news on any three of the media outlets listed above - and decide for yourself if the item is real news or fake news. Bottom line: Don't believe everything you read. There is no substitute for critical thinking.

If you get in the habit of asking all 5 of these questions whenever you read a news article, then your basic news literacy skills will start to grow stronger. However, these are just the basics! To dive deeper into news and media literacy, watch the TED-Ed Lesson: How to choose your news. To find out more about what students need, read the Stanford University report, published here.
Laura McClure is an award-winning journalist and the TED-Ed Editor. To learn something new every week, sign up here for the TED-Ed Newsletter.

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In November 2016, Stanford University researchers made an alarming discovery: across the US, many students can't tell the difference between a reported news article, a persuasive opinion piec...

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GOOGLE’S FEATURED SNIPPETS ARE WORSE THAN FAKE NEWS

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GOOGLE’S FEATURED SNIPPETS ARE WORSE THAN FAKE NEWS

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Peter Shulman, an associate history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, was lecturing on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s when a student asked an odd question: Was President Warren Harding a member of the KKK?

Shulman was taken aback. He confessed that he was not aware of that allegation, but that Harding had been in favor of anti-lynching legislation, so it seemed unlikely. But then a second student pulled out his phone and announced that yes, Harding had been a Klan member, and so had four other presidents. It was right there on Google, clearly emphasized inside a box at the top of the page:

For most of its history, Google did not answer questions. Users typed in what they were looking for and got a list of web pages that might contain the desired information. Google has long recognized that many people don't want a research tool, however; they want a quick answer. Over the past five years, the company has been moving toward providing direct answers to questions along with its traditional list of relevant web pages.

Type in the name of a person and you'll get a box with a photo and biographical data. Type in a word and you'll get a box with a definition. Type in "When is Mother's Day" and you'll get a date. Type in "How to bake a cake?" and you'll get a basic cake recipe. These are Google's attempts to provide what Danny Sullivan, a journalist and founder of the blog SearchEngineLand, calls "the one true answer." These answers are visually set apart, encased in a virtual box with a slight drop shadow. According to MozCast, a tool that tracks the Google algorithm, almost 20 percent of queries - based on MozCast's sample size of 10,000 - will attempt to return one true answer.

Unfortunately, not all of these answers are actually true.

Back to Shulman and his students. The result Google was quoting came from an article in Trent Online, a site that bills itself as a "leading Internet Newspaper in Nigeria," titled " REVEALED: 5 US Presidents Members Of Racist Cult Ku Klux Klan (PHOTOS)." On closer inspection, the Trent Online article notes that this piece originally appeared on a site called iloveblackpeople.net. The article says that William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman were members of the KKK. The only sources cited are the Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton and KKK.org.

"I understand what Google is trying to do, and it's work that perhaps requires algorithmic aid," Shulman said in an email. "But in this instance, the question its algorithm scoured the internet to answer is simply a poorly conceived one. There have been no presidents in the Klan."

According to the Harding Home, a museum in Harding's former residence, the allegation that he was a Klansman was a lie concocted by the KKK and denied by Harding. Biographers of Harding and his wife found no evidence that he was a member. Similarly, there is no reason to believe that William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge, or Woodrow Wilson were members, Shulman said. (It should be noted that Wilson was still a notorious racist.) There is evidence that Harry Truman, who was also a horrible racist, met with Klansmen - but if he was a member, he wasn't a very active one, Shulman said, and he later opposed the Klan and allied with its enemies.

14. @Google, please, please do better. Wikipedia has plenty of problems, but it's actually a much better source of info than this garbage.
- Peter A. Shulman (@pashulman) February 23, 2017

Google needs to invest in human experts who can judge what type of queries should produce a direct answer like this, Shulman said. "Or, at least in this case, not send an algorithm in search of an answer that isn't simply 'There is no evidence any American president has been a member of the Klan.' It'd be great if instead of highlighting a bogus answer, it provided links to accessible, peer-reviewed scholarship."

So how did this fiction manage to get the spot reserved for Google's one true answer?

The push for quick answers

Many of Google's direct answers are correct. Ask Google if vaccines cause autism, and it will tell you they do not. Ask it if jet fuel melts steel beams, and it will pull an answer from a Popular Mechanics article debunking the famous 9/11 conspiracy theory. But it's easy to find examples of Google grabbing quick answers from shady places.

Would you trust an answer pulled from the anti-vaccine alternative health content farm Mercola.com?

How about an answer from the Facebook page of a white nationalist group in Australia?

Would you trust a system that falls for a Monty Python joke?

What about a system that thinks Barack Obama is the current king of America - first because of an answer sourced from a Breitbart article, and now because of an article criticizing that answer?

What about a system that thinks Obama is planning a coup d'etat?

Would you trust a system designed to give one true answer to the query, "how to get a date"?

I mean, this isn't terrible advice. But why does Google even want to deliver a single answer to such a subjective question?

Google doesn't always get tripped up like this. Many of its answers, like the date of Mother's Day, come from what Google calls its Knowledge Graph, a database of hard facts sourced from places like Wikipedia and CIA World Factbook. Google started implementing these in 2012, and they're very reliable.

But a faster-growing number of quick answers, like the cake recipe and the Monty Python joke and the presidents supposedly in the Klan, are not as carefully curated. These answers are algorithmically generated from web pages that rank highly in the search results. They're officially called "featured snippets."

Google added featured snippets sometime in 2014, and it's not like the company doesn't know about this problem. In 2015, users discovered that the query "What happened to the dinosaurs?" produced the quick answer "Dinosaurs are used more than anything else to indoctrinate children and adults in the idea of millions of years of earth history," pulled from a fundamentalist Christian page titled "What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?" Google didn't comment, but the featured snippet changed to a quote from the University of Illinois Extension.

In December, a writer for The Guardian noticed that asking "Are women evil?" produced this enlightening featured snippet: "Every woman has some degree of prostitute in her. Every woman has a little evil in her... Women don't love men, they love what they can do for them. It is within reason to say women feel attraction but they cannot love men."

Google Home giving that horrible answer to "are women evil" on Friday. Good article on issues; I'll have more later https://t.co/EUtrx4ZFul pic.twitter.com/Ec8mEqx8Am
- Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 4, 2016

Google intervened manually after the Guardian piece. "Are women evil?" now pulls up the regular list of search results with no featured snippet.

Why does Google do this?

Google has an excellent reputation, and it's well-deserved. Mammoth forces of spammers, scammers, and other bad actors are constantly trying to manipulate Google's search rankings, and yet they remain incredibly useful for users. Yet the company seems willing to take hits to its reputation while also promoting conspiracy theories, bigotry, and misinformation. Why?

For one thing, people really like this style of search. "It's having a very good impact on the search results. People love them," said Eric Enge, CEO of Stone Temple Consulting, a digital marketing agency that has done three deep-dive studies on featured snippets. In one of his company's surveys, people said the feature they wanted most was the ability to "answer directly without having to visit another website or another app." These quick answers are great when they're accurate, especially if you're on a mobile device, and they often are accurate - or at least accurate enough to satisfy the searcher.

Focusing on direct answers is also a longer-term play. The number of browser-less internet-connected devices is growing fast, and already voice-activated assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home are penetrating the market. Google's traditional list of search results does not translate well to voice - imagine Google Home reading you a list of 10 websites when you just want to know how many calories are in an orange.

"There's data out there that suggests by the year 2020, which is only three years away, that 75 percent of internet-connected devices will be something other than a PC, smartphone, or tablet," Enge said. "That 75 percent of connected devices will most likely interact by voice, and if you're interacting by voice, and it responds in voice, you know how many answers you get? One. That's only going to work if you have that answer."

And here's what happens if you ask Google Home "is Obama planning a coup?" pic.twitter.com/MzmZqGOOal
- Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) March 5, 2017

The fastest way for Google to improve its featured snippets is to release them into the real world and have users interact with them. Every featured snippet comes with two links in the footnote: " About this result," and "Feedback." The former explains what featured snippets are, with guidelines for webmasters on how to opt out of them or optimize for them. The latter simply asks, "What do you think?" with the option to respond with "This is helpful," "Something is missing," "Something is wrong," or "This isn't useful," and a section for comments.

"It's having a very good impact on the search results. People love them."

Google uses this feedback form and other algorithmic signals from users to continuously improve and refine featured snippets. Snippets change a lot, Enge said - webmasters will optimize for a query, score a featured snippet, and then lose it days later. The system appears to work at least part of the time: On February 24, the query "MSG FDA" - my attempt to find the agency's guidelines on MSG as part of fact-checking for this story - turned up a featured snippet from the MSG conspiracy theory website truthinlabeling.org. Within five days, that featured snippet had disappeared.

In theory, featured snippets will always temporarily turn up some bad answers, but the net effect would be better answers. "It'll never be fully baked, because Google can't tell if something is truly a fact or not," said Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. "It depends on what people post on the web. And it can use all its machine learning and algorithms to make the best guess, but sometimes a guess is wrong. And when a guess is wrong, it can be spectacularly terrible."

Again, featured snippets are often incredibly useful, especially when you need to be hands-free.

The ability to read featured snippets is also the major distinguishing characteristic between Google Home and competitors like Amazon Echo and Siri, Sullivan said. "Google sees that as a competitive advantage and they don't want to turn it off," he said. The problem is that even when they are wrong, the featured snippets bear Google's highest endorsement. "Where is the tipping point where you get enough of these embarrassing answers that you decide to shut it off?"

Google has recently taken heat for its suggested queries, the autocompleted phrases that pop up when you start typing a question. However, those seem much less damaging than the promotion of bad information that is presented as Google's one true answer. As Google attempts to combat the proliferation of fake news by banning publishers from its ad platform, it continues to disseminate fake news itself through featured snippets. Fake news typically comes from hastily built content farms. In this case, it's coming from Google, which surveys show is trusted by around 63 percent of people, more than both social media and traditional media.

"Where is the tipping point where you get enough of these embarrassing answers that you decide to shut it off?"

"The whole experience was quite shocking," Shulman said. "The good news is this episode turned into a teaching opportunity for my class." Increased information literacy among users seems to be the best solution, as Google doesn't seem to see this as a priority for now.

Google declined to answer specific questions about featured snippets, instead sending a boilerplate statement: "The Featured Snippets feature is an automatic and algorithmic match to the search query, and the content comes for third-party sites. We're always working to improve our algorithms, and we welcome feedback on incorrect information, which users may share through the 'Feedback' button at the bottom right of the Featured Snippet."

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Why does Google think Obama is planning a coup d'etat?

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Peter Shulman, an associate history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, was lecturing on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s when a student asked an odd question: Was President Warren Harding a member of the KKK? Shulman was taken aback.

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My name is Julie and I am here to help you survive the rest of the campaign season. If you're like me, you're fairly desperate for the election to be OVER. (Heck, I've been ready since January. But that's a topic for another post.)

BUT, although there might be imperfect candidates this year, this is the PERFECT CHANCE to practice some awesome media literacy skills.

By encouraging our students to ask questions about the messages they're receiving, we're exposing them to the fantastic, critical-thought-filled world of media literacy. Ready?

QUESTION #1: Who's the communicator of the message? This is a HUGE issue. Check out these covers:

When I pick up a National Review, I know it's a conservative magazine. And the New Republic? A liberal magazine. Knowing the source of your message is a HUGE part of being media literate - because the sender makes all the difference! Do our students know where messages come from?

Question #2: What, if anything, is left out? Here's a post from Thursday's USA Today about Ted Cruz working a phone bank on behalf of Donald Trump. Why is this news? Does the article explain the context of the history between Cruz and Trump? Does it explain how they competed against each other in the primaries? Or, is the article simply to show tweets from people using awkward photos of the event? What could the paper have added to actually give this story depth?

Question #3: How could someone else interpret this message? So the big news is Hurricane Matthew attacking Florida. In this story, CNN tells us that Florida's voter registration deadline will NOT be extended because of the hurricane. How could people interpret this message differently? People in Florida would certainly consume news about Hurricane Matthew differently than people in Arizona. What about those in Florida who want to register to vote but now cannot due to the hurricane? Do our students have friends or family in Florida? Or LIVE in Florida? Then THEY are certainly going to consume news about the hurricane differently than anyone else. Seeing the news from someone else'e point of view can be a step toward empathy.

Question #4: What biases do we have that affects how we choose and consume our news? It's probably no big shock that my conservative friends prefer FOX News and my liberal friends prefer MSNBC. We love having our opinions affirmed, or perhaps more importantly, we don't like having our beliefs and assumptions challenged. Ask yourself - which newspaper would YOU have picked up the day after the June shooting in Orlando?

There's even recent research from the University of Michigan that proves we are more likely to believe polls that show "our" candidate ahead. Echo chamber, indeed. But awareness of our own biases is the first step!

Question #5: Can you verify what the news is claiming? The fun part about being online is that we have the same fact-checking abilities as anyone in the news. We still need to be careful, of course, but how fun would it be to set our students on treasure hunts for truth? FactCheck.org is a great site, and so is Politifact.com . And here's another gem: OpenSecrets.org In many cases, (especially during breaking news), the stories that come out initially might not be true. Keep these reminders from the "On the Media" podcast handy!

Question #6: How can word choice or photo choice affect the message? Take a look at the photos Twitter used a few weeks ago in their election coverage. There were choices made about which photos to use.

Word choice makes a difference, too. Although these next examples aren't related to the election, you can see how the words make a difference. Would our students spot the differences?

Question #7: Who makes money from this message? This is a super important question to ask students. After all, the news is not in public service. They are primarily operated by privately-held, profit-based corporations whose primary purpose is making money. When a big story happens, the "news" will benefit - either from increased ratings, subscriptions or clicks.

And they don't really bother hiding this fact. Les Moonves, the head of CBS News, had THIS to say about Donald Trump earlier this year:

"Donald Trump may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." Ah yes, Mr Moonves has given us a glimpse behind the curtain...

Final Thoughts: I leave you with a couple of closing thoughts. When I do media literacy talks, I'm frequently asked "Where should I get my news?" And I respond - it doesn't MATTER - as long as you KNOW your source, you're aware of your OWN biases and you're willing to do the work to verify what you find. We need to teach these skills to our students.

The next generation of critical thinkers (and voters) are in our classrooms. And they are counting on us.

(Thanks to www.namle.net and www.projectlooksharp.org for the question suggestions!)

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7 Ways Media Literacy Can Help You Survive Political News - Julie Smith

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My name is Julie and I am here to help you survive the rest of the campaign season. If you're like me, you're fairly desperate for the election to be OVER. (Heck, I've been ready since January. But that's a topic for another post.)