Library Home: Fake News: A Primer: More About The Fake

Real News About Fake News

NPR: How to Tell Real News from Fake News in 'Post-Truth' Era
Provides commonsense advice on what to look for in a news outlet.It also explores "post-truth."
ABCNews Video: When Fake News Makes Real News Headline
About a fake story which was treated as real news. Traces some of the pipeline for developing and distributing fake news
Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
Open source scholarship explores misinformation and its impact on climate change.
Citation:
S. van der Linden, A. Leiserowitz, S. Rosenthal, E. Maibach, Global Challenges 2017, 1600008.

Fact Checkers

FactCheck
A product of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, this site is terrific for checking up on political claims.
Politifact
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact researches the claims of politicians and checks their accuracy.
Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute develops resources for journalists and writers, plus offers resources on fact checking and media literacy for the general public.
Snopes.com
One of the oldest debunking sites on the Internet, Snopes.com focuses on urban legends, news stories and memes. the also cite their sources at the end of each debunking.
Hoax-Slayer
Similar to Snopes but Hoax-Slayer focuses on email hoaxes, identity theft scams and spam.

Parody & Fake

Parody: "The parody of print and broadcast news involves the employment of a variety of print, televisual, and film representations of journalism and journalists for comedic...purposes."***

The Parody:

The Onion
One of America's premier parodic news sites.
The Borowitz Report
From humorist Andy Borowitz, a column parodizing and commenting on current news trends

The Fake:
Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola is a doctor of osteopathy who has frequently been targeted by the FDA for promoting false, misleading and even dangerous medical advice. His site promotes products and his blog includes false and/or misleading information about medical topics.

***Bell, Christopher. "Parody of News." Encyclopedia of Journalism, edited by Christopher H. Sterling, vol. 3, SAGE Reference, 2009, pp. 1043-1046. Gale Virtual Reference Library.