Reliable Sources
If you followed the 2016 presidential election, then the term “fake news” should not be new to you. The term that Donald Trump hijacked in the heat of the election has become the news to look out for. Whether you follow the president’s interpretation, or the actual meaning of fake news, you ultimately want to be able to distinguish what is real and what is fake, or what is credible and what is not. The following are things you should look out for when you are taking in information online. The criteria below is defined as the “crap test”, that can be found here
http://loex2008collaborate.pbworks.com/w/page/18686701/The-CRAP-Test%20
Currency - o How recent is the information? o How recently has the website been updated? o Is it current enough for your topic? * Reliability - o What kind of information is included in the resource? o Is content of the resource primarily opinion? Is is balanced? o Does the creator provide references or sources for data or quotations? * Authority - o Who is the creator or author? o What are the credentials? o Who is the published or sponsor? o Are they reputable? o What is the publisher's interest (if any) in this information? o Are there advertisements on the website? * Purpose/Point of View - o Is this fact or opinion? o Is it biased? o Is the creator/author trying to sell you something?
Here are my 3 trustworthy and credible resources for news and 3 that are not so credible.
CREDIBLE WSJ.com
The Wall Street Journal is one of my favorite papers that still gets printed everyday and has one of the best webpages out there in my opinion. Everyday there are new stories and every hour stories are constantly getting updated. The above story about Hurricane Irma, as you can see, was updated at 7:03 p.m., 3 hours after creating this post. We know that this monster hurricane was upgraded to a category five in the early hours of Sept 5, which means that the story has had multiple updates throughout the day.
The Wall Street Journal is a worldwide paper, so there is no weather section. However, money is involved in every story, especially the weather. The first screenshot that I posted is of the first section of the website. As you can see the three news stories are todays BIGGEST stories. North Korea, Hurricane Irma and President Trump ending DACA are all current stories. The difference and unique aspect of business journals is that they can take current stories and transform them by telling the business angle. The Wall Street Journal has daily paper issues, one weekend paper issue for Saturday and Sunday and one magazine per month, among other great products for its readers.
The journal also is constantly being updated with new information and updated stories all hours of the day. If that isn’t enough proof of how updated its website is, look no further than the live commodities, currencies and bond yields that are constantly updating at the top of the page. The Wall Street Journal is a worldwide paper, so there is no weather section. However, money is involved in every story, especially the weather. Hurricanes can wreak havoc on the housing and insurance market, as we saw with Hurricane Harvey. The information is always current even for the weather in this case. This journal includes real numbers and facts in every story. It provides its readers with a real-time reflection of markets. Stories with investors and analysts as their primary sources. The true implication of a real business journal is for it to not be opinion or biased. The Wall Street Journal, which I follow a lot, almost never has opinion. In fact, investors trust this journal because they can read it and know that the only agenda is to make sure people make good financial decisions. The creators of the screenshotted story does not need to provide references in the form of websites. We can trust that the authors won’t misquote anyone or give us false information. As I said above, primary sources in the WSJ are usually credible and can stand on their own. We know that Jon Kamp, one of the authors of this piece has authority to write this story. He is a Wall Street Journal reporter. Job Kamp’s profile can be found here.
Credible washingtonpost.com
The Washington Post, aka WAPO, is another resource that I use daily for my information. The Washington Post is known for its coverage of politics and Washington D.C. This newspaper is another one that has a new issue daily and constantly gets updated online throughout the day. From this Hurricane Irma story you can see that news gets updated pretty frequently. This story is about Irma upgrading to a category 5 storm as it moves through the pacific information. Some websites that aren’t very credible tend to get forgotten about by their owners and don’t post new content for days and weeks. You will encounter the issue of old stories more often with blogs. Whenever I read news that I see posted on Facebook, I try to caution friends from posting blogs. Often I see blogs that are opinionated and have old stories from years prior that have resurfaced. The post has credible authors writing the stories and just like the Wall Street Journals, there are multiple contributors to a lot of the stories. I think having multiple contributors make a source more credible and give it more reliability.
As you can see in both screenshots have ads in them. One of the screenshots has a STARZ ad that wants you to buy an online subscription. The other screenshot has three American Express ads. Ads don’t necessarily make a site biased. Obviously online print have to make money somehow. As long as the entire page isn’t covered in ads, I would say it is credible. I want to be able to feel like American Express wants me to get a card and not the Washington Post wants me to.
Reliable
Cnn.com
CNN is one site that I frequently visit mostly for breaking news. CNN is also one that people love to hate because they think that it is biased. But I will tell you why I think CNN is a credible source. For the most part I think CNN is reliable because they have good sources for their information and if they make mistakes, they usually are transparent when correcting them. News organizations make mistakes all the time and the magnitude of those mistakes always seem bigger than they may be. As I said, I visit CNN mostly for breaking news because they are always updating. Regardless of if you think “breaking news” is over used with CNN, they do keep their information updated. Sometimes that may means that you have to wait a while before all the facts are out in order to make a judgement. This site has a section for almost any topic that you can think of, including CNN money. Just from looking on one of the stories I can see that there are ads from Shoe Carnival and Coors Light beer. I think it’s safe to say that there’s no agenda behind having those two ads. Coors Light and Shoe Carnival are not exactly big news, so it’s safe to say they are not biased. For that reason. Last but not least I will say that CNN may have a bias only by the kinds of stories that get the most attention. However, everything that is reported is factual, or corrected if it is not. The site also has opinions, which are usually started by saying “OPINION”.
NON-CREDIBLE Sometimes non-credible news sources can be harder to pick out from the credible ones. This is mainly because they sometimes look the same, or they are trying to tell you a story that is too good to be true. Non-credible news sources also can make their way into your news feeds or suggestions because the internet knows what you like and what you want to hear.
Non-Credible
Breitbart.com
The first non-credible site that I want to bring to your attention is Breitbart. The first thing that I can point out right away is that while the articles are current, they are not updated nearly as much as the credible sources I listed. Almost all of the articles that I clicked were published at one time and there were no updates made. Breitbart also has an enormous reliability and authority problem. All of the stories are about politics, or make non-political stories into political ones. If you go to the website here you can see that with the exception of Hurricane Irma coverage, every story is very dramatic and in opposition to democrats in some form.
In the story screenshotted above about Steve Bannon, the argument could be made that it is all opinion. The article uses no outside sources aside from what Steve Bannon said in the interview, and Steve Bannon works for Breitbart, which brings me to my next point. Breitbart has a big conflict of interest problem. A good amount of material on Breitbart is about Steve Bannon. If you follow the news at all, Steve Bannon is constantly using Breitbart as a weapon for Donald Trump’s opposition. Bannon’s behavior should be a red flag for anyone consuming news from this site.
The entire organization is biased and known to cater to conservatives. The majority of articles published have an anti-democrat slant. Lastly, I think the biggest sign that this site is not credible is that it is filled with ads of random things and clickbait stories. As you can see from every screenshot that I took, the site is drowning in ads that take you to weird and risky third party sites.
You can also subscribe to Breitbart, however, I would not know that because they are advertising for you to buy shirts and join the NRA. Breitbart is popular among some conservatives, but it is not a good source to get news.
In actuality Breitbart could have a more credible site by just getting rid of all of the ads among other things, or not having so many of them on the home page. Having an enormous NRA ad lets readers know that certain stories just won't be told on Breitbart.
Non-Credible Occupydemocrats.com
This next site is one that I see people share all the time on my Facebook timeline. This site is called Occupy Democrats. I think the name says it all about this site that appears to be a credible news site. The obvious bias is what stands about to me the most. Breitbart and Occupy Democrats are opposites, but both non-credible. Every story is dedicated to painting a grim picture of republicans or anyone that supports Donald Trump. The site does not have an issue with current information, the only issue is that it is biased and does not tell the whole story. The site also uses inappropriate language in its headlines that should be written in credible reports. For example, “New York City Subways Just Brilliantly Trolled Trump In A Very Public Way” was a headline on a recent story. This title is opinionated by using “brilliantly” and clearly supports trolling Donald Trump. The titles are sensationalized and written to appeal to liberals. Occupy Democrats also has a problem with click bait ads all over the page.
Occupy Democrats market themselves as an anti conservative site more so than Breitbart is just known to be conservative. For this reason I think the only way for Occupy Democrats to become more credible, is by getting grid of the ads and anti conservative message. Abandoning the inappropriate titles of articles will also help.
Non-Credible nationalenquirer.com
Last but not least, we would not be talking about non-credible sources if we left out the National Enquirer. This site and its store magazines combine everything together and make one crap test failure. The only thing that you need to know about the national enquirer is that almost everything in it is usually false. Almost every story about a celebrity dying is false including the one about Cher. This is another site that is overrun by click bait ads and click bait stories
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