Misinformation: How do you ensure that the news you read is genuine or fake?

[Raju Chacko]

How do you satisfy yourself that the news you read/hear is true? Often times, we need to use information sources available to us to verify, validate or increase our knowledge of somebody or something. And the Internet is undeniably one of the most important places where we search for it. So far so good. But this being the age of misinformation, how do you make out whether something you recently read on a website or in a message forwarded to you on WhatsApp, is genuine or fake? Of course, sites like Wikipedia that are monitored and controlled can be trusted most of the time, but what about others?

At the first level are sites with misspelled names and look-alikes. We can filter them out if we are careful. But what if the news that appears genuine, is, in fact, being engineered by repeating something untrue, over and over and through as many sources as possible? According to a book I recently read, a strategy was promoted in Germany in the 1930s " ... that suggests if you repeat untruth often enough, from as many sources as possible, it will become believed and you can use it to create deep feelings of hatred and discontent."

So, what if a set of reputed news sites (that collude or have the same owner) employ the above strategy? If, for example, news sites X, Y,&Z, all owned by owner ABC, report an event (that didn't actually happen) as having happened and then keep repeating it periodically for (say) a month (including, thru Social Media), how will you unearth the real truth?

Are fact-checking sites like Snopes and Politifact sufficient for all your needs or do you use other tools/methods? Please share your knowledge for the benefit of all of us in the OBC community.

[innocentdemand]

A lot of people will knock social media for being ripe with misinformation, but on the same hand you've got people who use those sites to spread fully-sourced, factual information against the spread of disinfo. I've found some great things through social media, and of course I always double check to make sure it's accurate.

One of your examples is a set of sites all owned under one corporation - I think one thing to do would be to check other sources that aren't under that owner's umbrella, and the more independently sourced places you can find, the better. Independently owned or smaller news sources can be great for finding factual information because they aren't beholden to influence from any higher-up commands, but that also means they can be more difficult to vet for.

[Raju Chacko]

Thank you. Your reply is useful.

[NetMassimo]

Different sources are a key to any checkup. I read sources in Italian and English, which means sources from different nations that can offer various points of view to understand if a news is fake.

[Ashley-Osuna]

I always look everything up, and I make sure that I use reliable sources or that many sources are advocating for the same thing. I try to fact check everything, specially if I read it off social media, because I don't want to spread any wrong information.