Resource Guide for Navigating Change and Challenges

This page provides some resources for detecting and debunking misinformation in the media.

Fact Checkers & Checklists:

What are they? These tools do the fact-checking work for you. They are transparent and reliable places to quickly verify news, viral posts, and other media sources.

• Politifact.com 
  • Owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Their core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting and clear writing. They publish to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy.
     
• FactCheck.org
  • A project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. They are a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. They monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Their goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.
     
• Snopes
  • The oldest and largest fact-checking site online, widely regarded as an invaluable research companion. Snopes.com is an independent publication under the company “Snopes Media Group Inc.,” and a member of the International Fact Checking Network.
     
• El Dectector
  • From Univision. Fact Checking source for Spanish speakers.
     
• 5 Laws of Media and Information Literacy
  • From From UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

From the News Literacy Project:

What is the NLP? A nonpartisan education nonprofit with a mission is to advance the development and teaching of news literacy in education.

• Breaking News Checklist 
  • This infographic and checklist offers six best practices to help navigate fast-moving stories.
     
• RumorGuard
  • NLP created RumorGuard to help us all learn how to recognize misinformation and stop it in its tracks. Each fact-checked viral rumor contains concrete tips to help you build your news literacy foundation and confidently evaluate claims you see online.
     
• Three Practical Ways to Debunk Misinformation.
  • Explains three strategies to become an active consumer of information online.

Check for Ethics in Journalism:

• 8 Trust Indicators from The Trust Project
  • Use these to know which news stories to trust.
  • In Spanish: Los 8 Indicadores de Confianza
• Society for Professional Journalism Code of Ethics: Four Principles

  • Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. 

Manage Your Sources

• Use a feed aggregator:
  • Feedly

    "Organize, read, and share what matters to you."

  • NewsBlur

    "A personal news reader bringing people together to talk about the world."

  • The Old Reader

    "The ultimate RSS reader. Import your subscriptions in one click, find your friends, and start sharing."

Use the SIFT Method for Evaluating Online Content: