By Hank Silverberg

 How to avoid “Fake News”

I was standing at the checkout counter at the supermarket the other day and I noticed something was missing. People Magazine was there, as well as some fashion magazines with the latest diet trend. But the old tabloids with the huge headlines like “60 Year Old Woman Gives Birth to Two Headed Baby,” or “Elvis Spotted At Gas Station in Toledo,” were missing. That kind of fake news, the obvious kind, moved to the Internet a while ago.  And why not? They have plenty of company, though it may not be so obvious.

REAL “fake news” has always been around. People actually bought News of the World (now defunct) or The National Enquirer for a good laugh or for some entertainment. No one really took them seriously (at least I hope not), even though on occasion the Enquirer would actually print something that was true.

 There is also a long standing tradition of political satire in the United States. The Onion is still going strong and Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update is still around. (Is Francisco Franco still dead?) They are “fake news”, entertaining,  and often include an editorial bite that can make you think. What plagues us now is another kind of “fake news.” The definition became blurred  in 2016, around the same time as a braggadocio real estate developer turned Reality Show host descended an escalator and declared he was running for President.   

There are now two additional kinds of “fake news.” Definition one is in itself fake. The Reality Show star turned President calls anything he doesn’t like “fake news.” Presidents have always criticized negative media coverage, but Mr Trump’s obsession with the term and personal attacks on individuals and entire news operations is more than Nixonian. It is an attack on the very foundation of our republic. (I will write more about that and “slanted” news in a future edition.) This time, though, I want to concentrate on the second definition of “Fake News” and provide some tips on how you, the news consumer, can find your way around it. If you use social media you see it every day and may not even know it. Your Facebook friends post it, you get a tweet with the link or a photo on Instagram, or it finds it way onto professionally oriented sites like Linkedin.

    It is important right now that you be able to differentiate between legitimate news sources and "fake news". It is still uncertain where the thousands of fake news stories posted on the Internet during the 2016 election cycle came from. It was most likely the Russians or someone paid by the Russians working out of some secret room in eastern Europe. Or it could have been people, with no political motive, writing fake news in their basement hoping for a few hundred thousand clicks just to make some fast bucks. But either way "fake news" under definition two, is still out there and could have a big impact on how our democracy works.  

Below you will find some tips I have developed with some input from some very Internet savvy students from my Introduction to Mass Media course last fall at Northern Virginia Community College. http://www.nvcc.edu/

My tips for detecting fake news sites:

1) Check trusted news sources that have been around for a while. Watch for the ones with long running good reputations. If you want an alternative source, find one that has a similar article and compare them. Sometimes the new guy on the block is good. They may just have different slants. The basic facts though should be the same. There is no such thing as “alternative facts”.   

2) Don’t just look at the headline. When you get inside, look carefully. If the site appears amateurish, has excessive ads and click bait and it moves very slowly from one page to the next, its reliability is questionable. It may be there just to post ads.  

3) Check the web domain. Always avoid sites with suspicious-looking web addresses that have add on letters like  .lo or .co.com. They usually mimic legitimate news sites and just add on a letter or two to confuse you. (Real news organizations are fighting a constant battle to protect their brand against these impostors.)

4)  Real news organizations update their sites daily, if not hourly. If the story you are looking at is dated and there does not appear to be any fresh articles on the site, it’s probably a fake site. Check to see if there are more recent stories or updates.

5)  Real news organizations have editors trained to fix things. If there are a lot of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors, it's probably a fake site. (One typo does not equal fake news, though.) If the articles on the site tend to have misspelled words, words in ALL CAPS, poor grammar, horrible punctuation and are very hard to read, it shows a lack of effort and probably a lack of truth.

6) Look for transparency. If there is a byline you should be able to do a quick Google search and find more articles by the same author. That will give you some indication of his or her reputation. Legitimate news organizations have an “About Us” section which will give you the names of the editors and sometimes a mission statement. There also should be a way to contact those people, including a comment page, email address and almost always a phone number. 

7)  Find other articles on the same topic or news event. Pack journalism is not always a good thing, but if it’s real news there is a likelihood that some other news outlet with a good reputation is reporting the same story. You can compare them. This helps detect political slant and gives you more rounded information as well.  If you can't find the story somewhere else, be suspicious of it's legitimacy. Real "Exclusive" stories are rare and if they are real they are usually picked up by legitimate news outlets.     

8)  Look for bias. Not just a slant, but a very obvious agenda. See if there are articles on the site that are pushing a very strong viewpoint or making outrageous claims and accusations.

9) Check their sources. Fake news articles tend to cite anonymous and unreliable sources. Some may not even provide or give a source for the information in the article at all.  All news organizations will use anonymous sources on occasion, but if every story on the site is “sources say” without any names or quotes, it’s fake news.    

10) Fake Checkers: There are fact checking websites such as FactCheck.org and Snopes.com which do a really good job exposing the fake sites and revealing the truth.

These tips will not protect you completely from "fake news" exposure, but they should make you a more cautious news consumer.  

#2 (This is the second edition of  what I hope will be a series of blogs on things that matter, large and small. Next up "Time to Think"--  Why we all hate I-95.)

Contact me below through the comments section or at HankSilverberg@gmail.com 

Here is my latest book which you can purchase at hsilverbergbooks.com or at Amazon or Barns & Noble.