LINKEDIN 8 COMMENTMORE

Hello and welcome to International Fact-Checking Day.

Officially promoted by the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter Institute and fact-checking organizations worldwide, it's no lie: This day deserves your attention at a time when fake news and bogus websites seem to be more numerous than Americans willing to think independently.

Sound harsh? Try this sample of questions from Poynter, an organization dedicated to improving journalism.

1. Yes or No: Did a Minnesota town last year elect a dog to its third term as mayor?

2. True or False: In 2016, President Obama banned families and friends from sending Christmas cards to U.S. military members overseas.

3. Which of these websites are fake sites containing fake news: CNN, DC Gazette or Daily Dot.

Keep reading — after you check your Internet favorites on those last three — for the answers.

New news landscape

While fake stories, bogus claims and flat-out wrong information are not new problems to journalism, there is no doubt the rise and role of the internet (along with the creators' ability to make money) is driving this flood of falsehoods camouflaged as "news."

Just how big is the tsunami, which hopefully peaked with the 2016 elections? Nobody really knows.

However, First Draft News, a nonprofit coalition aimed at raising awareness and addressing challenges relating to trust and truth in the digital age, reported last year the country of Macedonia alone was home to 150 U.S. political websites set up to publish false stories during the presidential election.

Sadly, too many unknowing and unthinking consumers seem to gobble it up. Worse yet, many pass it along in their social media threads. Meanwhile, credible news organizations not only get lumped in with these frauds, but we have to spend valuable resources reporting the claims are not true.

What to watch for

With that in mind, there are several ways you can avoid being duped by fake news, hoaxes and rampant and ridiculous misinformation.

Look no farther than "International Fact-Checking Day" organizer Poynter. Its experts have compiled several lists of suggestions on how to scrutinize not just fake news website, but urban legends, Wikipedia entries, Twitter handles, online photos and videos, and even politicians' claims.

Several other organizations, many known for rock-solid fact-checking and news reporting, offer similar advice.

A few of tips for fake news include:

• Scrutinizing the web address and logo design. Many fake sites aim to mimic credible sites by using the same web address with only a ".co" at the end. The same goes for graphics. Poynter points out the "abcnews.com" legitimate site vs. the fake news site of "abcnews.com.co"

• Checking story dates and sources. Articles lacking a "posted" date are often fake. Readers also can search the sources quoted in the article online.

• Looking for other media reports on that issue. Fake news typically starts (and remains) rooted on its host site. If you suspect a story is fake and cannot find it reported anywhere but one site, that's strong signal it's not legitimate.

Those are just a few suggestions. Here's a link to more, courtesy of Poynter. This board also highly recommends bookmarking websites such as PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org and FirstDraftNews.com. All provide exceptional sourcing, research and suggestions in helping people discern facts from fakes and fiction.

Now the answers to those questions: Yes, False and delete the DC Gazette from your list of credible news websites.

LINKEDIN 8 COMMENTMORE
Read or Share this story: http://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2017/04/01/today-and-every-day-embrace-check-facts/99815858/
https://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2017/04/01/today-and-every-day-embrace-check-facts/99815858/?from=new-cookie
www.sctimes.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-39
128219
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:JZDMGHKTXU74C7WNNGQBDS3NNTFQGWPQ
<urn:uuid:0e6dc2a8-36cd-4996-ac49-e45a0d62d0ef>
2018-09-23T20:44:25Z
151.101.202.62
text/html
sha1:UGLEOAZVBLBTFRIJ24FY43EDECYQQG54
<urn:uuid:da92b79b-89a2-4192-a6a6-6a6d12d590c3>
https://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2017/04/01/today-and-every-day-embrace-check-facts/99815858/?from=new-cookie
response
<urn:uuid:144c1035-f18f-4303-b303-2a40ed428c0d>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-138-196-149.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/