It can be difficult to determine what is trustworthy news and what is not. Try these games to see how you do:
S Source:
M Motive
A Authority
R Review
T Two-source test
SMART comes from the University of Washington Libraries
It can't be verified A fake news article may or may not have links in it tracing its sources; if it does, these links may not lead to articles outside of the site's domain or many not contain information pertinent to the article topic.
Fake news appeals to emotion: Fake news plays on your feelings - it makes you angry or happy or scared. This is to ensure you won't do anything as pesky as fact-checking.
Authors usually aren't experts: Most authors aren't even journalists, but paid trolls.
It can't be found anywhere else: If you look up the main idea of a fake news article, you might not find any other news outlet (real or not) reporting on the issue.
Fake news comes from fake sites: Did your article come from abcnews.co? or mercola.com? Realnewsrightnow.com? These and a host of other URLs are fake news sites.
How good are you are detecting fake news? Take these quizzes to find out:
Washington Post: Know Your News Quiz
BuzzFeed: Can You Tell the Hoax News Stories from the Real Ones?
Just what constitutes the News. The following articles have some answers
Questions to ask when evaluating information:
Currency: the timeliness of information
Relevance: the importance of the information for your needs:
Authority: the source of the information
Accuracy: the correctness, truthfulness and reliability of the content:
Purpose: the reason the information exists