One of the things that has made me angry are fake news sites that try to make people angry. I’ve been blocking lots of these places, but still, people circumvent my blocks by independently sending me links to the lie of the day, and it’s more than a little annoying. Melissa Zimdars has been doing something about it, though: she has begun compiling a long list of all the fake news/”satire” sites out there. Do check that list before you get annoyed at some fresh horror in the world — it’s entirely possible that it’s completely imaginary.
It has a long way to go to even approximate completeness, unfortunately, because new ones keep cropping up. It’s got some well known and infamous sites on the list, like Breitbart and everything Alex Jones has cobbled up, but it’s missing some, like the Drudge Report, and it can’t possibly cover all the dishonest wackaloons on the web — I’m currently getting flooded with crap from constitution.com, for instance, which seems to be trying to make a name for itself with histrionic conservativism.
But there has also been Snopes, which, for example, takes apart a lying claim that liberals are beating up innocent people from a site called christiantimesnewspaper.com. That’s not on the Zimdars list.
The bottom line is that you can’t rely on lists of baddies. You have to use critical thinking. Zimdars provides some good general rules to follow.
- Avoid websites that end in “lo” ex: Newslo (above). These sites take pieces of accurate information and then packaging that information with other false or misleading “facts” (sometimes for the purposes of satire or comedy).
- Watch out for websites that end in “.com.co” as they are often fake versions of real news sources.
- Watch out if known/reputable news sites are not also reporting on the story. Sometimes lack of coverage is the result of corporate media bias and other factors, but there should typically be more than one source reporting on a topic or event.
- Odd domain names generally equal odd and rarely truthful news.
- Lack of author attribution may, but not always, signify that the news story is suspect and requires verification.
- Some news organizations are also letting bloggers post under the banner of particular news brands; however, many of these posts do not go through the same editing process (ex: BuzzFeed Community Posts, Kinja blogs, Forbes blogs).
- Check the “About Us” tab on websites or look up the website on Snopes or Wikipedia for more information about the source.
- Bad web design and use of ALL CAPS can also be a sign that the source you’re looking at should be verified and/or read in conjunction with other sources.
- If the story makes you REALLY ANGRY it’s probably a good idea to keep reading about the topic via other sources to make sure the story you read wasn’t purposefully trying to make you angry (with potentially misleading or false information) in order to generate shares and ad revenue.
- It’s always best to read multiple sources of information to get a variety of viewpoints and media frames. Some sources not yet included in this list (although their practices at times may qualify them for addition), such as The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and Fox News, vacillate between providing important, legitimate, problematic, and/or hyperbolic news coverage, requiring readers and viewers to verify and contextualize information with other sources.
It’s always good to think when reading!
The byline “Daily Mail Reporter” should always be treated as suspect until proven otherwise. And that’s not me being snarky at the Mail. That byline generally signals that the story is (a) made up from whole cloth, (b) a pageful of biased insinuation and distortion wrapped around a tiny shred of truth, and/or (c) churnalism.
“Histrionic Conservatism”. I’ll add that to my list of potential band names. For when I acquire any shred of musical talent at all and decide to form a band that everyone hates.
Mind you, with Trump and his goblins left, right and centre (but mostly right), I doubt there’s going to be much of a need for fake news stories to make people angry. The real ones from legitimate news sources will do the job well enough.
“This piece is so bad, even we couldn’t find anybody in the office willing to put their name to it.”
Almost everything reported in the legitimate news makes me really angry. I have to have the bulk of my news pre-digested by professional satirists.
Another thing to watch for that’s not mentioned here: advertising masquerading as news, which seems to be becoming increasingly common.
That was the issue that broke the old scienceblogs, when Pepsi was offered a blog on the network.
“Bad web design”
Aw, man. You are on to me…
The list is a good and useful idea, but what on earth is Private Eye doing on it? PE is a respected fortnightly UK magazine, doing proper investigative journalism (alongside some satirical pieces and cartoons). I’ve been a loyal subscriber to that esteemed organ for years. It’s absolutely nothing like the other others listed.
Why does everyone ignore “Western Journalism” ? It is apparently put out by the same people doing WND and has the same low standards.
Also to avoid:
Sites claiming to be bipartisan or neutral.
Sites with click bait sounding article titles. “This one tweet will bring down Trump/Clinton.” Please.
how about sites that claim “controversial” things that are clearly obvious? yeah, they’re trying to include reference to all the arguing going on as well. why not make it a second sentence?
Sites that try to be too succinct get no points.
What the Heck is wrong with “longform” journalism?
Why does news have to fit on a single screen of smartphone size?
“Headlines” have a long history of being the extent of information for a lot of people, yet yuck. At least provide the ‘longform’ under the headline, so responsibility can be placed on the reader and not the publisher.
[tin foil hat time]
let’s blame “fake news” for the loss. That the election was indeed rigged, by enticing voters to elect the {list of awfuls} candidate. Not that the voters were also {list of awfuls}. They were all deceived by the fake news authors who had a nefarious agenda.
*removing tin foil hat*
It’s on the list precisely because it puts satire alongside proper journalism. Note that it’s marked as “includes 4”, referring to:
I almost replied ‘who the hell shares Private Eye’s silly spoofs thinking they’re real for real?”, but then I remembered this is the internet we’re talking about.
That sort of makes sense in a way, but it is unfortunate given that PE genuinely produces some of the UK’s best (and often unglamorous) investigative journalism.
It’s a bit like blacklisting everything from the New Yorker’s site because of the Borowitz stuff.
I appreciate that Zimdars is starting to mark the websites for why they are on the list. Full out conspiracy theories are different from ‘true, but heavily spun’ are different from satire. (Also this is a lot of work, I imagine.)
Forbes blogs are generally pretty good. They’re not edited directly but there is some oversight, and the contributors themselves are fairly closely vetted.
(I know one of them quite well)
Zimdars’s list also includes the blog Crooks & Liars, for no discernible reason. What was her methodology?
paulambos,
So, in an effort to find unreliable news sources that shouldn’t be read and shared indiscriminately, she created an unreliable news item that is being read and shared indiscriminately?
Funny. (Or not, to John Amato at least)
Semi-snarky, I’d suggest being suspicious of any site claiming “journalists / media (take your pick) aren’t doing their job (or similar)” when said without qualification. Some journalists, sites, sources, et al are doing a fine job. Lumping them in, even implicitly, with those who patently are not is itself sloppy. And a hint: Reliable sites exist outside USAlienstan, making the sorts of unqualified claims I am whingeing about even more ludicrous.
And, of course, an occasional individual example does not mean the entire site is crap. Some respectable sites invite pieces by eejits, normally opinion pieces or interviews. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” and all that.
A related, and interesting, article in the Granuiad about news / opinion / information bubbles, Bursting the Facebook bubble: we asked voters on the left and right to swap feeds (“Social media has made it easy to live in filter bubbles, sheltered from opposing viewpoints. So what happens when liberals and conservatives trade realities?”).
I can see some ways this could be improved: in fact I’ve been working on a program to (among many other things) help with precisely the kinds of trust issues that surface from this kind of aggregated info.
Block Bot faced similar issues, I think (not that I really looked into that one, but I did find the creator’s Patreon page! And she was also working on making a social media website, too. She’s an inspiration to me.)
I’d be happy if anyone wanted to help me make my website/program :)