Links or other measures of popularity are not reliable criteria for reliability !! I don't think there is an automatic way to know if some story is reliable. Sometimes you can't trust even a widely reputable newspaper. That said, although there are some exceptions, the most reliable sources of online news are still the good old news organizations. They still are who provide most of the original news material on the web. So if you find a story on a website and want to know if it is reliable, the best way to check it is to see if that information is also present in at least one reputable media: the main newspapers (the broadsheet ones) or news agencies. This is a basic criterion in journalism: cross-check information using reliable sources !!!

You can analyze hyperlinks on Google. Type in link:http://nytimes.com in search and look at the number of results. NYTimes for example has more links than http://cnn.com.  I think you can find studies in bibliometrics about this. 

While it might not give you a precise answer to whether or not a newspaper is reputable, you can use it as a proxy for data that is unavailable.

You can also compare metrics on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.

There are also services that measure traffic to sites: eg. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cnn.com

According to this site, CNN is #84 in the world, NY times is 108. 

Links or other measures of popularity are not reliable criteria for reliability !! I don't think there is an automatic way to know if some story is reliable. Sometimes you can't trust even a widely reputable newspaper. That said, although there are some exceptions, the most reliable sources of online news are still the good old news organizations. They still are who provide most of the original news material on the web. So if you find a story on a website and want to know if it is reliable, the best way to check it is to see if that information is also present in at least one reputable media: the main newspapers (the broadsheet ones) or news agencies. This is a basic criterion in journalism: cross-check information using reliable sources !!!

From the business point of view: look who owns the news source media company ...

I think that now it is really difficult to know, because everybody in social media could publish everywhere and everything. It is really important the sources, the media and the journalist. Although there are some times, the most reputation media fail (Jayson Blair and NYT). And you can read something interested in this article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair

http://now.snopes.com/2015/05/12/five-fake-news-sites/

I agree with what's been said. If it's a national or international story it may be carried by multiple outlets. Their sources can be scanned to see if there are independent sources. Also, Fact Check can serve as a resource.

There are some very specific but important situations that my previous answer has overlooked .It has been said that the Internet has a democratizing potential due to the presence of alternative voices, other than those offered by traditional media. Where there is a free press, usually the facts themselves are not hidden. Alternative voices are views or interpretations different from those prevailing in mainstream media. But in countries where the press is controlled, there may be organizations or individuals attempting to use the Internet to reveal to the world the facts that the regime hides. It may happen that the foreign media did not echo those revelations because they are not of much importance to the public. In these cases, the reputation of the organizations or individuals who report the facts or, if they are not known, knowledge of the political context --which can be obtained at institutions such as Freedom House, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the like-- may indicate the plausibility of the information to decide to undertake an investigation or not.

If it goes against what I would normally expect, I would look for corroboration from a second source.

I can speak from experience in covering crime and courts. A great deal of my best sources were police officers. The best recipe for success I found was to develop strong personalised relationships with them. I treated them as people first and police officers second and found that when major stories were breaking, they would tip me off or give me information they would not divulge to other media outlets. So relationship building is a significant dynamic of the journalist-source relationship.

You may want to see the book "Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload."   Other books by the same authors, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, distinguish the "journalism of verification" from less trustworthy "news" that aims only to affirm audience prejudices or to promote a point of view.

Here are some of my reactions to the notes you've left so far:

Carol, thanks so much, just borrowed the book and see its direct relevance!

Olga and José Eduardo, thank you for the popularity metric discussion and links (and your enthusiasm on the topic, Olga! Good to hear from you!) And, yes, José Eduardo, I agree with the point on leaks/ revelations from behind the curtains of tight regimes, be they political or economic monopolies. Third party critics play a huge role in such cases, your point well taken!

José María Herranz, the links to the fake sites are useful. I'm always on the look out for the known fake, fraud stories, especially if they are picked up by the mainstream media or go viral on social media. Do you (or anyone else) knows of any other ones?

John Budd, good to hear from you! Yes, we like Fact Check as well, though it's not completely unbiased, is it? Neither are several other sites that show some favoritism to a particular side in the conflict.

Arvind, some form of corroboration used to be paramount in journalistic practices. Isn't it ironic that the onus is now on the reader rather than the news producer (or often re-sender)?

Lucian, of course. Do you, by the way, have any particular examples that you consider cases of economic interests biasing the whole news source? Or do you mean more of a political affiliation bias?

Mark, thanks for your great insight on relationship building with law enforcement officers! I'm curious about your level of trust for other sources. Is that a continuum of some sort (from official to non-official sources)? And what you'd use to corroborate, fact-check or verify sources' information in different circumstances?

With many thanks to all who read and/or participated in the discussion up till now. I look forward to more insights and reactions.

Great, Victoria! I’m not familiarized with the topic, so I didn’t suggest any answer, but your summary of the various contributions is a nice example of how to build a sense of sharing and belonging in a debate. Lovely!

Off the topic, but close enough, I hope, you might like to have a look at a recent blog post on the relativity of traditional research paradigms before the contemporary challenges of big data and crowdsourcing.

Along that line, I remember that a couple of years ago I came across a paper on the use of automatic statistical data collection and processing by data journalists. Although I couldn't find that paper now (yet), I could swear it mentioned the automatic collection and processing of news data to increase reliability.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/swan20150524

Antonio, thanks for your compliments and complements.

As for news text processing, certain features wouldn't qualify news as big data. The 3V principles include Volume, Velocity and Variety + the 4th proposed V - veracity. News don't just come is as fast, steady and furious as purchasing transactions or imagery from cross-road intersections, but perhaps news form part of the big data variety (still laboriously manually produced) yet circulated in volumes via digital re-distribution channels, twitted, re-twitted, re-posted, basically re-and-regurgitated.

[As for your tangential comment on the very-large scale science, my take on it is that big data methods have their own merits, esp. with the powers of observing patterns, habits, etc., but I still wouldn't discount statistical predictions on smaller quality datasets. The article you pointed out seems to be written by "a philosopher, science and technology futurist" and not a data-mining geek, from what I can tell. So I'm not 100% sure her grasp is that well-rounded, esp. with admittedly sensationalized claim of the need to "retire the scientific method" as a whole. I assume she means the positivist paradigm (i.e., experimentation, etc.).]

It would be nice to see that article on auto-processing of news, esp. if it claims increase in reliability of the result. Was it in any of the data-mining conferences?

We have to assume that most news, while not being phoney is biased to an extent that it is not fully accurate.  News tends to be presented, no matter how 'unbiased' the source claims to be from a perspective of the culture in which the news provider is based.  

This can be excellently observed in watching the reports on the multiple wars in the Middle East.  The BBC portrays it from the perspective of the modern democracy (not necessarily as benign as westerners often like to think).  RT presents it from a purely chauvinistic Russian perspective and even Al Jazeera, purporting to be the Middle eastern view adopts a capitalist, corporate view of a minority in a geopolitical zone with a vast range of cultures, political and religious belief systems.

News is biased because people are biased.  British and American newspapers are deliberately biased in order to pander to their readership.  Many readers are less concerned with the accuracy and veracity of news stories than the pandering to their prejudices.  

Victoria, Many thanks for your answer!

As I said in my previous comment, I'm not an expert on the topic. In fact, I took an interest in journalism because one of my PhD students was a journalist. So, in the five years she took to finish her thesis, I made an effort to learn from our common intellectual struggles. And I found the topic very attractive!

I could not locate the paper I mentioned to you (I'll keep an eye on it, and I'll tell you if I do), but I found literature that belonged to the bunch consulted in the same period. In particular, I recalled the description of the Guardian Databolog's coverage of the UK riots of 2011, in "The Data Journalism Handbook" (edited by J. Gray, L. Chambers, and L. Bounegru, O'Reilly, 2012). The Guardian team developed the "Reading the Riots" project together with the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester, and worked on 2.6 million riot tweets to understand and explain what was actually happening. In the process, it also analyzed how the mainstream media fared in debunking, or, on the contrary, confirming, as news, the multitude of rumors that had been put in circulation. I don't know if this qualifies as the kind of example you were looking for! ...

As to the provocative article by the "philosopher, science and technology futurist", I can only agree with you! :) I was not trying to find any truth in it, but rather serendipitous provocation. I have a pet interest in accidental discovery, I wrote about it in the past, and I value much its role in contributing to the progress of knowledge :)

Hello, thanks for posing this question. It has been very educational to read through the answers and identify some quantitative pattern based methods to judge credibility. I would like to suggest a different approach as well - I have taught a course on news and journalism from the perspective of anthropology and media/cultural studies and it brings a more qualitative and critical perspective to the discussion. The question "How do we evaluate credibility?" was one of the guiding themes of my seminar. I had my students read a variety of texts that focused on language use in news production, the political economy of news organizations, and the social impact of news from the perspectives of readership, professionalization, and the affects of news on local situations - ranging from local politics to collective violence. I am sharing some insights and texts from that class here.

I found that getting students to focus on what kinds of words are used to tell stories help them to unpack biases and prejudices that we might otherwise be blind to - so John Hartley's Understand News is a great text for learning how to be critical of news discourse. Credibility and telling the 'whole story' relies a great deal on the creation of 'us' and 'them' binaries - which shift depending on whose perspective you are analyzing the situation from. For this, Amahl Bishara's book on Palestinian stringers who work anonymously and without credit for major US and international news agencies like the NYTimes is a fascinating read. Zeynep Gursel's work on the images in news is also great for this line of thinking. Pierre Bourdieu's essay on the notion of the field and specifically on the journalistic field and whether or not it is, or can ever be, an independent and autonomous entity free from politics or social bias is also a useful way to introduce students to the idea of how vested interests affect what goes into our news and how we read, watch, or listen to it. An oldie but a goodie is Gaye Tuchman's work on Making News - which is a sociological study of the news room and how 'facts' are created - not out of thin air, but how they are established as facts. Philip Schlesinger is another person whose work on the BBC, also from the 1970s if I am recalling correctly, takes on this line of investigation.

For my own reading, I tend to find more credible or convincing those pieces that try to cover multiple perspectives in a story, leaving us with more questions rather than a sense of closure. Stories that align themselves with a subaltern position, or are more likely to tell the less told side of the story are more likely to catch my attention, but even there, I pay attention to the words and imagery that a story conjures up, and for it to be credible it would have to be as fair as possible to multiple perspective, which is not the same as appealing to objectivity (Michael Schudson on the cult of objectivity and how it developed in US journalism is a great book), which often disguises deep-seated injustices and inequalities. This, of course, displays my political commitments, which is to be constantly critical of mainstream media, no matter what the credibility of particular organizations. 

Your question has really got me thinking more about how such a simple question can open up so many pedagogic and intellectual possibilities - so thank you again! I hope some of my thoughts on the question are helpful.

Determining if a news source is reputable or a news story is reliable can be done based on some known criteria. There are two key sides of a news source or a news story. To clarify, a news story depends on a news sources. There are two main common types of news sources. Besides, there are many sources such as local, national, regional, and international agencies.

     The first kind refers to individuals, families, groups, business, communities, organisations, or institutions. They provide information, news, or adverts to the media (clients). And the second categories are media institutions or media houses (both print and electronic media).

     A news source may be influenced by the media ownership, editorial policy, accident or chance, media trust, outreaches, corporate social responsibility, circulation, and public image. So, in order to determine if a news source is reputable or story is reliable check its media house or clients to whom the reported news story has been attributed (as the source) for the:

Possibilities of verification or sending a feedback on the subject, editorial contacts of editors and reporters, circulation figures or area coverage, clients, advertisements, and quality of journalism (the news story); because news story logically answers these questions: what? Who? When? Where? Why? and how?  If it is a local story, confirm with multiple sources.

     A story also indicates a by-line or full name of the reporter, dateline (place and date of filing the story), title or rank of the reporter(s), history of legal cases or public complaints, staffing levels, annual reports, polls ranking, and compare with other media reports / sources.

     I addition, we need to be aware of some special circumstances as well. For example, April 1 fools day media reports, some advertorials, special supplements, opinions, and propaganda. Most success news stories which are attributed to public or private corporations, institutions, organisations, businesses, associations, or individuals are public relations stories.

     If we are to be successful in assessing or evaluating the credibility of most news stories or sources, then we need to work on ourselves first. For example, we should build our own capacity, competitiveness, or competence to do so. Media literacy is therefore vital for us all.

     To conclude, good journalism is based on social responsibility of the press, verification, accuracy, truthfulness, fairness, balance, and the right to a reply by the affected audience.

by the credible authentic evidences and data they come out with

My first rule from distinguishing actual news from advocacy written to look like news is whether there are value judgements (opinions) stated in the article without attributing them to anyone.

Journalists to not incorporate their own opinion into stories. Opinions and value judgments must be attributed.

Then as a next step, one can evaluate whether both/all sides are treated fairly, who owns the publication or has editorial control, etc.

Thank you for your response to this question posited about 4 years ago, some time in 2014, way before the start of the 'fake news' hype. The issue remains unresolved, Dr. Marek, doesn't it.

I think you mention valuable points on lack of attribution and fairness of multiple perspectives. On the other hand, in a journalist is tasked with writing an op-ed (i.e., an opinion editorial by the definition of the sub-genre), does it change your perspective on value judgements? Or would you never take any op-eds into account, even as professionally written as say, the Undark, from MIT?

As a journalist, editor and former broadcaster in Canada for 30 years, I can tell you how stories are researched first before it ever hits the page. Now, this does not dictate that all news agencies follow this process, as tabloid, cable TV outlets, online news and podcasts etc., may decide to do things much differently.

Part of the issue is that we assume that those who are on these stations/channels, are actually trained journalists. Many are not, but heck, they're on television or the internet, they look slick and talk smart, but that doesn't mean they received the same training that requires them to follow the rules set out specifically for the fourth estate in that particular jurisdiction.

Remember too that standard/traditional journalists and broadcast reporters are required to follow specific laws and ethics according to that particular country, where the agency, its editors, and the individual are bound to adhere. Tabloid and cable news don't always follow this, as per the direction of their producers and executive producers and legal counsel. The goal is always to get readership, viewership and make money, but trust and professionalism factor into the mix more than we realize, sometimes unconsciously so.

When handed (or stumbling upon) a story, reporters will have their stock of specialists they turn to for a balanced opinion, or they seek out new, fresh and credible feedback. These are always vetted before the interview, checking other coverage, education, community impact, reputation online, and asking other reporters/editors. They are also required to seek the insight of the parties involved, (perpetrators, companies, victims, etc.) if they choose to do so or are allowed to do so.

Most answers/statements that come from corporations/groups in a story are often spun and controlled by public relations/communications specialists or lawyers, so we have to present that to the public (as to what the company's line is), because that's all we get at the time. Editorial never really embraces public relations as a credible source as a result (we don't like advertisers either), because it's not coming raw from 'the street, the moment'--it's manufactured. But we rely on them to feed us information on who is doing what, but most of the time, we prefer to chase our own quotes, rather than borrow one from a press release.

The harder, more front-facing and credible perspective comes from people on the street, who saw, heard, felt, etc., and give their own experience. But it's not the only piece of the 'truth'. It's only one perspective. The goal is to gain several in interviews, and then piece together the five W's and the H for the reader/viewer.

Any source in an interview may often just represent the personal/professional view of that individual or 'company', but are not always the only opinion. Ask 50 people what the weather is like today, and you'll possibly get 20 different answers, depending on their perspective.

A story typically requires three sources, or more, and all of them need to be accountable, identifiable (very rarely are pseudonyms or anonymous sources used in Canadian journalism, unless it is to protect the identities of vulnerable individuals who are in fear of retribution, such as women, children, or occasionally employees who blow the whistle.). This is not encouraged, as it lack the accountability and attribution on behalf of the person giving the quote and information and the reporter/agency that delivers it.

'According to'...attribution, is the key to credibility, but that all has to be checked and double checked, especially if there is a claim to be made. That's why statistics from a reliable source are key to backing up a source's claim.

My journalism professor, Geoff Lane, who worked for national British and Canadian newspapers, told us on the first day of class that "Your information is only as good as your source." Ergo, if sources are dependable, salient, logical, experienced, and can offer a balanced view (which means you ask balanced questions, pro and con to the situation in the interviews), and determine the strongest and most unique and relative quotes to the story's focus, you can guide the reader through the various perspectives you collected, allowing them to trust the writer, the sources, the agency and ultimately, themselves, to make up their own mind on how they feel about the situation.

To determine if a story is credible, it would be judged on the source/agency, checking out the credibility (if one takes the time), of the individuals who are quoted, and then viewing other stories that cover the same subject.

Most rank and file will not take the time to do this, as a digital information age is highly competitive in terms of attention, focus and discernment.

There's my perspective. I hope it helps widen the understanding. Maybe we can talk about the perception of 'fake news' sometime!

Best,

Donna

@DonnaGray, thank you for sharing your professional editor's/broadcaster's perspective. You've added depth to this somewhat forgotten thread of conversation.The valuable groundwork with credible sources seems to be given less priority and time, and some is often outsourced to post-print fact-checking. I came across Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel's (2009) book "Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload" that expressed similar concerns with obtaining credible evidence from sources at length. Your points of view seem to converge, as Kovach and Rosenstiel seem to lament the lost (or at least obscured) art of the journalism of verification. I also wonder how often and how consistently the procedures you describe have been properly followed under the current ad-revenue model in digital news (or other content dissemination).

Hi Victoria,

I used to live in Sarnia, and miss Grand Bend and Lake Huron and Dr. Disc! I appreciate your response. I would guess that in theory, the people hired to chase stories (or borrow, copy edit, rewrite/pare down, similar to the traditional Broadcast News feed) may not be pushed to follow all the steps I listed. It almost seems like digital news is perceived to less accountable even to editors, but ironically, more impactful, since a copy of the New York Times is only to subscribers, rather than general news being picked up by everyone. There is no 'overlord' for the news, unfortunately. The only guidepost is good taste and professionalism. Sadly, that doesn't seem to stick in tabloid or digital formats.

What do you think?

La pregunta es muy interesante y la respuesta es compleja.

Desde mi punto de vista se requieren varios pasos que ayudan a incrementar la credibilidad de la información.

En primer lugar el medio que publica la noticia: su prestigio, la existencia de un código de ética interno, la presencia de un defensor de la audiencia.

En segundo lugar, el género del que se trata: la noticia excluye la opinión de quien informa, ya sea explícita o implícitamente. Lo segundo suele caracterizarse por el uso de adjetivos para calificar el hecho y los actores del mismo, así como las reiteraciones. Esto demanda un análisis de contenido.

De esto último tengo muy presente el caso de Nicaragua durante la era Somoza y la de los Sandinistas. Los opositores a Somoza eran presentados como "insurgentes", en tanto que quienes combatían al sandinismo eran "contras". Del mismo modo, a fin de magnificar los hechos y las batallas, había quienes al referirse a un combate, sumaban el número de muertos de combates anteriores, a fin de "agregar valor" a la información. Todo ello evidenciaba sesgo en la noticia.

Otro elemento es la comparación con otros medios, cuando es posible, a fin de poder evaluar coincidencias y diferentes.

Todo ello en un contexto de que la objetividad pura no existe. En todo caso, yo prefiero la referencia a la veracidad. El información selecciona, jerarquiza y sintetiza el hecho desde una valoración en la que intervienen su concepción del mundo, sus valores y, finalmente, su competencia técnica para comprender el tema sobre el que informa. Finalmente, interviene el factor humano, en unos casos de forma deliberada y en otros sin intención, pero a fin de cuentas presentando el hecho de una manera limitada que, en ocasiones, nos obliga a ir y contrastar la información en las fuentes directas (un diario de debates del Congreso, por ejemplo), cuando esto es posible y, después, por analogía, aplicar un juicio general acerca del comportamiento del reportero y del medio.

¡Qué informativo, José de Jesús Castellanos! Me gusta vuestro ejemplo. La forma de nombrar "combatientes rebeldes" en lugar de "separatistas" aparece en conflictos fronterizos todo el tiempo y puede fácilmente revelar la percepción de la verdad.

No procedure could be posted by any source or opinion, including mine, that could itself be a credible method to consistently accurately "rate" the credibility of any publication.

But there are methodical approaches which I apply, based on observations and lessons learned.

In my opinion, there has been a n almost universal departure from objectivity, and even more of an abandoning of core investigative reporting, and for a different combination of reasons for each (please allow me to first list some observations I feel would improve consistency of publications):

1. Competitiveness of journalism as a free enterprise is arguably doomed to adopt some degree of sensationalism

2. Retort to mudslinging is implicitly nonobjective, yet holds a major stake in damage control. Retort has a variety of forms and strategies, of which the effectivity becomes largely subjective, thus ineffective to readers who don't know of said mudslinging and providing that background is mudslinging yourself; others who don't want to be placed in the middle of a mudslinging contest; others who despise defensively presented retorts and are immediately turned off when they were unaffected until the retort was published. The result of these possible subjectivities (among others not mentioned) is that any retort will have an I'll effect on an unpredictable subset of readers.

3. Investigative reporting is very expensive and slow to provide answers in an ever increasing rate of information that stresses readers to desperately seek answers or at least have some references on which to anchor their trust

4. Opinions are probably the worst column any serious publication can possibly publish, yet they enjoy large groups of readers who become devout followers. But this leads to the next point below. Opinions are definitely subjective as well, in that some readers find that to be cheap journalism. Everyone has an opinion. I don't believe people pay for a subscription to read an editor's opinion. It's to me, pretentious and reeks of an underestimation of their reader base.

5. A fan club of a column is not credibility. In fact, many opinions are actually well versed and founded in astute observation. But this is like having a parasitical publication taking market share from the employing publication, which is automatically divisive. Why not just have the publication dedicate itself to consistent deployment of facts? Why include any opinion?

6. Satire -- another peeve of the reader base. It's going to be politically biased, even if perceive so. This is because there's no way to have equal opportunity to roast all parties. Besides,. What is the point? Are people paying for entertainment, or news? Lastly, what's hilarious to one is inappropriate to another.

So the methodical approach is first based on my biases, as much as I'd like to think I have none, my time alone might be a reason why I subliminally don't check a particular article, because it seemed good to me.

In other words, propaganda rides on this premise -- the reader or viewer feels confident. It's tuned for that demographic. It's what I call comfort news. Face it. The truth hurts once in a while. So if everything you hear is what you believe, then it's probably unrealistic at least part of the time.

Furthermore, if the presentation is riddled with overacting, overemphasizing, or reporting a story as if it is the most ridiculous thing, even embarrassing to report, then it's probably sarcasm intended to denigrate the subjects of the story -- how do I know? Because it certainly isn't because the story itself is not credible, otherwise they would not word it in such a sarcastic way.

Next is who's benefiting from the story? It's quite clear, once practiced, whether a story is biased towards or against the stakeholders on any given issue. We have to try and deprogram our tendencies to succumb to news as it is formatted, because the successful formats are copied. For example, who says a weather reporter needs to be a jokester? Well it stems from sensationalistic reporting that gets so bad as to affect the title of a broadcast (action news, eyewitness news, first scoop, blood gore and whodunnit hour). This is noticed even subliminally, so people can feel better when the weather comes on. People like talking about the weather when there's just a superficial degree of mutual interest between people -- yes -- it is that ridiculous and we viewers enable that kind of shallow used car salesmanship which, is immediately used against us by the broadcast equating that cute friendliness to VIEWER TRUST. If they tell you that they are trusted by you, the viewer, ask yourselves why do they need to tell me that I trust them?

That leads to more awareness of marketing tricks. For example, the ex-Soviet Union state run paper was called Pravda, which literally means Trust. What a joke. But today, many biased-to-lying-to-tabloid need feeds use this. Names I won't replicate here exactly, but please, suspect sources called things like The Smart Person's Paper. Press of the brave or Ink of the free, or red white and blue Eagle Flag Guardian of the Fatherland. Or TheRealPoop. Those reek of insulting my intelligence.

Simple channel X news. Daily report. Week in Review. Local Headlines. National Summary these boring names at least prove a corporate decision not to require a major marketing effort to gain reader share. Their investment is probably in their data collection, not presentation as an experiment in mass hypnosis.

Fact check, fact check, fact check. There's no such thing as a partisan fact check site. The way to verify that, is to check that the fact checkers agree on any issue. If they do, it isn't because they're in cahoots with each other, it's because they're reporting fact and fiction correctly. Another good argument against anyone stating that your fact check is pro purple, is to ask them to point you to their pro yellow fact checking site. They can't. It doesn't exist.

Note that my observations can often be statistically substantiated, such as the ratio between untruths from the polka dotted party compared to the fruit striped party, and the pistachio party and the pineapple on pizza party. There is quite often that simple verifiable truth.

Is a politician being stroked? Over time, is that particular party being stroked?

What does that other scum of the earth party news have to say? Yeah that's a tough one. But it shouldn't be. If you don't have the motivation to check out the opposing side, you're not even sure that it is obviously transparently biased, anymore than sure that your favorite broadcast isn't. If it hurts to try, then you're already in the grips of a soft couch in front of a sewer pipe spewing out warm, fuzzy comfort.

In conclusion, it seems that the viewer or reader must be able to be honest with one's self, at least acknowledge that the market for news, we, the people, have a civil duty to be critical of our government. Anyone who says criticism us shameful, might have spent some time in North Korea, for example, where you are required to respect your leader.

Same with the news. It was given freedoms and constitutional protections because it is a functional aspect of American democracy, in that it is intended for the people to not only police their elected officials, but to be educated such that they cast a functional vote. You register every election year because we are not required to be lifers on one side of the other. All of that dysfunctional behavior, like saying well, this is a purple town. Or well, our family has always voted polka dots, are not the fault of the news feeds, fact or frictional feeds. That's we, the people, failing at being rational human beings, and in so doing, actually enable if not create the market for fake news.

So it's really up to us to evaluate just what it is to be a voter, and what is the point of complaining if we're lazy and the news sources are exploiting us?

Footnote:. I'm seriously not optimistic that this answer will change anything, because it's too easy to say Hmmm. Good points. But doesn't apply to me. It's time to watch South Park for this week's parenting tips.

In the current situation I have received advice "From NHS staff" which advocate pineapple juice and avocado as an antidote. The figures given for the pH levels of these is close to that of battery acid. (Hey?) My point now is, find just one or two mistruths, and question the whole post.

See e.g., https://africacheck.org/fbcheck/coronavirus-doesnt-have-own-ph-level-alkaline-food-wont-beat-it/ for a similar refutation.

Use of human and data sources--is it skewed or representative? How dependent is the story on government officials, especially unnamed ones? What questions about the story are unanswered? But the biggest thing is trusting your judgment--confirmation bias clouds our ability to assess the truth of some message. Once we become skeptical of our tendency to self deception, we are better able to judge the reliability of something which comes to us as "news"

Victoria, that's a great question in an age of declining old major media and the rise of the new ad hoc social media postings. Like all storytelling, news writers have data-background assumptions, data assumptions, interpretive frameworks, ideologies, and deeper religious or a/anti-religious worldviews that influence and shape all aspects of their seeing-hearing-telling and thus their entire news narrative. Even the legal standard in defamation cases of "generally reliable news source" is terribly squishy. As a long-time student of news, I find the elements of context (did the reporter provide a fair representation of the broadest possible context that the sources themselves would acknowledge as relevant?), accuracy (did the reporter provide information--quotes, relevant data, etc.-- in a context that gives them meaning and that again the sources themselves would acknowledge as fair and accurate?), and fairness (did the reporter tell the story in a way that fairly represents the differing views and the key players behind the event or issue in question?). Reporter and news outlet credibility and trust are built over time (and therefore, sadly, can be abused at later dates). I know of only a couple reporters and very few news outlets that consistently achieve that level or standard of performance. The major newspapers used have third-party editors fact-check stories and call sources to confirm quotes and context, but today's financial pressures have sadly reduced or eliminated that practice to the detriment of our news quality and public discourse itself. Hope that helps.

Peace be upon you. Greetings. We can determine the correct and reliable news by following the news from international channels such as the BBC and also the news agency from the Associated Press.

Thanks Lana Abid Mansor , it certainly makes sense to rely on credibility of trusted news sources.

Victoria Rubin Excellent question and thanks for sharing!

Although there is The International Fact-Checking Network (https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/), I'm not aware of any organization for regulating news agencies. Anyway, in 2017, I proposed an unsupervised method to crate trust scores for news portals. Nevertheless, it's a very complex problem and still an open problem, I guess.

Here's the link for my publication in case you're interested:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325212409_DistrustRank_Spotting_False_News_Domains

All the best,

It becomes more complicated when a media-illiterate receives news information from multiple communication channels. Since, media-literate societies are capable to filter, interpret, explain, share and digest raw and refined news information coming from different circles, they give less chances to be an easy prey of agenda-setters.

Thank you for your recent comments. The topic still seems ripe for further discussions, even 6 years after I first put this question to the ResearchGate community. Not surprising it's atop of many people's minds, yet the definitive solution to the problem alludes us all.

Dear Muhammad Riaz Raza,

As the prevalence of false news and the spread of conspiracy theories in the U.S. has shown us recently, even some societies that may have been considered traditionally 'media-literate' are not immune to the disease of mis- and disinformation.

Vinicius Woloszyn Sounds like your trust/distrust rank works reasonably well for distinguishing likely sources of false vs reliable news. Do you provide a GUI for experimenting with your algorithm?

Hi Victoria Rubin , a GUI for trust scores sounds like is an exciting idea!

Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to create it yet. Similarly, we have created a search engine that collects fake claims from fact-checkers and makes them available through a searching interface -- it's called http://untrue.news. Anyway, send me an inbox if you want to have a further chat about a GUI :)

Here there's further information about Untrue.News

Preprint Untrue.News: A New Search Engine For Fake Stories

Greetings,

Vinicius

I am interested in knowing that to whom you are asking this question - a reader in me? Or a journalist within me? Some part of examining the truth then differs. But in both the cases there is no 100 per cent perfectly developed test to determine if the news is fake or real. Sometimes it depends of the type of news also. For instance, if a website gives a fake story about some crime then there is no way for a reader to know instantly if it is true or fake. In both the cases one common thing that works is the personal knowledge and information you have gathered over the years from your reading, experiences etc., which many a times create a doubt in your mind about a news. Then as a second step you should be willing to take some efforts and spend time to check its veracity, like checking if any other media has also carried the same news. Several readers give up at first stage itself, journalists take efforts to little deeper. Tom Wicker of New York Times while covering Kennedy assassination had said that a reporter has to sometime believe in his sixth sense or instinct in believing the information s/he has received. I feel that is applicable in fake news on web also. Your instinct tells you that there is something not matching here. But one - a journalist or a reader - needs to develop that instinct or sixth sense by reading, watching, talking interacting for several years. Beyond instinct or sixth sense what is ultimately important is cross checking - whether for journalists or readers - a basic lesson in journalism.

Milind Kokje Thank you for your thoughts, they obviously come from experience. Towards the end of your post, in a way, you answer your own question from the beginning. I concur that we all need to find an inner journalistic grit in us, especially when it comes to issues that matter. Unfortunately, simply relying on intuition often lead people to wrong conclusions, especially if they already have a an inclination to believe what they see in the news (that pesky confirmation bias issue). It takes time, effort, and skill to verify information, as any journalist would tell us, and it's simply unrealistic to expect that every lay person reading news would not succumb to simpler ways of thinking or 'intuiting' through what the news says. In principle you are right: it's good to fact check, cross check, and look for logical evidence. Those are indeed valuable lessons for news and media literacy from (what I understand is} your profession of journalism.

Dear I think it is called Media Literacy and I have earlier explained that one can mininmize the bad effects of mis and disinformation through better understanding of the content.

Victoria Rubin Thanks for your response.