In the last several years, it has become increasingly important to be able to evaluate news sources to distinguish reliable from "fake" news. "Fake news" has actually been around for many years in the form of publication like National Enquirer, Star, The Globe, and The New York Post (the most well-known in the US), referred to as "tabloids." Tabloids are marked by sensational stories and the "dirt" on public figures and their writing ranges from outright fiction to plausible, but unsubstantiated stories. Tabloids are published purely for profit and sometimes with malicious intent towards public figures and politicians.
Recently, however, fake news has taken a dark turn and has been used for explicitly political ends and has had a strong impact on recent elections, public discourse, and even public safety. For example, the 2016 fake news item/conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate lead a man to drive from North Carolina, walk into a Washington D.C. pizzeria, and open fire with an assault rifle--luckily nobody was killed, but the incident shows how potent fake news can be.
First off, get news from several different sources! Relying on one news source is a sure way to guarantee that we will be vulnerable to fake news. Sometimes a story reported as fact in one source will be questioned by another; when that happens, look into the story to see if it is simply a difference of perspective or if one is trying to pass along a fake story.
Additionally, a National Public Radio blog post from December 2016, gives a quick set of steps for determining whether a news story is fake, based on the work of Dr. Melissa Zimdars, Assistant Professor of Communications and Media at Merrimack College in Massachusetts:
Additionally, below is a short handout put out by CQ Press on recognizing fake news.
Below is an infographic posted on imagur.com that tries to show the range of popular news sources from extreme left sources to extreme right sources. Best suggestion is to pay more attention to sources in the middle columns, the ones labled "Skews Liberal," "Mainstream," and "Skews Conservative."
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