Tools & Resources

The world is buzzing by in a nonstop whirl of headlines, tweets and gifs. Here are some places you can turn to help you make sense of it all.

Resources

• FirstDraftNews.org — This free online course in how to identify misinformation takes you through five lessons that will help verify news stories and photos.

• How To Spot Fake News — How do you spot fake news? Here are tips from an expert who teaches it to kids. A Quartz video project.

• Center for News Literacy — Take a class at Stonybrook University in how to be a more savvy news consumer or find links to numerous tools and websites that can help you sort through the mishmash of sites purporting to have the real story.

• How To Establish A Media Diet — tips for how to figure out how much news you need and how to get what you’re interested in.

• Fake, Misleading, Click Bait-y, and/or Satirical News Sources — This document was created by Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, to help her students sort through and avoid citing questionable sources. She starts with practical advice on how to check up on a “news” site and includes a list of hundreds of misleading, satirical and fake sites that she’s already investigated. (Be patient: the document is a bit slow to load because it is so comprehensive.)

• PEN America News Consumers’ Bill of Rights and Responsibilities — This nonprofit literary journal’s guide to what readers can and should expect from news outlets and what reputable news organizations can and should to to give consumers confidence in their work.

• Six Questions That Will Tell You What Media To Trust — Tom Rosenstiel, the executive director of the American Press Institute, provides a checklist for readers.