Experience and education do not always result in unbiased reporting.
The reputation of the organiza- tion that supports (employs) a reporter also serves as a means of evaluating a source. Publishers that have been in the news business for a while get a reputation based on the accuracy, reliability, and slant of the sto- ries they publish. The New York Times, Wall Street Jour- nal, Fox News, and CNN have built their reputations by selecting reporters who write the stories and then by selecting the stories those authors produce. The publishers act as gatekeepers for the news. For those publishers with a track record for providing accurate reporting, their reputation can serve as a credential and can reflect that reputation on their reporters.
It is true that reporters with valid credentials who write for reputable news outlets sometimes mis- lead or misinform. The monetization of internet-based news is responsible for at least some misinformation. The relentless 24/7 flow of news also puts pressure on reporters and publishers to release information
quickly, sometimes before the facts have been com- pletely verified. The need for speed can also cause one news outlet to simply repost a report from another news outlet, even if the facts have not been verified.
Producers of On the Media have provided informa- tional sheets in their “Breaking News Consumer’s Hand- book.” Several points they list speak to the pressure for legitimate news sources to release information quickly. They offer pointers about the language reporters use and what specific phrases mean regarding the reliabil- ity of the information they supply.14 On the Media also suggests that part of the verification process for news stories should be geographic. Sources geographically close to the incident being reported are more likely to have reporters at the site and will therefore be closest to the unfolding event. Checking the geographic loca- tion of a story can help to evaluate its authenticity.
It is good practice to follow any links or citations given in a story. Fake news writers often include links and citations to make their posts seem more credible. However, those links may not connect to any infor- mation that is relevant to the original post. A Fact- Check report posted on November 18, 2016, found the following:
Another viral claim we checked a year ago was a graphic purporting to show crime statistics on the percentage of whites killed by blacks and other murder statistics by race. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump retweeted it, telling Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly that it came “from sources that are very credible.” But almost every figure in the image was wrong—FBI crime data is publicly available—and the supposed source given for the data, “Crime Statistics Bureau—San Fran- cisco,” doesn’t exist.15
A quick and easy check for the veracity of a source that seems questionable is to go to the homepage of the news source and look at what other articles are being posted. While one story may sound plausible, there may be others that are less so. By looking at the site in the aggregate, it is sometimes possible to deter- mine the purpose and tone that will help identify the site as legitimate or bogus.
Some fake news sites will reuse older information retrieved from other sites to mislead by association. For example, President Donald Trump credited him- self with convincing Ford Motor Company, after his election, to move the production of one of their vehi- cles from Mexico to Ohio. However, the original pub- lication date of the announcement by Ford was August 2015, long before Mr. Trump was elected. Similarly, in 2015, then-candidate Trump suggested that he had influenced Ford to move its plant, citing a story on Prntly.com. In fact, the original story came from CNN in March 2014 and referred to moving some assembly work to Ohio. The plant to be built in Mexico was still being built in Mexico.16