In the past, there was general agreement that most news organizations were responsible enough to only publish stories about events that really happened, to the best of their knowledge. Also, they would check their sources, and only use reliable ones. Also, we knew that tabloids in the checkout line at the local supermarket were not to be trusted, thanks to the absurd stories in one of them, The Weekly World News. At least the Weekly World News admitted to being satire when it stopped publishing paper editions in the real world. And we knew that a few websites, like The Onion, deliberately posted satire; that was good for laughs.
Today I am running into untrustworthy news stories all the time, especially on Facebook. Many of them come from a few writers in Macedonia, who make good money by grinding them out. They are made popular by social media, where all too many people accept the stories on face value. And even on the mainstream sites, journalism has become so sloppy that I routinely see spelling and grammar errors in the stories. They should hire me as a proofreader!
Here is a list of the fake news sites I have found so far. I won't post links to them, because they probably make money when enough people visit the sites. My advice is this: please don't share stories from them, except to make your friends laugh. Many of them are written with a right-wing slant, to fool those of us with conservative tendencies. For me, The World News Daily Report is the worst offender; not only does it pretend to be a conservative news site, Worldnet Daily, but I see its fake stories about Christianity and the Exodus every week. Forewarned is forearmed!
Sites known to have fake news:
http://abcnews.com.co
http://abriluno.com
http://adobochronicles.com
https://aceflashman.wordpress.com (news lifted straight from The National Reporter)
http://americanconservativeherald.com/ (misleading headlines)
https://babylonbee.com/ (Christian satire)
http://christwire.org
http://dailybuzzlive.com
http://dailycurrant.com
http://dailyleak.org
http://diversitychronicle.wordpress.com
http://empirenews.net
http://holyobserver.com
http://huzlers.com
http://madworldnews.com (potentially fake stories, annoying popups)
http://nationalreport.net
http://news4ktla.com (utterly false stories)
http://newsexaminer.net (a mixture of real and fake news)
http://News-Hound.org (maybe not satirical but a lot are definitely fake)
http://newsthump.com
http://newstoad.net
https://now8news.com/
http://nymeta.co (News lifted straight from The National Reporter without checking them)
http://odgossip.com
http://righthoughts.com
http://rockcitytimes.com
http://stuppid.com (http://realorsatire.com/stuppid-com)
http://thelastlineofdefense.org
http://theonion.com
http://thestocktontimes.com (another satire site)
http://theusualroutine.com/
http://tmzhiphop.com
http://tyronetribulations.com
http://usaviralnews.info/
http://weekendpoliticalnews.com
http://witscience.org
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com
http://wundergroundmusic.com
http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com
http://www.crystalair.com
http://www.derfmagazine.com
http://www.duffelblog.com
http://www.enduringvision.com/index.php
http://www.gomerblog.com
https://www.ncscooper.com/
http://www.news24fresh.info (a combination of outdated and fake stories)
http://www.newsbiscuit.com
http://www.newsmutiny.com/Index.html
http://www.private-eye.co.uk
http://www.sott.net/ (seems to be a mixture of satire/real news with no obvious way to tell which is which)
http://www.sportspickle.com
http://www.thebeaverton.com
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk
http://www.thenewsnerd.com
http://www.thepeoplescube.com (my favorite political humor site, where conservatives pretend to be communists)
http://www.thespoof.com
http://www.theworldnature.net
http://www.unconfirmedsources.com
If you come across a news story that does not come from the above list, how do you tell if it is fake? Here is how I do it:
If you see it first on social media, rather than on a well-known news site, chances are it is fake news.
If a news headline tells you which emotion you should be feeling, like "What Trump Just Did Should Terrify You," chances are it is fake news.
If you are told to share the story with everyone you know, like the urban legends and fake virus warnings, it is definitely fake news.
(My favorite) Go to the website's home page, and check out the other news stories on it. If you can't believe the stories, chances are it is a fake news site. Any well-designed website has links to the home page/index page on every page, so if I find the site doesn't have those links, that's another giveaway.
If you find an article organized so that every picture or factoid is on a different page, and you have to click on links that say "Next" to get to each one, it may not be fake news, but it's definitely clickbait. Don't bother following the links. Every page will be full of ads; the owner of the website and the advertisers are looking to squeeze out as many clicks (hits) as possible from each visitor, to maximize their popularity and revenue. As long as you are on a clickbait site, they are getting more from your visit than you.
If the title of an article says something about an item in the article and only gives the item's number, not a name or a description, the author is telling you in advance that it's clickbait. An example of such a title is "The 15 Most Dangerous Trees in the World, and I'd Run Away From #11!" In some sneaky cases, the article will end before the reader gets to the number mentioned. Consider this a warning before you click on anything.
Likewise, if the title of an article promises to talk about a specific number of items, like "The Ten Worst Restaurants in Your State," and then the article covers many more items than the promised number, with no end to the article in sight, you have found another example of clickbait.
If an article has a misleading headline, and nothing is said in the body of the article text about what's in the headline, you've been hit with a double whammy -- the article is both fake news and clickbait.
If a headline includes the word "disrupt," like "This Company is Disrupting a $200 Million Industry," that's not news, that's spam. The same goes for a headline that promises you can fix a problem with "one weird trick." Either way, if you click on it, you will get a tedious infomercial.
If a headline includes the word "bombshell," the authors want you to think something big is about to happen, but it probably won't. Don't hold your breath.
If a headline contains the word "tragic" with a celebrity's name, like "A Tragic End for Laura Ingraham," rest assured, the celebrity is alive and well, and the article will talk about something else completely (See #8).
And if almost every story from a network (e.g., CNN) or website is about the president of the United States, that isn't news, that's an obsession!
To summarize all this: "Don't believe anything you read on the Internet or hear on my radio show (or any other show, for that matter) unless you can confirm it with another source, and/or it is consistent with what you already know to be true. Yes, that does include information obtained from this site."-- Neal Boortz (a retired talk show host)
