Hello! Call me Aya. ^_^ You may know me from the Fediverse (Octodon, anticapitalist.party, Mastodon, computerfairi.es, elekk.xyz), from Facebook, from MyAnimeList, from Twitter or from any other number of places. No matter where you are from, welcome to my blog!! I am happy to have you here. ^_^ Sit down, enjoy yourself and prepare yourself for the thoughts, feelings and musings of a girl who has lived a strange, wonderful and painful life.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Ayase Leilani’s “Rule of Four:” Verifying the Validity of News Sources
I’m a working journalist. I’m interested in all points of view and I draw conclusions based on facts, not just on opinions.
We live in a day and age where pretty much nobody seems to be sharing news stories from either reputable sources or reputable aggregates; I see so many articles being shared on my social media accounts from disreputable places that I am beginning to question the hearts and minds of those in my life.
Allow me to issue a PSA:
UNDERSTAND
One of the most important roles of our journalists is to be watchdogs.
The following groups of journalists (and aggregates) can generally be considered “reliable and investigation-focused:”
- CNN
- MSNBC
- NPR and its affiliates
- PBS and its affiliates
- CBS News and its affiliates (with the exception of affiliates owned by Sinclair Media)
- NBC News and its affiliates (with the exception of affiliates owned by Sinclair Media)
- ABC News and its affiliates (with the exception of affiliates owned by Sinclair Media)
- BBC News
- CBC News
- The Guardian
- The Independent
- The New York Times
- Washington Post
- Los Angeles Times
- The Des Moines Register
- Star Tribune
- Honolulu Civil Beat
- TIME
- Newsweek
- Salon
- The Atlantic
- Teen Vogue
- News And Guts
- VICE
- Huffington Post
- Vox
- Bloomberg
- Business Insider
- CNBC
The following groups of journalists (and aggregates) can generally be considered “unreliable and biased” (I will not be including links for this list because I wish to reduce traffic to these disreputable sources):
- FOX and its affiliates
- FOX News
- MyNetworkTV and its affiliates
- Sinclair Media
- Yahoo! News
- MSN
- The Sun
- The Mirror
- The Times
- Daily Mail
- The Telegraph
- TheBlaze
- Breitbart
- The Wall Street Journal
- Forbes
- FOX Business
RESEARCH
There’s no such thing as an independent person.
Any other group of journalists (and aggregates) should be approached with caution. While the above lists are hardly exhaustive, they give a good place to start. When in doubt, check to be sure where your news stories are gathering their information from; every reputable article will link to one or several of the above sources in the first list. If they only link to themselves, to other unknown sources or to any sources in the second list, you are almost certain to be looking at “Fake News.” There is one exception to this rule: personal blogs. All personal blogs (including my own) are biased, but in many cases, they may speak about greater truths. For all personal blogs and sources not in the first list, check the informatin shared against Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo to ensure its authenticity.
READ
I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.
Once you’ve done this, you can be sure that what you’re reading is solid information and you can go ahead and trust the content.
INFORM
The issues of the day have never seemed more complicated and yet the conversations over how to solve them increasingly resemble cars passing down a divided highway. Whizzing by without a glance.
And when all is said and done…share links to the stories about the news you’ve been researching only from the first list.
If your response to this is, “but Aya, I don’t have enough time to do that!” or “Aya, that’s so much work!,” then don’t share anything at all.
Do your part to halt the spread of fake news, everybody! Follow Ayase Leilani’s “Rule of Four:”
Understand. Research. Read. Inform.
