Whitaker Library: Evaluating Sources: Find better coverage

Find better coverage

Disregard the source you are getting the information from and look for articles from trusted sources that discuss the topic.

Research the claim, not the source.

News search cross-check

Check other news organizations to see if they are reporting the same story. The fast way to do that is to search on Google News or another news search engine. Discover if other news organizations are reporting this story and what are they saying. Investigate the news organizations that are reporting on this source. Do they lean conservative or liberal?

Use fact-checking sites

Save time by checking if a professional fact-checker has already investigated the claim. I recommend the Google Fact Check Tool because it searches multiple fact-checking websites.

Google Fact Check Tools
Search different fact-checking sites to see if your claim is accurate.
PolitiFact
A Pulitzer prize winning fact-checking project that is run by Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Snopes
One of the oldest fact-checking websites on the Internet. Snopes pre-dates Google!
FactCheck.org
A nonprofit fact-checking project that is run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Reverse image search

When researching a claim, sometimes it is more efficient to search for specific images.

To do this, perform a reverse image search. In Google Chrome, right-click on an image to do a reverse image search.