Fake news can vary widely in quality and believably from source to source, but quite often identifying it is as easy as taking a moment to learn who is behind a that particular website or social media account. Frequently the creators of fake news put quantity ahead of quality and they are counting on the fact that most readers won’t bother to take the time to do even cursory checks. Here are a couple of great examples:

In January of 2017, a fake news story circulated claiming that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was resigning. It was a well crafted fake news story, complete with the usual false evidence such as misattributed quotes. The claim was quickly debunked by the reputable fact checking organization factcheck.org.

In this case, like many others, the creator of the fake story website failed to take the time to even update the Contact Us page of their WordPress theme, leaving it with the default information of:

A Great Company Name
123 Main St,
Warwick, RI 02889
718.555.0062

While this is an obvious example, even when more effort is put in it’s still quite easy to distinguish a real source from a fake one. In fact, in looking at one of the largest reported fake news websites, yournewswire.com contact pages we can see that while there are names listed, proper care hasn’t been taken to even complete the page.

Beyond that, a quick search of the editor’s name reveals a wealth of stories from a wide-ranging number of long-standing publications listing the site as not reputable. The sources include the UK Standard, The Drum and the site is even listed on Wikipedia as a major site involved in fake news during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The next time you see a story for a source that you’ve never heard of, in addition to checking fact checking websites, we recommend taking a moment to visit the site’s own contact us page as you can often identify fake news for yourself.

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