Find Your Fit: The Importance of Fact-Checking in Journalism
We are becoming more cognizant of “fake news,” and developing strategies to think critically and fact check what we’re reading, seeing or listening to. Journalism students should learn how to spot fake news and assess the truthfulness of information they research.
To assist in teaching “fact checking,” and apply it to interviewing, writing and publishing, I located three open educational resources (OERs) I think would enhance students’ knowledge:
(1) The 10 Best Fact Checking Websites for 2020 – https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/2020/04/12/the-10-best-fact-checking-websites-for-2020/
Many of the websites listed in this OER are discipline-specific: if students are writing stories pertaining to politics, science or culture (just to name a few), they can use them to assess claims made by industry leaders.
(2) Check, Please! Starter Course – https://www.notion.so/Check-Please-Starter-Course-ae34d043575e42828dc2964437ea4eed
A potential weekly exercise, this set of five lessons teaches how to fact and source-check for disinformation. It could build students’ knowledge of spotting fake news, and then conclude with providing trusted sources, and how to locate them.
(3) Fact-Checking Meets Fauxtography: Verifying Claims About Images – https://core.ac.uk/display/334853057?recSetID=
A journalist may specialize in photography or gather images online to complement their published stories. Students, using content from this OER, would learn that photos, as well as written text, can be manipulated to mislead the public.
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