miss and disinformation online is wreaking havoc on people all across the globe when there's so much content legitimate and fake so readily available at your fingertips how do you know if what you're seeing can be trusted news 8's kirsten holmes takes a deep dive to find out how you can figure out what's real and what's not you're scrolling instagram and a friend sends you a news post asking you if you think it's real or not now i'm a journalist so i get this question all the time but it doesn't take a journalism degree to figure
out if something is real or not online what it does take is a little bit of know-how so here's what you need to know first let's verify the post's legitimacy are they verified online just go to the instagram page and see if they have that blue check mark now that doesn't mean that they are right or unbiased but it is a good start from there you can check out their website address do they have a clearly identifiable name and then you can go into the about section look at their mission their reporters how long they've
been in business so here's some things to look out for when you're doing this does the website mimic or just look like a real news site watch out for that and product or cause affiliation for example a gun rights page talking about gun deaths that could be biased but lots of people use social media and not everyone will send a post to a friend to check its veracity so i talked with experts about how you can protect yourself from bad information online skepticism is a virtue a skeptic is someone who says i wonder if that's
true dean nelson is the director of journalism at point loma nazarene university he says question and verify everything you want to have multiple points of view and that's what's going to give you i think the best obtainable version of the truth and to make sure what you're seeing online passes the is this reasonable smell check why would you trust a quarterback in the nfl to give us advice about science just have to have your antennas up which is okay i'm probably going to encounter information that's not true claire wardle is the director of first draft
they're a non-profit that helps organizations like newsrooms tackle misinformation she says it's okay to have your go-to trusted outlets but it's an even better idea to get several sources for one piece of information especially if you have doubts it's just that there is never one source that all of us can trust it's about how can you do a little bit more digging to try and say well okay the majority of people seem to be saying that this one person on youtube wearing a white coat is saying this but everybody else is saying something different as
soon as you disprove one thing they'll come up with another way to phrase it the centers for disease control calls the delta variant a variant of concern brandon lewis is a national host for verify they're from tegna news 8's parent company and it's their job to debunk rumors online it can be really hard to spot misinformation and disinformation that's that's kind of the point brandon says where you get your information from or your sources matters we're going straight to the people who authored the post or authored the study that was cited in the link that
may have been shared now that you know how important it is to have a myriad of trustworthy news sources let's dive deeper let's say you already vet a news story but the picture is questionable you can check that picture out with a reverse image search all you have to do is right click on that picture and then save it to your desktop after that open google images then you can just drag that picture right into the search bar once you do that you might see a bunch of articles coming up already debunking that photo or
if nothing really comes up it passed the reverse image check some of them they're trying to hoax you they're trying to scam you they're trying to make money some people are doing it to build their brands so that they can become a bigger personality online and i hope they get a book deal some people are doing it just to see if they can get away with it just to see if they can cause some trouble and why does miss and disinformation spur it faster than the truth as humans we've always liked to gossip we've always
liked a tv spoiler we've always liked to oh have you heard but the internet has taken that which is a very human response and just kind of taking it to the next level and if you're wondering if the truth even matters the only way democracy works is if you have an informed citizenry i hope that was helpful for you there's a lot to sift through certainly we deal with it every day as well if you have something else you'd like us to see online something you've seen and want us to verify email it to us
at verify kfnb.com
