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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchCheck both the outlet and the specific story. Before sharing a political report, separate verifiable claims from opinion or prediction, investigate the outlet and author using sources outside their own site, inspect the evidence, and look for independent corroboration. A familiar name, political label, or rating alone cannot establish that a particular claim is accurate.
Start with the claim, not the headline
Pause before sharing. Identify the specific statement you want to assess, then distinguish facts from commentary, interpretation, and predictions. A source may be useful on one subject and less reliable on another, so judge the report in question rather than assigning an outlet a permanent pass or fail.
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Pay particular attention to consequential claims: allegations about a person, a striking statistic, a quote presented as proof, or a claim that could influence a decision. Ask what evidence would verify or disprove it.
Check who is behind the outlet
Use lateral reading: leave the article and look for independent information about the outlet and author. The UK House of Commons Library describes this approach as checking sources outside the page being evaluated. Its guidance recommends considering the source’s aims and funding as possible context for biases or conflicts of interest: House of Commons Library, “How to evaluate sources”.
#1 Best Overall
Look for ownership, funding, stated aims, relevant experience, and a track record. Do not treat an outlet’s own About page as the only account of who it is or how it operates. Funding and perspective can help you understand incentives, but they do not by themselves prove that a particular report is false.
Inspect the reporting and evidence
Read beyond the headline. A well-supported story makes it possible to see who reported it, what evidence is offered, and where facts end and opinion begins. The News Literacy Project also recommends checking transparency about ownership, funding, and reporting practices: “Is it legit? Five steps for vetting a news source”.
Rank #2
- Is an author named, and is their relevant experience clear?
- Does the story link to original documents, datasets, recordings, or other primary evidence?
- Are dates, methods, and context explained well enough to assess what the evidence supports?
- Does the article distinguish reported facts from analysis, advocacy, and opinion?
- Are important claims attributed to identifiable sources, rather than vague phrases such as “experts say”?
A citation is a starting point, not proof: open it and check whether it actually supports the statement in the article. If the underlying material is missing or does not substantiate the claim, lower your confidence accordingly.
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Look for genuinely independent reporting
Search the claim in other outlets and compare what they report. Agreement can increase confidence when reports rely on separate reporting or evidence. Several stories repeating the same wire report, press release, or original post are not several independent confirmations.
Rank #3
Compare the articles’ sources and evidence, not just their conclusions. The SIFT approach, described by Michigan State University, includes investigating a source and finding better coverage before drawing a conclusion: Evaluating Online Information with SIFT.
Trace quotes, numbers, photos, and videos to context
For a quote, look for the full speech, transcript, or recording. For a number, find the original report or dataset and check what it measures, when it was collected, and whether the article describes it accurately. For an image or video, investigate where and when it first appeared and whether it has been edited or given a misleading caption.
Tracing a claim or media item back to its original context can reveal omissions, changed wording, or an unrelated older image. Michigan State’s SIFT resource calls this move “trace claims, quotations, and media to their original context”: SIFT guidance.
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Assess corrections and accountability
Look for a correction policy and for visible handling of significant errors. A clear, prompt correction is evidence about how an outlet responds when it gets something wrong; it does not guarantee that every other story is accurate. Likewise, the absence of a correction notice is not proof that a report is correct.
Best Value
The House of Commons Library discusses source evaluation and accountability in its guidance: “How to evaluate sources”. Any rules it describes for UK press regulation are specific to that jurisdiction, not universal requirements.
Compare two sources consistently
When choosing between two outlets or reports, apply the same tests to each. An outlet may have transparent policies while a particular article still lacks evidence; compare both general practices and the story itself.
| What to compare | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Relevance and expertise | Experience or access relevant to this subject and claim. |
| Primary evidence | Documents, data, recordings, or sources readers can inspect. |
| Transparency | Clear authorship, ownership, funding, and reporting methods. |
| News versus opinion | Whether reporting is distinguishable from commentary or advocacy. |
| Corroboration | Independent reporting based on evidence rather than repetition. |
| Accountability | A correction process and visible treatment of substantial errors. |
Reach a calibrated conclusion
Do not force every report into “true” or “fake” when the evidence is incomplete. State what is verified, what remains uncertain, and what additional evidence could change your view. Political perspective and emotional language may be useful context, but neither replaces checking the evidence for the particular claim. PolitiFact describes its own fact-checking approach in its methodology page; that organization-specific description is not proof that every fact-checker follows the same process: PolitiFact methodology.
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