Weary of disinformation overload? Fact-check your way to the truth
Posted
Lee Shappell
In 2025, Independent Newsmedia, USA, Inc. launched Civility Learning Lab, a free, non-subscription platform designed to promote civil discussion of issues affecting Arizonans. It now includes INI's Delaware/Maryland and Florida newsrooms.
CivilityLearningLab.org is made possible by sponsorships from INI and retired INI CEO Joe Smyth. For more information on the platform or how to become a sponsor, email CEO Charlene Bisson at cbisson@iniusa.org.
How many times have you been worked into a lather after seeing a meme on social media, perhaps even moved to comment on it — and maybe in a very uncivil way, only to learn later that the content simply was not true?
Deliberately false or slanted information driven by artificial intelligence is the bane of today’s information-overloaded world. While we once relied on the social media giants to police their content, with well-meaning, independent organizations looking over their shoulders, the difficult reality is that time, money and perhaps even indifference have conspired to change the landscape in protecting the truth:
• United Kingdom lawmakers accused X, TikTok and Meta of failing to curb Iran war misinformation, including fake images tied to Iranian narratives, the British newspaper The Guardian reported in March 2026. AI-generated videos and fake satellite images receive hundreds of millions of views as creators use new tools to profit from misinformation. X said it would suspend accounts that post fake videos.
• OpenAI is discontinuing Sora, a video-generating tool that drew scrutiny for enabling users to produce realistic fake footage, according to Axios.
• In January 2025, Meta ended its third-party U.S. fact-checking program, replacing it with community notes. It plans to expand the crowd-sourcing form of fact checking to other countries. Meta reported that 900 community notes became visible in the first six months of its U.S. rollout. However, over a similar period in the European Union, professional fact-checkers flagged 35 million Facebook posts, according the European Fact-Checking Standards Network. Meta’s own Oversight Board in March of this year warned that community notes is susceptible to manipulation and coordinated disinformation.
• Philippine-based VERA Files, a Manila non-profit online that is focused on investigative journalism and fact-checking, lost funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. As a result, VERA Files all but gutted its fact-checking staff last year. VERA Files, according to the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, is among 141 fact-checking organizations across 71 countries surveyed for its annual State of the Fact-Checkers report, which showed that 62% of organizations said their audience grew in 2025, even as 76% described their finances as vulnerable or in crisis.
• In the United States, Factchequeado, which serves Latino communities, increased its reach by 60% in 2025 while cutting staff and losing partnerships, according to Poynter. It won the IFCN’s Global Collaboration Award in 2025 for its work fact-checking the 2024 U.S. election alongside PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and USA Today.
• The News Literacy Project’s 2024 survey of American teens' information attitudes, habits and skills found that most teens report seeing posts that spread or promote conspiracy theories, and most are inclined to believe them. NLP’s research aims to identify ways to ensure that young people become well-informed, critical thinkers.
Against that backdrop, fact-checking now more than ever is critical.
Poynter, a nonprofit media institute and newsroom that provides fact-checking, media literacy and journalism ethics training to citizens and journalists, quoted VERA Files co-founder Ellen Tordesillas: “Everybody should be a fact-checker. And we cannot put that in practice as much as we want to these days.”
Indeed, there are processes and tools everyone can use to check veracity of content and safeguard the truth.
Fact-checking tips
As a reader, be alert. Be vigilant. Pay attention to cues that content might suspicious, fake or flat-out wrong with no ulterior motive. Verify claims on official websites. Watch for bias. There could be more to the story. And don’t forget to check your own biases, as well. Don’t let those influence your thinking.
Red flags include sensational wording, excessive use of capital letters and emotional language.
When you open a story, open a second blank window in your browser. As you read along, copy and paste claims into the blank-page search window to verify them.
Google and LinkedIn searches are a quick first step toward verifying that the author is trustworthy and an expert source on the subject.
Verify that information is the most recent, and in today’s world that can change fast.
Double-check sources and URLs to ensure they aren’t fake. Be wary of misspellings, random letters in the URL instead of words and of unusual extensions like .wyz or .top. Look at reviews, ratings and comments. If it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. A good validation tool is www.scam-detector.com/validator.
Google Lens and Bing Visual Search can help you spot altered photographs.
By proceeding with caution, common sense and a healthy dose of skepticism, you can separate fact from fiction even in a world bombarding you with dubious content.
Fact-checking sites
• FactCheck.org: A product of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, this site is useful for checking on political claims.
• Politifact.com: The Pulitzer Prize-winner researches claims of politicians and checks their accuracy.
• Snopes.com: One of the oldest debunking sites on the Internet focuses on urban legends, news stories and memes. It also cites its sources at the end of each debunking.
• Factchequeado.com: A non-partisan nonprofit that helps Latinos check facts in Spanish.
• Mediabiasfactcheck.com: Click on Filtered Search to find out whether a site you’re considering leans left or right, its credibility rating and where it’s located.
Additional resources
• “Fake News” & Misinformation, How to Fact Check: The University of Tampa’s Macdonald-Kelce Library, https://utopia.ut.edu/FakeNews/factcheck, features fact-checking tips, how to spot manipulated videos, checking your own claim and more.
• News Literacy Project: This national educational program, https://newslit.org, mobilizes seasoned journalists to work with educators to teach middle school and high school students how to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. Its teen survey report, https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/NLP-Teen-Survey-Report-2024.pdf, is packed with information on teens’ thoughts on the media and how they get their news.
Lee Shappell is opinions associate with Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA’s Arizona newsroom. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.
A lot of very good advice here, I hope everyone reads this.
However, it is missing one very critical piece of advice: You must also factcheck the factcheckers when there is any indication that their information is not right. They are all significantly biased and often leave out some facts themselves or interpret them in a biased manner. Facebook, X and Google are infamous in their manipulation of facts, stories and data and are almost as bad as our government. Of course, that is an obvious consequence when acting on behalf of government.
Nonetheless, it would be a wonderful milestone just to get everyone to understand the necessity of doing factchecking themselves. My how some would be surprised.
dweIndep
A lot of very good advice here, I hope everyone reads this.
However, it is missing one very critical piece of advice: You must also factcheck the factcheckers when there is any indication that their information is not right. They are all significantly biased and often leave out some facts themselves or interpret them in a biased manner. Facebook, X and Google are infamous in their manipulation of facts, stories and data and are almost as bad as our government. Of course, that is an obvious consequence when acting on behalf of government.
Nonetheless, it would be a wonderful milestone just to get everyone to understand the necessity of doing factchecking themselves. My how some would be surprised.
Tuesday, July 21 Report this