News & Fact-Checking

Most important points from this article:

• Think about your own opinions and biases. The more you engage with content you already agree with, the more you will get of it, and the stronger your opinions can become about it. Instead, think about what other viewpoints exist and search for content from their side. One way to do this is to seek out content from reputable news organizations across the political spectrum.
• Second, pay attention to where you get information. Is all your news coming from social media? Research shows that Americans who rely on social media as their main source of news are less knowledgeable than those who get news from almost any other news source.  Pick a news website or two and sign up for their alerts instead.
• Continue to evaluate the content on your “For You” page. You don’t need to stop using TikTok, but do keep looking for those clues about whether information is credible: Who is it from? Is it a journalist, a news organization? Or maybe it was a news influencer, someone who has a large following on social media for sharing current events but who is not necessarily a journalist. Do they cite and link to sources?
• If you can’t find this information, you should search about the topic online. If you don’t find any reputable news organizations reporting on it, you may want to think again about trusting it and sharing it.