How to Verify News Sources Before Sharing

Most false stories spread because someone shared them within seconds of seeing them. You do not need to be an expert to stop that: a few minutes of checking catches the large majority of fakes, recycled stories and doctored images.

The method below is based on SIFT (Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace the claim), developed by the digital literacy researcher Mike Caulfield, and on Stanford research showing how professional fact-checkers judge websites.

You need nothing more than a phone or computer, a second browser tab and, for pictures, a reverse image search such as Google Lens or TinEye.

1. Stop. If a story makes you angry, scared or delighted, that is the moment to slow down. Strong emotion is what makes false stories travel. Ask yourself: do I know this source, and do I know this is true?

1. Find out who published it. Do not judge a site by how professional it looks. Open a new tab and search for the site or account name, adding words like "who owns" or "Wikipedia". This is called lateral reading: in a Stanford study, professional fact-checkers reached sound judgements about websites faster than historians and students because they left the site to read what others said about it. Watch for lookalike addresses that copy a real outlet with an extra word or an unusual ending such as ".com.co".

1. Check the date. Old stories often come back as if they were new: a storm, a protest or a quote from years ago, shared again because it suddenly fits the news. Look for the publication date on the page, and search the headline to see when it first appeared.

1. Look for other coverage. Search the main claim in a news search. If something big really happened, several established outlets will be reporting it within hours. If only one site has it, or every version links back to the same post, wait.

1. Trace it to the original. Follow links back to the first source: the official statement, the court document, the full video, the original study. Check that the original says what the story claims. Quotes are often cut, and studies are often stretched beyond what they found.

1. Check photos and videos. Run a reverse image search with Google Lens or TinEye to see where else a picture has appeared and when. For videos, take a screenshot of a key frame and search that. The free InVID-WeVerify browser plug-in breaks a video into frames and runs these searches for you. Signs of AI generation include warped hands or text, mismatched shadows and backgrounds that melt into each other, but the most reliable test is still whether a trustworthy source can confirm where it came from.

1. Decide, then share with context or not at all. If the story checks out, share the most reliable version of it, not the screenshot. If you are not sure, do not share it. If you have already shared something false, post the correction: it helps more than deleting quietly.

• A deleted page can still be checked. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine keeps old copies of many web pages.
• Screenshots are easy to fake. A screenshot of a tweet or headline is not proof it was ever published. Find the original post.
• Satire gets shared as news. Check whether the site describes itself as satire before reacting to its stories.

How long should this take? Usually two to five minutes. Steps 2 and 4 alone catch most problems.

What if a friend or relative shares something false? Reply privately with a link to a fact check or the original source, rather than correcting them in public. People are more likely to change their minds when they do not feel embarrassed.

Can I trust a story because it has lots of shares? No. Popularity measures how fast something spreads, not whether it is true.