Consider the News Source¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Learners interrogate the source of a news report rather than only its content: Who publishes it? Does it employ editors who check work before publication? Does it link to underlying evidence and name where facts come from? Traditional news brands sometimes err — sometimes badly — but their identity, standards, and accountability structures are visible. Less prominent sites may carry compelling stories, but the burden is on them to show who they are, where their information came from, and that they have argued honestly. "Trust me" is never an acceptable answer; the strategy teaches learners to expect demonstrated sourcing and editorial accountability as the price of credibility.

Design Implications¶

Source evaluation is most effective when taught as lateral reading — leaving the page to see what other sources say about the publisher — rather than reading the site's own "About Us" claims, which professional fact-checkers do and novices typically do not [Wineburg & McGrew's work on professional fact-checkers] [+S]. Direct instruction in evaluation criteria outperforms unguided exhortations to "be critical," which learners apply inconsistently [~M]. Because learners often overestimate their own ability to spot unreliable sources, evaluation practice should include feedback on actual judgments, not just exposure to criteria [~M].

Context¶

Requirements¶

• An explicit set of evaluation criteria: named ownership, visible editorial staff, cited and linked sources, correction practices, separation of news from opinion
• A corpus of real news sources spanning the credibility spectrum, including deceptive sites that mimic legitimate journalism
• Structured practice applying the criteria, with Class Discussion to surface disagreements about judgments
• Instructor knowledge of newsroom practices (editing, fact-checking, corrections) so criteria reflect how journalism actually works

Constraints¶

• Fails when learners evaluate only the page in front of them; vertical reading of a polished deceptive site produces confident wrong judgments [-S]
• Criteria lists alone, without practice on real and deceptive sources, produce knowledge that does not transfer to authentic browsing [-M]
• Overemphasis on "political bias" misdirects attention; a partisan outlet with editors and sourcing is more reliable than an apolitical one with neither [~M]
• Requires instructor familiarity with the media ecosystem; outdated examples undermine credibility of the lesson

Implementation Variability¶

• Lateral reading protocol (SIFT: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims): learners open new tabs to investigate the publisher before reading the story
• Comparative analysis: learners compare coverage of the same event across outlets with different editorial standards
• Source autopsy: deconstruct a retracted or fabricated story to identify the missing accountability signals
• Production perspective: learners draft a story with and without editorial review to understand what editing adds

Target Learners¶

• Secondary and post-secondary students, who in national assessments show persistent weakness in evaluating online sources regardless of achievement level [+S]
• General adult audiences; the strategy assumes no prior journalism knowledge but does assume basic web fluency
• Less effective for learners who already use lateral reading habitually — instruction becomes redundant [~W]

Target Learning Goals¶

• Information literacy: judging the credibility of sources before judging their content
• Critical thinking: distinguishing accountability structures (editors, corrections, sourcing) from surface signals (professional design, domain names)
• Epistemic vigilance: treating "where did this come from?" as a default question rather than an occasional one

Instructions¶

1. Present the evaluation criteria (ownership, editorial staff, sourcing, corrections) with worked examples of each signal — a Demonstration of lateral reading on a live site makes the moves visible.
2. Model the investigation aloud: open new tabs, search the publisher's name, check whether the story links to underlying documents (Think-Aloud).
3. Learners apply the criteria to a set of paired sources — one reliable, one deceptive — and record their evidence (Annotating the pages helps make judgments inspectable).
4. Hold a Class Discussion to resolve disagreements, focusing on why a signal counts as evidence of accountability.
5. Transfer check: give learners an unfamiliar source a week later and assess whether they investigate laterally without prompting.

Related Strategies¶

• 3-Source Rule — corroborating a claim across multiple sources complements evaluating any single source
• A Finder's Guide to Facts — broader fact-finding framework within which source evaluation sits
• Teach AI-mediated judgement and make process, judgement and transfer visible in assessment

Examples¶

• Civic Online Reasoning curriculum (Stanford History Education Group) — free lessons and assessments built on lateral reading research; students learn to investigate sources by leaving the page.
• SIFT method (Mike Caulfield, https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/) — a four-move protocol taught in undergraduate information literacy courses.
• News literacy units comparing coverage — learners contrast a wire-service report (visible sourcing, editorial review) with a content-mill article on the same event, identifying which accountability signals each displays.

Key Sources¶

• Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11), 1–40. doi:10.1177/016146811912101102
• Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2021). Students' civic online reasoning: A national portrait. Educational Researcher, 50(8), 505–515. doi:10.3102/0013189x211017495
• Metzger, M. J., Flanagin, A. J., & Medders, R. B. (2010). Social and heuristic approaches to credibility evaluation online. Journal of Communication, 60(3), 413–439. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01488.x
• Caulfield, M. (2019). Web literacy for student fact-checkers... and other people who care about facts. Pressbooks. https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com