By the time you are reading this, you should have caught all of our April Fools stories. First off, thank you for having a little bit of fun with the Owl staff and please email us if you haven’t already about the prize you can win!
We like to think that these stories are fairly obvious to decipher in terms of which ones are fake and which ones are real, even the opinions you can tell which ones lean into April Fools and which ones are genuine. There are clear signs that indicate the stories are fabricated, whether it’s information that can be discredited or a premise that is so outlandish that you can’t take the story at face value.
However, sometimes you can’t always tell which stories are telling the truth and which ones are lying to the reader. This April Fools, we want to remind readers that you shouldn’t fall fool to stories that share misinformation or disinformation.
There are some simple checks that you can do to make sure a story is accurate. The first is to run it against secondary sources. Taking any source at face value and trusting one news organization and one only is bad media practice. Have a wide range of accredited sources of information, preferably sources that have some level of recognition from other peers in their field or make it easy to fact-check the information they share.
With the advent of the internet, people are sharing news at a rapid-fire rate, sometimes the best you can do is sit down and thoroughly read or watch what is being said and then run it against other people reporting on the same matter.
We at the Owl don’t want our readers to be fools. Make sure you are trusting journalism that cares to fact-check their information, admits when they make mistakes and doesn’t speculate or commit libel.
