Subject and Course Guides: Fake News: News Literacy

How news-literate are you?

News Literacy Project
A national education nonprofit offering nonpartisan, independent programs that teach students how to know what to believe in the digital age.

How to Choose your News

Why news literacy?

In recent years fake and misleading news has become prevalent. It is perhaps unsurprising that Oxford Dictionaries named "post-truth" as its 2016 "Word of the Year." This guide can help readers evaluate news sources for accuracy and harmful bias.

Reasons that fake news has become a growing problem include:

The growing use of social media as the primary source for news consumption:
According the a Pew Research Center report over 40% of adults in the US go to Facebook for their news.
The appeal of sensational and often false "clickbait" information:
News that goes "viral" and is widely share is far more likely to be false or misleading.
"Filter bubbles" that result from the personalized web:
Search engines and social media usually present a us with information intended to fit with own own individual interests and perspective. We then miss information that others with different perspectives are more likely to see.
Confirmation bias:
People are predisposed to believe information that fits their worldview and to discount information that does not.

These factors reflect a need to carefully evaluate news sources and where and how we get our news.

Newspaper Databases

America's News This link opens in a new window
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America's News diverse source types include printed and online newspapers, blogs, journals, newswires, broadcast transcripts and videos. The database contains 1,250 sources from 53 states and territories and has 10 source types. Explore a specific issue or event through the detailed coverage provided by local reporting or compare a wide variety of viewpoints from across the country on topics such as politics, business, health, sports, cultural activities and people.
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries.
These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

Independent Voices is made possible by the funding support received from libraries and donors across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Through their funding, these libraries and donors are demonstrating their commitment to open access digital collections.
Wall Street Journal archive (1984 - Current) This link opens in a new window
Full-text of the Wall Street Journal back to 1984. See also ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal (1889 - 2002 ).
Factiva This link opens in a new window
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Factiva.com offers more than 25,000 of the world's leading news and business sources from 159 countries, 350 geographic regions and in 22 languages.
Factiva features: 2,100+ Newspapers: Same-day and archival coverage of the world's most influential newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, The Times, El Pais, Les Echos und Süddeutsche Zeitung - as well as local newspapers from every corner of the globe. 3,500+ Magazines: General business titles and the "must-read" industry publications for knowledge-driven markets, including The Economist, Finanz and Wirtschaft, Satellite News, Computerworld, and more. 500+ Newswires: Breaking news from Dow Jones, Reuters and the Associated Press, as well as PR Newswire, M2 Presswire and other regionally focused and industry newswires. 280+ Media programs: Transcripts from BBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and more. 12,000+ Web sites: The world's top news and business Web sites in more than 20 languages. 32,000+ Company reports: Customized profiles of public companies from around the world, including detailed company and industry research from Investext. 7,000+ Pictures added each week: Photographs from Reuters and McClatchy - Tribune Photo Service capture the pressing events of the day. Historical Market Data: Historical market data from blue-chip suppliers Reuters Investor and SunGard PowerData, going back as far as 1973, and capital changes back to 1968. 1.2 Million+ EUR-Lex documents: Articles from the official database for the European Union. Content available in 22 languages: English, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
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It is highly recommended to utilize full tunnel VPN for Wi-Fi and off-campus access. See information for VPN installation with Ivanti (formerly known as Pulse Secure). Details to establish the full-tunnel connection can be found here.
Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
Please note while accessing Nexis Uni, users may experience security issues. Please refer to this guide to add Nexis Uni as a "Trusted Site."