Real or Satire?

Copy and paste any article URL below. We'll tell you if it's real.

theepochtimes.com -

The Epoch Times is both real and really interesting to read. Originally, it was directed towards Chinese readers living abroad, countering through its own reporting and opinion pieces what it considers to be CCP propaganda. There is some concern that their primarily negative stance towards the CCP colors their work too much, but considering the closed nature of China’s microcosm,…



allenbwest.com -

allenbwest.com is ‘real’ for the sake of our purposes here, meaning, it’s not satirical. Fond of citing the New York Post, another in the Murdoch sensationalist crop, it’s more an anti-Obama mouthpiece than anything else. This was the article that was submitted to us: http://allenbwest.com/2014/07/abject-disdain-military-troops-get-pink-slips-combat/ Basically, it’s blasting Obama for firing over 100 military personnel, including some generals. But the…



nationalreport.net -

Fake. Fake. Fake. (And we really cannot stress this enough.) In the immortal words of Public Enemy: Can’t Truss It! Articles on The National Report tend to be a tad more . . . subtle. This ‘gentle’ form of satire parodies real news in a way that seems almost designed with the specific goal of tricking its readers. More to…



elitedaily.com -

Elite Daily is advertised, via their Facebook page, as a “HuffPost without the cats” when “BuzzFeed just isn’t enough.” One should consider Elite Daily more as one big Op-Ed piece. They have a shared office space with Elite SEM (if that matters ((which it likely does)) and the site appears to be gunning as a disrupting agent for the likes…



cnn.com -

Okay, I’ll bite . . . CNN was submitted twice in a three-day period. No story or article, just ‘cnn.com.’ [Editorial Note: Please see the update to this statement at the end of our verdict.] Whoever submitted it: was likely the same person; was likely trying to make a point; probably didn’t think that we could turn this maybe-pisstake into…



dailycurrant.com -

From their About page: The Daily Currant is an English language online satirical newspaper that covers global politics, business, technology, entertainment, science, health and media.



theplantain.com -

We love The Platain. They’re funny. They have videos. And, for our purposes, they made it easy to determine their satirical nature. If you cannot glean their comedy from their videos (like “Plantain Action News: Amendment 2: The Plantain Gets High!” or “Traffic Fatalities Increase 9% According To Article I Read On My Phone While Driving,” for example), they have…



viralcords.com -

viralcords.com doesn't make it easy to tell if they're satire. No Disclaimer or About Us. And the stories seem true -- or true-enough. So are they? Read on:



readersupportednews.org -

This is a difficult one to assess. RSN is exactly as its name suggests: reader-supported news. From their about page: Reader Supported News is a new service by the creator of Truthout, Marc Ash. [. . .] Truthout built its following among readers who wanted to better understand the most important stories of the day, but had grown tired of…



thehardtimes.net -

thehardtimes.net is, thankfully, forthcoming about their satirical nature. From their About page: The Hard Times is a very real punk news site that you should not question. Just absorb the information as truth and move on. The historic satire site was founded in December 1982 at 171A studios while the founding members were eating broken glass with The Bad Brains.…



bizstandardnews.com -

Any site whose abbreviation is, basically, BS News should be immediately suspect; however, we don't really need to second-guess their intent.



dailysnark.com -

As with comedy, timing is everything for “satire” and ClickBait sites. Take this article submitted for The Daily Snark: Jason Pierre-Paul Blows Off Other Hand After His Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Explodes. With Samsung’s ‘Exploding‘ Galaxy Note 7 recall in the news and being banned on all U.S. Flights, it’s very easy to believe something like this. Until, that is,…



objectiveministries.org -

ObjectiveMinistries.org once had an article about kangaroos existing in the Middle East. It’s satire; in particular, Poe’s Law. They even go on a tirade against another parody/satire site, Landover Baptist Church. This site hasn’t been updated in awhile.



unconfirmedsources.com -

The headlines on this site are pretty obviously fake, but depending on the writer, they can sometimes read fairly credible, at first glance. At the very gutter of the page (footer, for all you net-savvy folks) you’ll find their disclaimer: Unconfirmed Sources political satire and news story parodies as represented above are written as satire or parody. They are, of…



nydailynews.com -

NY Daily News does contain a lot of clearly marked op-ed pieces. And they definitely lean towards one end of the political spectrum. They can, however, be considered real. Be sure to check the originating section of the article before resharing or determining any truth-value. Addendum 11-22-2016: Since this post, we’ve updated our review system to include the categories ClickBait,…



snoopman.net.nz -

Mirror-site for snoopman.wordpress.com. Snoopman is less satire, more conspiracy theorist. But plenty of folks, with varying degrees of conspiracy-isms, pass on Snoopman articles as facts. Editor’s Note: Someone from Snoopman offered a ‘defense’ of sorts for their site, which you can read in the comments below. Again, Real or Satire has, technically, a binary system (either, or) and a site…



ebuzzd.com -

I was contemplating marking eBuzzd as both real and satire, seeing as they have a couple items on their site that are kinda sorta true; however, any truth on their site is likely happenstance. eBuzzd represents to me the worst sort of ‘satirical’ page. As of this writing (3-13-2014) the first three articles are all celebrity tragedies, designed solely to…



empireherald.com -

One of the ways to check if a news source is legit is to simply look at the site itself. At first glance, Empire Herald seems fairly legit — the site looks polished and well formatted. But the site’s footer is ripe with broken/non-existent links, particularly the contact us and advertise links, both of which point to a # relative…



tezhazirlamaevi.com -

Tez Hazirlama Evi is a Turkish site. No one here at RoS speaks Turkish. Sorry. If you do speak Turkish and would love to help us out on this one, please do! EDIT: Special thanks to site-visitor 4DEATH, who provided a bit of info on Tez Hazirlama Evi: Thiis is not a news website. It claims to write thesis (university)…



news-bar.hr -

New-Bar.hr is a Croatian site. Sorry, we don’t speak the language. If anyone reading speaks the language and can translate some stories or determine if the site is real or satire, please let us know in the comments! Thanks!



Copy and paste any article URL below. We'll tell you if it's real.