Real or Satire?

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

spreadingromney.com -

I mean . . . it’s real. He really did that shit (pun intended). You can read tonnes of stuff about this site. Definitely real.



newsexaminer.net -

The article sent to us to review was "World’s First Head Transplant A Success After Nineteen Hour Operation." But . . . is it real?



christwire.org -

Imagine The Colbert Report television show, without the laughing audience, the obvious wink-wink of the host, and the over-the-top comedic stylings of Comedy Central writers, and you have Christwire. Christwire highlights the excesses of American Christian conservatives through its satire. Ironically — or expectably, depending on your point of view — Christian Conservatives tend to mistake Christwire articles as true…



politifacts.com -

PolitiFacts.com is actually a pretty good source for vetting political (mis)information. As far as we can tell, it’s not satire. They do a pretty good job at taking an article and debunking it with plenty of hyperlinked information and sources. Remember: You should always @mdash; always! @mdash; check sources. You definitely don’t want to fall completely down a source-search rabbit-hole,…



realorsatire.com -

Okay, you smart-asses! 😉 After several submissions for Real or Satire, I guess it’s time to give ourselves an entry. Real or Satire is, as best we can determine, real. You’re welcomed to submit URL of a news story. If it’s from a source that we’ve already researched and verified, then you’ll receive a verdict: real or satire*. If the…



9news.com.au -

Though the .com.au gives us pause, 9news.com.au appears to have been half-owned by Microsoft until recently. They get some stories from outside sources, especially their entertainment sections. You’re advised to be careful; some of those sources can be the more sensational sites, like The Sun. This gives some entertainment stories a very TMZ-like gossip-y feel. Based in Australia,



stormfront.org -

Stormfront and its members are, unfortunately, real. Really, that’s all we can say about them and the wretched, racist bile that drips from their lips. If, in your many varied social media circles, anyone is resharing Storm Front articles as facts, you should seriously consider re-evaluating your social media circles. [Editorial Note: I can’t, in good faith, let this entry…



mzansidaily.co.za -

Mzansi Daily is South Africa’s Daily News Website. It’s hard to verify whether or not some of the stories are real, especially the ones that are specific to South Africa that isn’t internationally reported news. But they have enough actual global news (“UK Woman Caught Urinating In Busy Street“, which, damn) sprinkled about their site that makes me think that…



savethehumans.com -

This site’s last article was from 2012; however, hyper-linking and sharing has no expiration date. While this site is satire, it’s goal is definitely to affect opinion, probably mostly through ridicule.



jesus-is-savior.com -

In 2014, we originally marked jesus-is-savior.com as an extreme form of Poe's Law (satire). But that didn't sit well with us. Could jesus-is-savior.com be satire? Or is it something much different?



callthecops.net -

Self-branded as the “27th most trusted source for Public Safety News, Call the Cops is a satire of the current state of Law Enforcement, Fire Fighting and Emergency Medical work, per their Twitter profile. From their About page: This site is a satire of the current state of Law Enforcement, Fire Fighting and Emergency Medical work. Stories posted here are…



worldtruth.tv -

The article submitted for WorldTruth.tv was a rehash on an old viral scare from a couple years back about the pacific ocean “dying.” Our issue with this story is that, with the exception of 1 link about Chernobyl, all of the source links point to fear-mongering www.enenews.com, a site that focus solely on questionable conclusions from questionable science. Most of…



speld.nl -

I mean . . . we are Americans over here at Real or Satire. 😉 I can read and write German fairly well, but that’s the extent of our linguistic skills outside of English. When I see a .nl top-level domain and some German-looking words on the website, I assume it’s likely a Dutch-based site. While Dutch and German have…



addictinginfo.org -

UPDATED REVIEW 1-10-2017: Our previous review of addictinginfo.org came when we had a simple binary ranking system. Our conclusion has been updated to match the new system. You’ll be seeing a lot of updated reviews as we continue to comb through the database. Sometimes, a news story has enough “clickability” on its own merits that it doesn’t warrant much alteration.…



bigstory.ap.org -

bigstory.ap.org is a wing of the Associated Press news agency. News collected by the AP is then published by more than 1,700 newspapers and over 5,000 television and radio stations. But . . . how reliable are they?



facebook.com -

Yes, someone submitted Facebook to RorS. And I wonder if this is more of an existential question: “Is Facebook real? Are we real? Is any of this real??” I don’t have the Ph.D.s required to answer that question for you. And while getting rich from a patchwork pastiche of previous ideas might seem farcical, we can assure you that Facebook…



newsmutiny.com -

Their site tag says it all: “Satire for the wise. News for the dumb.”



breitbart.com -

UPDATE – 08-03-2016: We have slightly revised our judgment on Breitbart in light of their consistent policy of going well beyond headline-hyperbole with their articles into downright lying when it suits them: Obama’s post-Ramadan statement giving thanks to the “achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy”…



landoverbaptist.org -

Landover Baptist Church is another example of Poe’s Law, similar to Christwire. Fully immersed in the joke, you are knee-deep in muck and mire of this extremely conservative “church.” There is no sign of the site breaking character, even on their ‘Godly Terms of Service’ page, which features paragraph upon paragraph of semi-legal gobbledygook. That is until you get to…



countercurrentnews.com -

Counter Current News is a fringe news source. They’ve reported on the murder of an Anonymous hacktivist Abu Shehadeh and even on the Banksy arrest hoax. The one post they have marked “satire” is actually a real article about a group of Muslims making a satirical spoof video on ISIS. While some of the stories might seem like humor, (e.g.,…



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