Real or Satire?

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

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…



denverguardian.com -

denverguardian.com claims its fake news site is more satirical than clickbait greed. Not sure if we believe it. Read on:



atlbanana.com -

The Atlanta Banana. It’s fake news, y’all. From their About page: Is any of this real? The Atlanta Banana is a grassroots effort to write serious, hard news. Yeah, real hard. So hard it feels like your jeans are going to rip off. So hard if it walked sideways through the library there’d be a hell of a lot of…



billlboard.co -

Not even sure what the point is for hollywooodreporter.co, or the other sites connected to it. Doesn't matter; it's all fake -- and only barely funny.



motherjones.com -

Mother Jones reports investigative and breaking news on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. It might be snarky and sarcastic at times, but it’s legit. From their Facebook page: Mother Jones is an award-winning nonprofit news organization that publishes in-depth investigative reporting, game-changing breaking news, and innovative coverage across politics, the environment, health, human rights, culture, and more. Their…



twitter.com/RNCSquirrel -

@RNCSquirrel is a response-Twitter account that acts as a so-called “frenemy” to @HRCsquirrel, itself an insult-Twitter designed as a pre-backlash maker to the prospect of Hilary R Clinton’s presidential run.



duhprogressive.com -

DuhProgressive is one of the flurry of sites that came to us about 2 years too late. The site was admittedly satirical, but has since “admitted defeat.” Their site is still up, with articles intact, but they are no longer producing new content. From their Mission Statement: [. . .] Duh Progressive is also here to do is prove that…



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…



burdekinherald.com -

From their About page: The Burdekin Herald is your first stop for news from the Burdekin and other lesser places. [. . .] The contents of this site are entirely fictional and are meant as a parody.



procrastimes.com -

Remember when we discussed eBuzzd? Let me refresh your memory: Plus the photo used [of singer Phil Collins with an arm-sling] on eBuzzd for this story is likely the worst photochop job ever. For real. Well . . . we have another eBuzzd sit-chee-a-shun with Procrastimes. The main article that’s been submitted (several times, I might add): “Teens Gather In…



waterfordwhispersnews.com -

This is another of those sites that you wouldn’t have any idea it was fake unless you clicked on the “Disclaimer” link up in the header. Per their disclaimer: With fun stories about the Pope commissioning J.K. Rowling to rewrite the Bible and NASA just assuming we already knew about aliens, you can see how WWNews gets its rep as…



mobile.wnd.com -

WARNING: WorldNetDaily (WND) is an American web site that publishes political content from the perspective of U.S. conservatives and the political right. So expect heavy coloring. They are likely the source of many ultra-Right folks’ conservative conspiracies, e.g., Obama’s birth certificate non-issue. But we wouldn’t call WND ‘conserva-nutjobs’ or anything of the sort. WND has a lot of personal commentary…



americanewsproject.wixsite.com -

The story submitted to us for America News Project was this one: Small Indiana Town To Change Name To Avoid Clinton Reference. Their About Us page features a fair bit of cheek: As you likely well know, the National Report and Daily Currant are both satire sites. (If you did not know this, feel free to click those links and…



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…



betootaadvocate.com -

Betoota is a small town in Diamantina Shire, in the Channel Country of Central West Queensland, Australia. Betoota Advocate, however, still has some Lorem Ipsum text on it. I’m assuming it’s not real. Now whether it’s pure gossip or satire is a question for another day. Since we don’t have bullshit category, we’re gonna mark this one “satire.”



harddawn.com -

We're going to try show the satirical nature of Hard Dawn using the most family-friendly articles they have. It'll be hard (heh), but worth the shot!



abcnews.com.co -

Fake news. Sometimes funny… but always fake. On their About page, they have the address and phone number for the Westboro Baptist Church hatemongers, which we find deliciously funny. There’s also this: Thanks to ABC News President & CEO, Dr. Paul “Un-Buzz Killington” Horner for making ABC News the greatest website in the multiverse. We need writers! Find out more…



thenewsnerd.com -

No, Patti Labelle did not punch Aretha Franklin; and no, Leonardo DiCaprio will not play the role of MLK Jr. in blackface. Newsnerd is nice enough to contain the following disclaimer on every page: The stories posted on TheNewsNerd are for entertainment purposes only. The stories may mimic articles found in the headlines, but rest assured they are purely satirical.…



madworldnews.com -

UPDATE 01/31/2017: Categorizing madworldnews.com as “Real” never felt quite right with us. At the time of the initial review, we had a binary grading system: either a site was real, or it was satire. Mad World News didn’t quite sit comfortably in that either-or system. Where do we place highly opinionated commentary sites that commented on real news? But now…



gamingfreepress.com -

With gamingfreepress.com, it (thankfully) doesn’t take much to determine if the site is real or satire. From their About page: But the real question: Are they funny though? Ehhh . . . humor is subjective.



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