Real or Satire?

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

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…



patheos.com -

I guess we are to consider Patheos.com to be the WebMD of religion. Never mind the implications of that analogy; simply take it at face value. The grisly story that was submitted to us for review, “Christian zealot beheads teen for practicing witchcraft,” is unfortunately true. And while Patheos is fond of citing The Washington Times a lot — itself,…



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…



conservativeoutfitters.com -

We actually commend Conservative Outfitters on their schtict. They sell clothes (and other things like coffee mugs, ‘museum quality’ artwork) on a nicely designed website that tries to draw a weak connection to a well established clothing store (Urban Outfitters) — all with conservative slogans, mantras, quotes, etc — while redistributing news from other Conservative outlets. Enrage the audience. Then…



rumormillnews.com -

From the Rumor Mill News Facebook page: Politically Incorrect News Stranger than Fiction Usually True! This is kinda the same as when someone is going to say something, but they start with, “Not to be an asshole,” or “I’m not racist, but . . . ” and you know they are about to say something assholish or racist. If you…



Slate.com -

Slate Magazine is an online current affairs and culture magazine. Inititally created in 1996 under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN, it is now managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings Company to develop and manage web-only magazines. The article presented to us was: Abolish the Week! It’s unnatural. It’s unnecessary. Why…



realnewsrightnow.com -

Sometimes you have to dig pretty deep to get a hint as to the purpose of a "news" site. Real News Right Now is one such site. Is it real?



theshovel.com.au -

The Shovel is one of three satirical publications in Australia. The other two are the Burdekin Herald and The Chaser, which is really just a vehicle for the satirical comedy troupe, and their television/radio shows, of the same name. The Shovel mainly satirizes the Australian political and social culture. So you might not really see The Shovel articles reposted anywhere…



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.



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…



weeklyworldnews.com -

With over 64,261 Facebook likes, Weekly World News is another talboid-style faux-news site whose subject matter alone should tip you off whether or not its real news or fake news. In its heyday, WWN would sit on grocery check-out lines across America with other similarly crafted rags, such as The National Enquirer (only less credible, if you can believe that).…



empiresports.co -

I have a personal shame with this site. I almost shared “Blake Griffin Smacks Justin Bieber At Hollywood Starbucks” with my personal Google+ circle. But it’s definitely fake news. Their tagline is, “Because Sports News In Better When We Write It,” which in and of itself isn’t telling. Their About page reads: Empire Sports is part news, part op-ed, (part,…



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…



lercio.it -

Lercio.it was going to be another site that we’d pass on making commentary on. But one of the first images I was presented when I visited http://www.lercio.it/ was this one: So how hard can it be? Even better than the image, though, is the quote that Lercio is able to get from our Lord and Savior: “Sono cose che succedono.”…



now88news.com -

Not to be confused with Now8News, though that is likely exactly what they want you to do, Now88news.com at least has the decency to provide a disclaimer: We thank Now88News for being upfront and honest about their site’s content.



tatersgonnatate.com -

A lot of people seem to like to point to Taters Gonna Tate as a viable news source. We hope they're joking, because the site is.



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?



educate-yourself.org -

From Rational Wiki: Educate-yourself (“The Freedom of Knowledge, The Power of Thought ©”) is a green ink website of alternative medicine, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, UFOs, Sylphs, and every other form of crankery under the sun. Think of it as the Californian equivalent of whale.to. The editor is Ken Adachi. “Green Ink” is a British term, meaning, the letter from a…



boredomtherapy.com -

“Real or Satire Clicked on www.boredomtherapy.com and What They Discovered Will Shock and Awe You Into New Stratospheres of Amazeballsness.” This should give you some idea as to what Boredom Therapy is: clickbait bordering on emoterrorism. To their credit, they’re hardly at the emo-terror-levels of its role-model — Upworthy. But even their website tagline is consistent with the tactic: “Trending…



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.…



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