Names are important! This is ever true when discussing a so-called newsite. Lapine is a real word (French, I believe) but it’s also the fictional language spoken by rabbits in the 1972 novel Watership Down. A Novel. You should read it.. From their About page: The Lapine is all about poking people and things that deserve to be poked. It…
So you found a new medical site — that’s great! But . . . should you follow their medical advice? Answer these three questions before you do:
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).…
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.
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…
If reading the news for you means just skimming the headlines, then you’ll likely find Lightly Braised Turnip to be the bane of your article-resharing life. The headlines are sometimes attention grabbing (Obamacare’s Post-Partum Abortion Requirement Riles Anti-Choice Foes And Catholic Church and sometimes quite innocently mundane (Janet Yellen Trailblazes New Territory For Women As She Takes The Helm At…
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,
Viral Worthy can’t even be original enough to come up with a better name for itself. It’s another Upworthy clone. Another in a long list of Upworthy clones. Viral Worthy basically scours the ‘Net for something that is “amazing” and “unbelievable” and “shocking” and re-post it. An example would be their post: 33 AMAZINGLY USEFUL WEBSITES YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED.…
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…
Naha Daily's website is down (or no longer active). Should we still review them? Yes! Find out why, and if their site is satirical or no.
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.
NewsWire-24.com is based in the U.K. and geared mostly towards that audience. We looked at two stories, as best we could, to determine if it's real or not. Read onward:
This is a political satire/humor site for “The Citizen,” a.k.a. BJ Schwartz; however, it has a serious side. Those more serious posts are under the banner of “The Serious Citizen,” but they are op-ed pieces and shouldn’t be believed whole-heartedly as factual, rather, one’s opinion. From the About page: [. . . BJ] harkens back to his college days doing…
While TopekasNews.com might look legit, you’ll quickly find that the stories are exaggerated or just plain fake. Well . . . that is, if you can even pull up their website, which routinely returns an ‘Service Temporarily Unavailable’ server error. (Seriously! Every other link-click returns a server error. What is this? Satire Amateur Hour??)
africametro.com's stated goal is to "provide access to a full range of what Africans themselves are saying, thinking and publishing [. . .]." But are they real or satire?
The New York Post has been around longer than dirt, it seems. They report on real news, but with a heavy Conservative slant. They are not above posting ClickBait-y articles, such as the Planet X Gonna Kill Us All nonsense, that had already been debunked. NYPost was perfectly willing to refer to then Presidential-hopeful Barack Obama as “Osama” in a…
Thought Catalog is a site for op-ed pieces. They also tend to repost — and resell — Reddit posts. From their About page: The more worldviews and rhetorical styles on the site, the better. We want to tell all sides of the story. Whether or not they are vigorous with fact-checking is another — and likely, moot — question; the…
There's no easy find for News Chicken. But there are clues to the site's legitamacy once you look at some of their original -- er, sorry, "original" -- stories.
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…
Christian Science Monitor is a confusing beast—and has been for years. Despite the obvious religious reference in its name, CSM claims neither to be a religious-themed paper nor promote the doctrine of its patron church. It does contain a daily religious article, at the request/behest of its founder, which has appeared in every issue of the Monitor. Eddy, the founder…
