6.5: Some Resources Worth Your Time

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Having spent the last several pages cautioning you against sources you might have previously relied on, it is worth directing you to some resources that you can rely on.

Snopes and Politfact

As we have established, there is a tremendous amount of misinformation on the internet. Researching claims can be time consuming, and part of how we end up accepting false claims is by deciding that investigating them isn’t worth the information costs. A reasonable safeguard we can employ is finding a reputable fact checker that we can trust to do the investigating for us. Two sites we recommend for fact checking are Snopes (https://www.snopes.com/) and Politifact (https://www.politifact.com). Both of these sites fact check all sorts of claim, but Politifact’s focus is on political claims, while Snopes tends to have a broader scope. The way they both work is they explain the claim (including where it originated), give a rating as to how truthful it is, offer a full explanation of why they rated it the way they did, and provide citations for the sources they used to make their determination. When an issue is important enough to you, it is always best to do your own research. Snopes and Politfact are tools you can use to make your life easier, but they shouldn’t replace your own research and judgment.

Digital Encyclopedias

Depending on the issues you are investigating, there is likely a reliable online encyclopedia. The benefit of a traditional encyclopedia is that the entries are going to be written by academics with expertise in the area, and they are going to be edited by other academics who know what to look for to ensure a fair and unbiased explanation. The authors of this text are philosophers, and we strongly recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/index.html).

Websites for Credible Print Media

If you want to know what is going on in the world, you should consult credible news sources. One good heuristic for finding a credible news source online is to consult the website of a credible print newspaper. The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com), The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com) and The Wallstreet Journal (https://www.wsj.com) are all well regarded newspapers with large stables of excellent journalists. All things being equal, these sources are going to be far more reliable than the average online only source. (We don’t mean this to be an exhaustive list – there are many excellent local and regional newspapers as well). Keep in mind, the credibility of the paper should be understood as stopping at the news division. Editorial pages are a different thing entirely, and you should hold the claims of editorials to the same level of scrutiny you would apply to any blog post.