Research Guides: BIOL 130: Cell Biology & Genetics: Evaluating Resources

It can be challenging to figure out whether something is trustworthy. Author, journalist, researcher, and media critic, Tom Rosenstiel, offers six questions used by editors and media producers to edit stories and create web pages to help keep you from being misled.

Type: What kind of content is this?
Source: Who and what are the sources cited and why should I believe them?
Evidence: What’s the evidence and how was it vetted?
Interpretation: Is the main point of the piece proven by the evidence?
Completeness: What’s missing?
Knowledge: Am I learning every day what I need?

The next time you’re appalled at some social media post, take a moment to do a little digging. Remember to check for biases.

AllSides.com
Displays the top news stories from all political views side-by-side for balanced & diverse perspectives. Look up specific news media to check their biases, and view an interactive chart.
Snopes.com
One of the more prominent Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. The snopes.com website was founded by David Mikkelson, who lives and works in the Los Angeles area. What he began in 1995 as an expression of his interest in researching urban legends has since grown into what is widely regarded by folklorists, journalists, and laypersons alike as one of the World Wide Web's essential resources. Snopes.com is routinely included in annual "Best of the Web" lists and has been the recipient of two Webby awards. Each item investigated includes the claim and verdict at the beginning (false, unproven, true) as well as the origin of the claim.
Factcheck.org
"We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding."
Washington Post Fact Checker
In an award-winning journalism career spanning more than three decades, Glenn Kessler has covered foreign policy, economic policy, the White House, Congress, politics, airline safety and Wall Street. He was The Washington Post’s chief State Department reporter for nine years, traveling around the world with three different Secretaries of State. Before that, he covered tax and budget policy for The Washington Post and also served as the newspaper’s national business editor. This site uses Pinocchio symbols to indicate levels of false information.
PolitiFact
PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. PolitiFact is run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times, an independent newspaper in Florida, as is PunditFact, a site devoted to fact-checking pundits. The PolitiFact state sites are run by news organizations that have partnered with the Times. The state sites and PunditFact follow the same principles as the national site. This site provides more variability into the "verdict" of statements made by politicians, such as half-true, compromise, mostly false, promise broken or kept, pants on fire, mostly true, and true.
TinEye
A reverse image search tool to find where images appear online.
Media Bias
A resource that identifies the biases of over 950 news media sources: Left News; Left-Center News; Center News; Right-Center News; Right News; Breaking News; Pro-science; Conspiracy-Pseudoscience; Satire/Fake News.
Interactive Media Bias Chart
This interactive graph helps visualize how news media can be biased that covers thousands of news sources and is searchable.

Don't rely solely on the content from the site. Move outside of the site to assess the website in question. (3 minute video)

When it comes to finding resources for university assignments, you need to consider how credible the source is. Considering the Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Bias of a source will help ensure your work is well researched.

(Murdoch University video, length 2:17 minutes)

BIOL 130: Cell Biology & Genetics: Evaluating Resources

Willamette University Libraries