The importance of vetting web sites for credibility
May 17th, 2007 by BryanAs long as I’ve been teaching journalism students about the Internets, I’ve included at least one lesson on judging the credibility of online information. Part of that lesson included discussing how to gauge the credibility of information based on the top-level domain (.org, .gov, .edu, etc.). The method isn’t foolproof, but the top-level domain should at least be a first step in figuring out whether a web site is credible.
The last time I taught the class, I considered removing the credibility lesson, thinking to myself, “surely by now everyone knows how to judge the credibility of online information.”
Today, Joshua Marshall of Talkingpointsmemo illustrates why we still need such lessons. Here’s a video clip of MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer:
Whitehouse.org is a spoof site. A cursory glance over the front page would illustrate that point.
Lesson: Train your student journalists to evaluate online information just as carefully as they would information in the “real world.” Or they could be the next to end up in a YouTube moment.
May 17th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Fabulous example! I can’t wait to show this to my students next semester. This alone gives me a reason to return from summer break!
May 18th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Hilarious.
We had that lesson in my Web publishing class at UT-Austin. For that lesson, my teacher Cindy Royal asked us to review this site about Titanic casualties and report on whether it was credible. When you search Google for “titanic casualties” this is the first site that pops up.