Topic Guide - Evaluating Resources: News Sources

You are more likely to get reliable news from library databases or Pulitzer Prize Winning News Sources. Even news sites and online news magazines are less likely to have fake news, though some are biased. More reliable biased sites let you know what their point of view is.

One of the best ways to determine accuracy is to use multiple sources. This is what scholars do. This is what faculty train college students to do when they write papers for courses. Scholars and faculty know that the more sources you review, the more likely you are to come to an accurate conclusion.

When you review your multiple sources, ask yourself things like:

1. What does the author know about the subject?
2. Does the author have an agenda?
3. Where did the author get the information?
4. When was the material written?
5. Has the material been reviewed for publication?

If your sources don't have information about the author or it is not clear where the author got the information, it makes it very hard for you to evaluate. Sources that clearly state these things are generally more reliable.

The Pulitzer Prize awards excellence in journalism for U.S. newspapers, magazines or news sites that publishes regularly.

• Associated Press

• Center for Public Integrity

• Chicago Tribune

• Los Angeles Times

• Reuters

• Tampa Bay Times

• The Boston Globe

• The New York Times

• The New Yorker

• The Seattle Times

• The Wall Street Journal

• Washington Post

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Sections of this guide were created by Kathy Park at College of the Mainland and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA).