When we live in a time where you are constantly seeing “news” on social media, it is important to know whether the information you are reading is reliable or not. Fortunately, there are a few different methods to use to evaluate your news source.

Many English teachers teach about things you can do to make sure you are receiving reliable information, so I asked a few Armijo students what things they have learned from their teachers. Cristal Mejia said, “Whenever we look up news online, my teacher tells us that we should use websites that end in .org or .gov because they are official websites.” This is a good method for making sure the website you are looking at is trustworthy. A website ending in .com can be made by anyone, whereas .org and .gov are verified websites.

“Whenever I use a website to look up information I check the bottom of the page to see if it was written by one author or edited by multiple people,” said Nicole Go. Some websites let pretty much anyone edit the page so I know that those ones aren’t as trustworthy.” This is the reason that many teachers dislike Wikipedia. Websites like this may not be as reliable as websites that are made by a specific group of people.

There are a few good questions you can ask yourself when looking at an online news source. “Is this a verified website?” You can figure this out by reading the website address and making sure it says .org or .gov. “Is this written by a credible author?” Most web pages name the author of the article at the bottom of the page. “Could this information be edited by anyone?” Most websites also show the editors at the bottom of the page. “Is this information current?” The date that the article was written should also be listed at either the top or the bottom of the page. If you answer these questions each time you read news online, you should be able to tell if your source is credible or not.