Media & information literacy

Every day a flood of headlines, videos, posts, and ads rushes at you. MEDIA LITERACY is the skill of slowing that flood down and asking: who made this, why, and can I trust it? An INFORMATION-LITERATE person checks the source before sharing, before believing, and before using the info in a report. Today you will learn the difference between RELIABLE and UNRELIABLE sources and learn the RED FLAGS that warn you something is off.

Reliable sources — built to be trusted

A RELIABLE source is one that takes accuracy seriously. Editors check the facts, authors are named, sources are listed, and mistakes get corrected. Government sites that end in .gov, university sites that end in .edu, established news outlets, peer-reviewed articles, encyclopedias, and pages curated by librarians all sit in this group. They are not perfect, but they have systems to catch errors before they reach you.

• OFFICIAL .GOV SITES — government data on weather, health, and laws.
• UNIVERSITY .EDU PAGES — research from professors and students.
• PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES — checked by other expert scientists before publishing.
• ESTABLISHED NEWS — outlets with editors, fact-checkers, and corrections policies.
• ENCYCLOPEDIAS — overviews written and edited by experts.
• LIBRARIAN-CURATED LISTS — sources hand-picked for young learners.

Unreliable sources — built for clicks, not truth

An UNRELIABLE source has no system to catch mistakes. Anonymous blogs, social posts with no sources, clickbait headlines, AI-generated text without citations, and viral videos with no author or date can all be wrong on purpose or by accident. They might be selling something, joking, lying, or just guessing. If you cannot tell who made it or where they got their facts, treat it as unreliable until proven otherwise.

• ANONYMOUS BLOGS — no author, no track record, no accountability.
• SOCIAL POSTS WITH NO SOURCES — opinions and rumors mixed together.
• CLICKBAIT HEADLINES — written to grab clicks, not to inform.
• AI TEXT WITHOUT CITATIONS — confident-sounding but possibly invented.
• DEEPFAKE VIDEOS — fake footage made to look real.
• ADS DISGUISED AS NEWS — selling something while pretending to report.

Red flags — warning signs to watch for

A RED FLAG is a quick warning sign that a source may be weak. None of these flags by itself proves a source is fake, but each one should slow you down and make you check further. The more red flags you spot on a single page, the less you should trust it. Train your eyes to spot them in the first ten seconds of looking at any web page or video.

• NO AUTHOR — nobody is willing to put their name on the work.
• NO DATE — you cannot tell if the info is current or ten years old.
• SENSATIONAL TITLE — ALL CAPS, exclamation points, fear or outrage bait.
• ONLY ONE SOURCE — claims everything but cites nobody else.
• ADS DISGUISED AS NEWS — paid content styled to look like a news article.
• DEEPFAKE OR FAKE IMAGE — manipulated video or photo passed off as real.
• AI HALLUCINATION — confident text with invented facts and fake citations.