News literacy in practice: verifying a claim, reading a source, spotting a manipulated image, and knowing when the honest answer is that nobody knows yet.
Public document checklist for provenance, identity, type, status, version, completeness, authenticity, context, redactions, calculations, citation, and review.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
PACER vs state court dockets decides where a case record lives and what it costs. Federal filings are centralized and paid; state lookups vary by county.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Public document types compared across bills, laws, proposed and final rules, notices, guidance, filings, pleadings, orders, minutes, audits, and archival records.
Costs Desk · 7 min read · Read →
Learn how to verify access to information request records from Canadian federal and provincial portals. Check release letters, exemptions, and file numbers.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
To verify campaign finance claim Canada, use the right database. Federal and provincial filings are searched separately, and errors carry real costs.
Costs Desk · 8 min read · Read →
Verify an EPA water quality report before repeating a local claim. Use ECHO, state portals, and Clean Water Act standards to confirm what the data shows.
Standards Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Verify PACER court filing screenshots by matching the case number to the live docket, checking the filing date and judge, and confirming with the court.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Verify product recall claim before you report it by checking CPSC, FDA and NHTSA records, not the press release. Questions and red flags for editors.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
School Board Meeting Claims: verify the agenda and minutes before you share. Texas and California open meetings deadlines, draft minute risks, and what to wait for.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Verify bill signing claim with five checks against state legislature bill status pages, governor veto records, and official enacted laws databases online.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Verify Statistics Canada claim numbers against LFS data, The Daily and provincial labour statistics, and see what a $0 to $400 yearly checking budget buys.
Costs Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Student loan forgiveness claims need a quick check of Department of Education announcements, Federal Student Aid data, and state program pages before you share.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
CDC and FDA datasets describe populations over set periods, so a viral number usually misreads what the underlying survey data measures about health trends.
Standards Desk · 10 min read · Read →
A Chicago police scanner claim needs three record sets to stand up: Cook County court dockets, City Council agendas, and CPD incident reports.
Practice Desk · 7 min read · Read →
Deepfakes political ads FEC: check disclaimers, advisory opinions, platform synthetic media policies, and C2PA provenance signals on video ads.
Standards Desk · 11 min read · Read →
A public records request works best as a reporting specification: name the office, the record series, the custodian, and the date range before you file.
Practice Desk · 7 min read · Read →
Verifying a Los Angeles celebrity claim means finding the original TMZ upload, checking court records, and naming the outlet that first aired the footage.
Practice Desk · 7 min read · Read →
San Francisco AI synthetic media claims need proof: demand model cards, NIST AI benchmarks, provenance signals, and detector accuracy tests before you cite any tool.
Standards Desk · 12 min read · Read →
State public records request rules differ sharply across California, Texas, and New York, from 10-day deadlines to attorney general rulings and FOIL appeals.
Costs Desk · 11 min read · Read →
Four real US Canada border claims, checked against Census trade tables, CBP statistics and Canadian releases, with what each number actually counts.
Costs Desk · 10 min read · Read →
US defamation law First Amendment rules decide what you can safely share: actual malice, the fair report privilege, Section 230, and state anti-SLAPP statutes.
Standards Desk · 12 min read · Read →
Verify disaster claims with NOAA and FEMA records: hurricane advisories, storm reports and OpenFEMA declarations for Houston and Miami posts.
Practice Desk · 10 min read · Read →
Match each US election claim to its record: FEC filings for campaign money, county clerk pages for raw returns, state portals for certified totals.
Practice Desk · 12 min read · Read →
How to verify a government record before quoting it: find the creating system, read its status and version, and cite the page that proves the claim.
Practice Desk · 8 min read · Read →
Retracted health study correction case showing how a coding error invalidates a result and how a newsroom repairs its headline, chart, archives, and social claims.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Survey correction case showing how a newsroom finds an unsupported trend, checks margins of error and wording, repairs a chart, and publishes a complete correction.
Practice Desk · 7 min read · Read →
Emergency-account correction case tracing a lookalike profile, false evacuation claim, unsafe link, newsroom alert error, public repair, and prevention controls.
Practice Desk · 4 min read · Read →
Flood video correction case tracing an old clip through reposts, geolocation, shadow and construction clues, source contact, publication repair, and prevention.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Circular citation correction case showing how one unsupported claim spread across reports, passed weak checks, and required a transparent article-wide repair.
Practice Desk · 4 min read · Read →
Science and health reporting problems explained, including causal overreach, relative-risk framing, surrogate outcomes, product status, and image claims.
Standards Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Statistics and chart reporting problems explained, from missing denominators and uncertain estimates to distorted axes, weak poll questions, and false causal claims.
Standards Desk · 7 min read · Read →
Ten verification problems that let false posts through, each with the check that catches it, from badge trust to copied posts and hacked accounts.
Standards Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Nine visual verification problems, from baseline screenshots to detector confidence scores, with the specific check that resolves each one before publication.
Standards Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Eight common source-evaluation mistakes, from surface trust to forced ratings and citation bias, each paired with the practical check that corrects it.
Standards Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Account and viral-claim checklist for preservation, identity, control, badges, origin, reposts, links, evidence, coordination, safety, publication, and correction.
Practice Desk · 4 min read · Read →
Poll audit workflow for sponsor, population, sample, recruitment, fieldwork, questions, weighting, uncertainty, subgroup comparisons, headlines, and corrections.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
A step-by-step way to verify an unfamiliar account and viral post before you share it, from preserving the original screenshot to checking the claim.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Checking an unfamiliar online source means preserving the page, naming its publisher, tracing the evidence, and recording what stays unresolved.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Evidence source types compared by proximity, scope, independence, strengths, limits, and best uses for checking events, numbers, causes, and quotations.
Costs Desk · 4 min read · Read →
Geolocation fixes where a photo or clip was made, chronolocation fixes when, and both rest on matched features, sun angles, and independent records.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Health research evidence types compared across laboratory work, case reports, observational studies, trials, qualitative research, and systematic reviews.
Costs Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Audit a clinical study story by pulling the paper, protocol and registry record, then checking every claim, number and quote against the data.
Practice Desk · 8 min read · Read →
Image and video verification checklist for preservation, source identity, origin, metadata, location, time, editing, provenance, safety, credit, and publication.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Image and video verification means separating origin, place, time and edit into distinct claims, then testing each against records before you publish.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
How to trace a science or health claim back through the paper, the press release, the protocol and the regulator before you repeat it to anyone.
Practice Desk · 8 min read · Read →
Science and health verification checklist for study identity, design, outcomes, statistics, risk, harms, conflicts, product status, expert review, and corrections.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Social account identity signals compared across badges, profile labels, official links, history, direct confirmation, posting patterns, and platform limits.
Costs Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Verify a viral social post by checking account identity, control, the earliest upload, and the claim itself, then report without amplifying it.
Practice Desk · 6 min read · Read →
Source and claim verification checklist for scope, origin, authority, evidence, independence, quotations, numbers, conflicts, response, wording, and corrections.
Practice Desk · 4 min read · Read →
Source evaluation and claim mapping helps you split a story into checkable claims, trace each to its earliest record, and judge authority against each claim.
Practice Desk · 4 min read · Read →
Statistical measures compared across counts, proportions, percentages, rates, ratios, indexes, means, medians, change measures, and seasonal adjustment.
Costs Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Statistics and chart checklist for provenance, definitions, data quality, denominators, calculations, uncertainty, comparisons, axes, labels, review, and correction.
Practice Desk · 4 min read · Read →
A statistic carries a definition, a source population, and a revision date. Check all three of these details before you repeat the number as a finding.
Practice Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Visual verification methods compared across reverse search, source interviews, metadata, geolocation, chronolocation, provenance, and forensic analysis.
Costs Desk · 5 min read · Read →
Guides
CDC and FDA datasets describe populations over set periods, so a viral number usually misreads what the underlying survey data measures about health trends.
Guides
A Chicago police scanner claim needs three record sets to stand up: Cook County court dockets, City Council agendas, and CPD incident reports.
Rules
Deepfakes political ads FEC: check disclaimers, advisory opinions, platform synthetic media policies, and C2PA provenance signals on video ads.
Guides
Verifying a Los Angeles celebrity claim means finding the original TMZ upload, checking court records, and naming the outlet that first aired the footage.
Reviews
San Francisco AI synthetic media claims need proof: demand model cards, NIST AI benchmarks, provenance signals, and detector accuracy tests before you cite any tool.
Rules
State public records request rules differ sharply across California, Texas, and New York, from 10-day deadlines to attorney general rulings and FOIL appeals.
Maintenance
Public document checklist for provenance, identity, type, status, version, completeness, authenticity, context, redactions, calculations, citation, and review.
Guides
PACER vs state court dockets decides where a case record lives and what it costs. Federal filings are centralized and paid; state lookups vary by county.
Reviews
Public document types compared across bills, laws, proposed and final rules, notices, guidance, filings, pleadings, orders, minutes, audits, and archival records.
Rules
Learn how to verify access to information request records from Canadian federal and provincial portals. Check release letters, exemptions, and file numbers.
