Three Easy ways to avoid FICTITIOUS NEWS

Social media, the holy grail of technological interaction, is now slowly being filled with links that lead to fake or exaggerated news.  Many individuals rely on social media to keep up with current local, and global events.  But with the new up-rise in yellow journalism, it's becoming more and more difficult to avoid these fictitious articles.  Three effortless but extremely useful tips that'll help you avoid encountering counterfeit news include, educating yourself on topics that you may find interesting, credentialing the publishers of the articles you read most, and following all different types of news networks.

In today's society, many people claim to be knowledgeable about certain issues when they really aren't.  People tend to follow the norm in terms of making decisions about what should and shouldn't be "socially acceptable."  Very little people actually take the time to educate themselves.

A safe example would be whether-or-not it should be legal to carry firearms.

Those who are anti gun laws might argue that the Second Amendment was added to our Constitution because the founders believed in private ownership of guns was necessary for protection of our liberties or restrictions to gun ownership put citizens at the mercy of gun-toting criminals.  

Those who are pro gun laws may say that guns are not safe. There are too many accidents involving children playing with guns or accidental discharges due to careless or inexperienced adults.

The main point of this is to educate yourself on the topic so that you become knowledgeable on both aspects.  Then you can make a decision of where you stand.

Secondly, credentialing the authors and publishers you read is a must.  This process takes no more that 40 seconds.  Often times, you have the ability to click on a persons' name to be informed on who they are and what they stand for.  If you don't have the ability to click on their name, then just copy & paste their name into Google search engine and see what comes up.

If the author isn't credible, then despite how good or bad the article is, they are an unreliable source and should be avoided as much as possible.  On the other hand, if you click on their name and it gives you a brief description on who they are and what degree they have in a relative field, then you can more than likely trust their work.  

Just be aware of bias. 

Lastly, following only one news network is very fallacious as well.  Different networks will look at different parts of a certain issue.  CNN is more liberal bent where as ABC and FOX news are much more conservative.  

So obviously, if you only have interest in watching CNN than you will look at certain topics with a much more liberal lens whereas FOX news followers will have a more conservative perspective.

Getting a wider spectrum of current issues from other news networks allows you to learn and filter out biases in news programming/articles.

These three relatively easy and helpful tips will give you the advantage, and will help you refrain from being fooled by the corrupt yellow journalism industry,

You'll thank me later.