News and current events Guide

This page features some of the most popular and important news sources provided by the LBCC Library and tips on how to get the full text of articles. The second tab, Evaluating News, contains a variety of resources for both students and instructors to help navigate the news in an era of misinformation. The final tab, More News and Journalism Resources, contains a more exhaustive guide to resources that can be accessed through LBCC Library's subscriptions and selected free resources.

View full issues of the following news magazines:

The Atlantic
National Review 
Newsweek Global
Newsweek Mexico en español

Many online newspapers and magazines limit access to subscribers only. Others generate revenue with invasive ads. While it is understandable that these organizations need revenue, this can be frustrating for people who are doing research. Here are some tips to help:

• Check library-licensed resources.
  • The Library has access to the full text of many newspapers and magazines through our subscription databases. You can search for availability of all newspapers, magazines, and journal titles, including popular titles like the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today.
  • To see if the Library has a specific article, or search for a general topic, you can use the FindIt search tool.
• Search free web sources. Here are some news sources that are freely available. Some even have Creative Commons licenses, meaning you can copy them into your Moodle course if you want, as long as you provide attribution!
  • The Associated Press. The original source of much syndicated news.
  • The Conversation. Current events analysis by academic experts. Published under a CC BY-ND license.
  • NPR News. An independent, nonprofit media organization founded to create a more informed public.
  • ProPublica. Nonprofit investigative journalism. Articles available under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
• Contact a librarian. Still can't get the article you need? Ask a librarian! They may be able to assist you with Interlibrary Loan or other ways to access the resource.

 

Take a quick test to see if you can spot fake news.

One thing you can do to combat misinformation and fake news is to quickly search for a claim on one of the websites below before you share it online. In 30 seconds or less, you can get a sense of whether a claim is Mostly True, if It's Complicated, or if it's Mostly False. You don't have to rely on the ratings: these sites provide links to sources that you can check yourself.

• Factcheck.org
• PolitiFact
• AP Fact Check
• Snopes
• TruthOrFiction.com

Watch out for "sponsored content" that looks like news but actually is paid for by an advertiser. Sponsored content is designed to promote a product or service. The samples below show how sponsored content presents as part of the publication and doesn't immediately stand out as an advertisement.

 

Other sections of this guide suggest some trustworthy and reliable news sources. But you may see information about current events on social media from an unfamiliar source. How do you know if something is "fake news"?
The tactics and habits on this page help you evaluate the claims and sources of current events information on the web. One way of evaluating information is to spend a lot of time assessing the credibility of one source, like with the CRAAP Test. Newer research suggests that a more accurate and efficient approach focuses less on one source and more on lateral reading, or seeing what other sources say. Three questions you can ask are:

1. Who is behind the information?
2. What's the evidence?
3. What do other sources say?

Another way to think about this is with "four moves" skilled factcheckers use, the acronym for which is SIFT:

1. Stop
2. Investigate the coverage
3. Find better coverage
4. Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.

Many Americans don't trust the news media, yet most see reliable reporting as essential to our democracy (source: Gallup). One thing we can all do is try to identify the biases, or perspectives, of the sources we use and balance them by checking claims from other perspectives.

Bias is not the same as trustworthiness or reliability. A trustworthy or reliable news source:

• Clearly distinguishes factual reporting from opinion or commentary
• Abides by journalistic standards and corrects false information when it's brought to their attention

If you read an article on a topic in a newspaper that is trustworthy but leans slightly left (the New York Times, for example), compare it to a source that is also reliable but leans slightly right (the Wall Street Journal, for example). You may notice differences in word choice or emphasis, but the news reporting sections of both of these papers make an effort to be careful with the facts.

You must be much more skeptical of the information in the opinion section. Pundits and commentators are not held to the same standards as journalists. They often seek to sway your emotions rather than to inform you.

The sources below will help you evaluate the bias of news:

• Wikipedia. Encounter a source you're not familiar with? Look it up on Wikipedia to quickly get a sense of its purpose and biases.
• All Sides. Provides a chart showing the bias of major news sources and current news stories that are tagged as being left, right, or centrist.
• Interactive Media Bias Chart. Many news sources rated on both reliability and bias by Ad Fontes's analysts.

Notice that often the opinion section of a news source is rated as more biased than the news reporting section. Want to know more about how to use these sites? Read Should you trust media bias charts? from Poynter Institute.

The resources below will help instructors understand current issues and best practices in information and media literacy. Many include tips and activities for students to develop the skills to evaluate digital information.

Professional Reading

Featured!

• Teaching in the Age of Disinformation: Propaganda and conspiracy theories are everywhere. What’s a professor to do? Chronicle of Higher Education.

More:

• Students Fall for Misinformation Online. Is Teaching Them to Read Like Fact Checkers the Solution? Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Media Literacy Standards to Counter Truth Decay. RAND Corporation.

• Information Evaluation from the American Library Association

Resources to Use with Students

Featured!

• Citizen Literacy. University of Louisville Libraries. An online toolkit that promotes the development of key information skills for democratic citizenship and features short videos, handouts, and activities that faculty across all disciplines can integrate into their courses and assignments.

More:

• Check Please! Starter Course. Teaches students how to fact and source-check in five online lessons, taking about 30 minutes apiece.
• Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers. An in-depth OER text by Mike Caulfield, developer of the popular Four Moves & a Habit (SIFT) approach to web evaluation.
• Civic Online Reasoning. Stanford University. Includes videos and activites to use in the classroom.
• CTRL-F. A verification skills module from Canadian nonprofit CIVIX, including videos and interactive online activities.
• Debunking Handbook 2020. George Mason University. Summary of the current science of misinformation.
• Teaching the Nature of Science using Pseudoscience: A Semester-long Curriculum to accompany any Introductory Science Course. Dr. Douglas Duncan, University of Colorado.

• Gale General Onefile
  A broad collection of news articles, magazines, books, academic journals, images and video that support general interest research and exploration.
• Gale OneFile: News
  Provides access to major U.S. regional, national, and local newspapers, as well as leading titles from around the world. It also includes thousands of images, radio and TV broadcasts and transcripts.
• Newspaper Source
  Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for more than 40 (U.S.) & international newspapers. The database also contains selective full text for 389 regional U.S. newspapers. In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are also provided.
• Regional Business News
  Regional Business News incorporates coverage of more than 80 regional business publications covering all metropolitan and rural areas within the United States.

• The Commuter archive
• Historic Oregon Newspapers
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, 1789-1925 
  High-quality, digitized newspapers from all over the U.S.
• Google News Archive

Look for the following newspapers and news magazines in our Reading Room:

The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
Albany Democrat Herald
Corvallis Gazette Times
Lebanon Express
Salem Statesmen Journal
Atlantic Monthly
Bloomberg Businessweek
Christian Science Monitor
The Economist
Mother Jones
The Nation
National Review
New Yorker
Newsweek
Reason
Time

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Their highly recommended section on Journalism and Media offers insights into media news and attitudes: http://www.journalism.org/