Journalism is the practice of researching,&nbsp;&nbsp;
verifying, and presenting&nbsp; information to the public.
But not all journalism is created equally. Reports&nbsp; can range from short bulletins written quickly,&nbsp;&nbsp;
to substantial investigations that take&nbsp; a lot of time and effort to produce.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Some reporting that looks like journalism may&nbsp; not have the same standards of research and rigor&nbsp;&nbsp;
as reports produced by professional organizations.&nbsp;&nbsp;
To confuse matters more false and misleading&nbsp; information online can also look like journalism.
With so many different sources available&nbsp; to us, it is important to determine&nbsp;&nbsp;
which information is reliable and which&nbsp; is not. One key way to do this is to seek&nbsp;&nbsp;
out information from organizations that&nbsp; operate according to a set of standards.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Professional news organizations won't always get&nbsp; it right but a story is more likely to be reliable&nbsp;&nbsp;
if it is produced in a process that involves&nbsp; a commitment to accuracy. You can evaluate the&nbsp;&nbsp;
quality of a journalistic report by looking for&nbsp; some of the standards that define journalism.
Accuracy Does the news organization&nbsp;&nbsp;
have a reputation for professionalism? Do&nbsp; they have a policy for correcting mistakes?
Research How many people&nbsp;&nbsp;
are interviewed or quoted in the story. What&nbsp; supporting research or statistics are included?
Sourcing&nbsp;
Are the people quoted experts or otherwise&nbsp; qualified to speak about the issue?
Context&nbsp;
Does the story include background information&nbsp; to help you understand the key themes better?
Fairness&nbsp;
Are people and issues described&nbsp; using neutral language?
Not all journalism will meet the same standards.&nbsp; Becoming familiar with professional news&nbsp;&nbsp;
organizations and the standards that define&nbsp; journalism can help us determine what to trust