There is another fake news story being shared rapidly on South African social media with regards to the new American President signing a visa-free travel policy for South Africans.
The fake news website is currently named ‘www.USA-Television.com’ but is actually an updated ‘www.Te1egraph.com’ and their current onslaught of posts claim that the newly elected President has signed hundreds of ‘visa-free’ orders for almost every country (we smell click-bait here).
The article states that “President, Donald Trump has signed an executive order to allow all South Africa nationals travel to the United States without visas.”
“The new order, serving as a change in visa policy for South Africans traveling to the United States, would permit them stay in the U.S for a maximum period of 180 days for Tourism or Business purposes only. Stay over 180 days would therefore require a visa.”
“Trump says this measure is to strengthen trade between the United States and South Africa.”
“However, South Africans who hold dual nationality will be banned from entering the United States if their other passport is from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen — the seven Muslim-majority countries “of concern”.”
There are no press-releases from the White House regarding any visa-free policies and the article being shared is the only one un-reputable source reporting on the story.
Added to that, the website hosting the article is filled with ambiguity. There is no ‘about us’ section and the privacy policy relates to www.Te1egraph.com, not www.USA-Television.com.
A quick look around the website, and their ‘other stories’ make it clear that the website is filled with Fake News. We can assure you that Lesotho has not become a South African city and Obama’s youngest daughter is not pregnant either.
NPR listed a few tips to spotting fake news that I think we should all brush up on…
Read beyond the headline.
If a provocative headline drew your attention, read a little further before you decide to pass along the shocking information. Even in legitimate news stories, the headline doesn’t always tell the whole story. But fake news, particularly efforts to be satirical, can include several revealing signs in the text. That USA-Television.com story that we checked, headlined “Donald Trump signs a visa-free travel policy for South Africa,” went on to say that they had also revoked Australia’s rights to visit the country ever again. We have to assume that the many readers who were sharing the original article hadn’t actually read the full story.
Pay attention to the domain and URL
Established news organizations usually own their domains and they have a standard look that you are probably familiar with. Sites with such endings like ‘com.co’ or sites that have numbers replace letters should make you raise your eyebrows and tip you off that you need to dig around more to see if they can be trusted. This is true even when the site looks professional and has semi-recognizable logos. For example, www.telegraph.com is a legitimate news source, but www.Te1egraph.com is not, despite its similar appearance.
Read the “About Us” section
Most sites will have a lot of information about the news outlet, the company that runs it, members of leadership, and the mission and ethics statement behind an organization. The language used here is straightforward. If it’s melodramatic and seems overblown, you should be skeptical. Also, you should be able to find out more information about the organization’s leaders in places other than that site.
Look at the quotes in a story
Or rather, look at the lack of quotes. Most publications have multiple sources in each story who are professionals and have expertise in the fields they talk about. If it’s a serious or controversial issue, there are more likely to be quotes — and lots of them. Look for professors or other academics who can speak to the research they’ve done. And if they are talking about research, look up those studies.
Look at who said them
Then, see who said the quotes, and what they said. Are they a reputable source with a title that you can verify through a quick Google search? Say you’re looking at a story and it says President Obama said he wanted to take everyone’s guns away. And then there’s a quote. Obama is an official who has almost everything he says recorded and archived. There are transcripts for pretty much any address or speech he has given. Google those quotes. See what the speech was about, who he was addressing and when it happened. Even if he did an exclusive interview with a publication, that same quote will be referenced in other stories, saying he said it while talking to the original publication.
Check the comments
A lot of these fake and misleading stories are shared on social media platforms. Headlines are meant to get the reader’s attention, but they’re also supposed to accurately reflect what the story is about. Lately, that hasn’t been the case. Headlines often will be written in exaggerated language with the intention of being misleading and then attached to stories that are about a completely different topic or just not true. These stories usually generate a lot of comments on Facebook or Twitter. If a lot of these comments call out the article for being fake or misleading, it probably is.
Reverse image search
A picture should be accurate in illustrating what the story is about. This often doesn’t happen. If people who write these fake news stories don’t even leave their homes or interview anyone for the stories, it’s unlikely they take their own pictures. Do a little detective work and reverse search for the image on Google. You can do this by right-clicking on the image and choosing to search Google for it. If the image is appearing on a lot of stories about many different topics, there’s a good chance it’s not actually an image of what it says it was on the first story.
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