Section 3 — The Truth
Session 12 of 16
Thursday, July 9, 2026
Choosing your sources
In an era of information overload and deliberate disinformation, choosing which sources to trust is one of the most important skills you can have. This session gives you a practical framework for evaluating news sources — and for building a media diet that makes you genuinely better informed, not just more anxious.
Vocabulary for this session
credibilityfact-checkingprimary sourcemisinformationdisinformationverificationcitationvettingreliabilitytrust
Grammar focus
Grammar focus: The language of credibility and sourcing — "according to", "based on data from", "as reported by", "citing", "confirmed by", "on condition of anonymity", "a source familiar with the matter". How journalists signal the strength and nature of their sources — and what these phrases reveal about how confident they really are.
Come prepared to discuss
"How do you decide what news to trust? What is your actual process — step by step?"
Before this session
Prepare: Write down three news sources you use regularly. For each one: What makes you trust it? How did you start using it? Have you ever caught it getting something wrong?
Task-Based Activity
Source Evaluation Workshop. Students bring one article each. In pairs, they evaluate each other's articles using a checklist: (1) Is the author named? (2) Are sources named or anonymous? (3) Are primary or secondary sources cited? (4) Can the key claims be verified elsewhere? (5) Does the outlet have an editorial standards page? Present findings. Discuss: Did any articles fail the checklist? What does that mean?
Career-Oriented Take — How to Frame It
"Trust but verify" is as important in business as in journalism. The ability to evaluate the reliability of information — whether it's a consultant's report, a competitor's announcement, or a market research study — is a core professional skill. The criteria you apply to news sources apply equally to business information.
Big Picture
Misinformation (false information spread without intent to harm) and disinformation (false information spread deliberately to mislead) are not new phenomena — but the speed and scale at which they now travel is. Understanding the difference, and having tools to identify both, is now a civic responsibility. Fact-checking organizations like Snopes, Full Fact, and PolitiFact exist precisely because this has become a structural problem.
Current Events Take
Bring in an example of a piece of misinformation or disinformation that circulated recently. Walk through, as a class: How could you have identified this as false? What sources would you have checked? What were the signs? This exercise makes the abstract skill of source verification immediately practical.
Homework (assign after session)
Build your personal "media diet" — three sources you trust and why, one source you read to challenge your assumptions, and one fact-checking resource you'll use regularly. Write a 150-word explanation of your choices.