CBS News recently highlighted a list of fake news sites on their web site.  Many of these sites had been compiled by communications professor Melissa Zimdars to help her students “navigate and increasingly complex and questionable media landscape.”  She has since updated and expanded this growing list of such questionable site which she has indexed into four categories below:

CATEGORY 1: Below is a list of fake, false, or regularly misleading websites that are shared on Facebook and social media. Some of these websites may rely on “outrage” by using distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious information in order to generate likes, shares, and profits.

CATEGORY 2: Some websites on this list may circulate misleading and/or potentially unreliable information, or present opinion pieces as news.

CATEGORY 3: Other websites on this list sometimes use hyperbolic or clickbait-y headlines and/or social media descriptions, but may otherwise circulate reliable and/or verifiable information.

CATEGORY 4 : Other sources on this list are purposefully fake with the intent of satire/comedy, which can offer important critical commentary on politics and society, but have the potential to be shared as actual/literal news. I’m including them here, for now, because 1.) they have the potential to perpetuate misinformation based on different audience (mis)interpretations and 2.) to make sure anyone who reads a
story by The Onion, for example, understands its purpose.

Professor Zimdars notes that not all of the sites on this list should be considered fake; at the very least the term “fake” can potentially have a spectrum of nuanced definitions.  This nuance between outright false or misleading or even satirical explains why Zimdars has put her list into categories.  She urges her students to pursue a critical evaluation of any site.  Nevertheless this list represents a good first compilation of questionable news sites.

Link to the list here: False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, & Satirical “News” Sources.