Fake news can be hard to spot. Let’s make it easier.

Published on October 21, 2025October 21, 2025 by Joy Mayer | Reading Time: 4 minutes

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I got tricked earlier this year. I got an email promising daily local news updates for my Florida town, and I was momentarily excited. A new investment in local journalism? More reporters helping me understand where I live? Yes, please!

It looked initially like useful, original content — real headlines and summaries about real events. But because of who I am, my first step after a cursory glance was to investigate who was behind it. And it turns out, no one was behind it. The email was part of a chain of hundreds of AI-generated newsletters (as this Nieman Lab piece explains) across the country. 

Part of our role at Trusting News is to empathize deeply with the experience of consuming the news and help journalists respond and adapt to that experience. And when I was having that moment of exploration, I was reminded of how legitimately hard it can be to tell where information is coming.

What tips could journalists offer their community

So, how are local newsrooms helping people with that problem? How are journalists better equipping their communities to navigate their information ecosystems?

Jane Elizabeth, a savvy retired editor I’ve been learning from for years, has some suggestions. She experienced something a bit different in her Virginia community recently — a “pink slime” printed product landed in her mailbox.

Jane then posted on Facebook with advice for her neighbors. She framed the tips around telling the difference between political information rags disguised as “newspapers,” and her suggestions also work for AI-fueled aggregations disguised as legitimate local news efforts. With Jane’s permission, here are her tips, lightly edited by me:

• If there is a company name anywhere, it’s not easy to track or understand (perhaps a partisan effort seeking donations or a generic, hard-to-trace company called something like Good Daily). 
• The news product doesn’t tell you the names of reporters who wrote the stories.
• The news product doesn’t give you a way to contact the staff — no email addresses, no phone numbers, no office location. Online, there is no “About Us” page.
• Content that looks like a political advertisement is not labeled as “political advertisement.”
• Political stories that clearly favor specific political candidates and issues are mixed in among the mundane “stories” about school bus schedules and local gas prices. That hyper-local information is there to trick you into believing this is a regular, service-oriented journalism publication.
• The “stories” only present the views of one party. There are no responses from other parties, from voters, from non-partisan academic experts.

Where could this information go?

I hear so often from journalists that their instinct (or their boss’s direction) is to ignore illegitimate or uninformed accusations or questions. As in … we obviously aren’t guilty of the ethical breach someone is accusing us of, so don’t bother responding.

I think responding to fake news sites too often falls prey to that line of thinking … it’s clearly not real, so let’s not address it. Or … we don’t want to draw attention to that fake site, so we’ll just ignore it. 

Our team at Trusting News has a different suggestion. There is more to be gained by helping people to both believe in the validity of YOUR work and also feel more equipped to make decisions about other offerings in the information landscape. (This is a big goal of the work we’re doing around AI education, with two cohorts kicking off this month.) 

We’re not suggesting that journalists “cover” the fake news product but instead that they use it as a chance to share best practices.

Picture it as a social video, with a staffer serving as a trusted guide through the news. Consider language like this:

This week, our team came across something that looked at first glance like a legitimate news offering about our community but was actually a fake product that seemed designed to mimic legitimate news. It was presented as being [written by local reporters / a collection of local events, etc.]. But when we looked into it, it was actually [copied from other sites but without attribution / partisan messaging from a company known for this tactic, etc.]. We know how hard it can be to tell the difference, so I’m here to share the things our team of journalists looks for in these cases to figure out whether the site is legitimate. We’ll put them all on the screen at the end, so feel free to screen grab them to save. [Walk through the tips.]

That could be a quick segment on air, too. Or a moment in a podcast. Or a section of a newsletter. Or an editor’s column. Consider anywhere your team is talking directly to your audience. Our Transparency Trust Kit has lots of ideas for format and placement. 

Put yourself in the audience’s shoes

When you see something masquerading as real news, imagine what it might feel like to genuinely not know if it’s true. 

Regularly, savvy news consumers likely pick up on a lot of signals — conventions of traditional journalism like bylines and hyperlinks. Most people are not news junkies. 

Picture someone in your life who is not constantly dialed in — someone who wants to be informed and definitely doesn’t want to be misled but has a more casual relationship with the news. Imagine sitting down at a computer with them and walking them through how to tell what’s real. 

Then do that for your audience.

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At Trusting News, we learn how people decide what news to trust and turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. We train and empower journalists to take responsibility for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust through transparency and engagement. Learn more about our work, vision and team. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Follow us on Twitter, BlueSky and LinkedIn.