Sometimes, you don’t care about the particular article or video that reaches you. You care about the claim the article is making. You want to know if it is true or false. You want to see if it represents a consensus viewpoint or is the subject of much disagreement.
In this case, your best strategy may be to ignore the source that reached you and look for trusted reporting or analysis on the claim. If you find an article that says koalas have just been declared extinct by the Save the Koalas Foundation, your best bet might not be to investigate the source but to go out and find the best source you can on this topic or, just as importantly, to scan multiple sources and see what the expert consensus seems to be. In these cases, we encourage you to “find other coverage” that better suits your needs — more trusted, in-depth, or varied.
Do you have to agree with the consensus once you find it? Absolutely not! However, understanding the context and history of a claim will help you better evaluate it and form a starting point for future investigation.
Determine what type of source it is. If it is:
a popular source, look for a substantive popular source on the topic
a substantive popular source, look for a trade or scholarly source
a news source, look for a source from a news source of record