Fall '25 - ENGL 1301 - Mackovic - by Kara Dixon: Fact Check Challenge: Truth or Trickery?

This image is trickery! The photo of a shark swimming on a flooded highway after Hurricane Harvey is fake. It has been digitally altered and repeatedly debunked. Try a reverse image search to find articles about this fake image.

This article is misleading. A quick Wikipedia search of The American College of Pediatricians will tell you that they are a socially conservative advocacy group (approx 700 members). Not to be confused with the widely trusted American Academy of Pediatrics (approx 67,000 members), The American College of Pediatricians has faced criticism for opposing LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, and vaccine mandates, and has been labeled a hate group by some organizations.

This article is truth! BBC is a low bias, trust worthy source of world news. Check out the media bias review on a media bias checker. This article discusses a real historical event known as the "dancing plague" of 1518, where people in Strasbourg danced uncontrollably for days, and some reportedly died from exhaustion or other causes.

This article is trickery! It's from The Onion, a well-known satire website that publishes humorous, fake news stories meant for entertainment rather than factual reporting. A quick Google search will immediately display Wikipedia's description of this satirical online newspaper.

This video is trickery! Use your lateral reading skills to search for the names on the jersey, in the background and on the microphone to find that these sources don't exist. Also, look for some of the tell tale signs of AI-generated video: people in the background go in an out of blurriness, and the visible text doesn't make any sense.

Trickery! "Heart on My Sleeve" is a song written and produced by TikTok user Ghostwriter977, with vocals created to sound like musicians Drake and the Weeknd with the help of AI. The song was self-released on April 4, 2023, on various streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube.