Read on Twitter
This is likely a touchy example for a class, but this "Trump Manatee" story here is a good prompt for a class discussion if the class is not defensive. And it shows some important things about how CRAAP methods fail. https://www.chronicleonline.com/news/local/federal-officials-seek-information-on-manatee-harassment/article_c84a3b66-5423-11eb-93b6-1bf69750167f.html
If you want, you can start the students at this tweet. It's from a blue checkmark, and a media person, but a hover will show his area of reporting isn't relevant to the news item. https://twitter.com/exavierpope/status/1348684626622107652
If you click into the thread, however, you do find he provides a link. https://twitter.com/exavierpope/status/1348705013238034433
A couple clicks later you get to the story. And if you follow the CRAAP methodology you'll be hopelessly confused. First of all it's a dot com and CRAAP wrongly tells you you can't trust dot coms.
Second, it appears to be by a Photo Editor? Which again, the students will think is weird.
There's the sidebar which has this weird online poll and ads. CRAAP wrongly tells students those things count against the site.
With CRAAP, students are also told look for spelling errors and grammar mistakes, and when people find these in junk news sites they often say "Aha! See, looking for errors works!"
The problem with that is that this assertion doesn't deal with the inverse -- it never checks how many non-junk sites have errors or weirdness. Look at this botched capitalization, for instance, and this weird two-tense construction.
Finally there is this image, which some students are likely to think might be photoshopped and others will think it provides more evidence than it does
Look at any photo long enough and it will start to seem photoshopped, and this is no exception.
What's a better approach? Two seconds gets you to the wikipedia page. It's newish, and short, but solid, and it links to the Library of Congress as a source if you want to go the extra step.
So it's a real publication -- we learn that in less than a minute pretty conclusively. Second step -- is this local news? I'm not trusting a publication of this sort on national reporting, but it might be a good source for a local event.
Do a select and search here. Is the river this was found in the paper's area? Or are they running a story they picked up elsewhere. Turns out it's local.
