Is it True?

While driving home Thursday after school and work, one of my work chat's started to blow up. I didn't look at the notifications because I was driving, and I was off the clock. I had worked that morning and decided I needed a break from work because I was going back the next day. Anyways, I got home and started doom scrolling on TikTok. I saw a video of a helicopter falling out of the sky. It was a video from CBS, but I was still sceptical because that does not normally happen and I know from personal experience, anything aviation related is newsworthy or at least more considerable for news right now.

I decided to double check the story, claims, everything to see if this is true. The first step I took is not part of traditional S.I.F.T. or lateral reading measures. Most people don't work for a news organization and have access to developing breaking news.

STEP 1: I stopped and immediately checked my work group chat to see if they were reporting it or if it was local news that was causing my Teams app to blow up.

STEP 2: This starts my investigation process. I saw we got the information from Associated Press. Immediately I went to AP to find the story and their sourcing.

STEP 2: Now I tried to find better coverage. While I trust AP sourcing, I still went to other news outlets and searched for ones in the Hudson area because locals know it better than anyone else.

STEP 4: Now that I am seeing roughly the same coverage, I was tracing sources. I saw most of them said officials or eye witnesses. Looking through photos it was mostly Hudson river area first responders. Eye witness accounts are on news outlets and social media is blowing up with videos of the helicopter falling.

Overall while I would typically try to track down if they quoted the same people or same first responders, this incident is still under investigation so it mostly joining statements released. As for eyewitnesses I am always sceptical of because it is hard to know if that was an accurate memory or someone trying to get an interview to be on the news. Since there are so many videos, news outlets and officials releasing information this story can be accurately identified as true. It is good to verify all claims, especially those heard on social media. Because not all are true like this one was. Normally I would blindly believe AP. However this story made me want to verify it because any plane crash is national breaking news now- this story broke while researching Hudson River crash. While plane crashes are serious, not are all newsworthy. It is a coverage trend because many people are nervous about planes since the D.C. crash and other crashes or incidents.

Yes, news outlets are there to share knowledge of communities, but they are still businesses. What is trending is what gets the clicks and views, which is what keeps the light on. So plane crashes are easy viral stories right now, which is why sometimes digging a little deeper is necessary to figure out if the story is as big and scary as it was made out to be.