Happy Source Criticism's day! One of our biggest newspapers/online newspapers here in Sweden, Metro, just declared this day to be the Source Criticism's day, to promote source criticism and to teach people how source criticism works, how to spot fake news and scams and how to approach stories spread via social media. 3 years ago they started the viralgranskaren (viral inspector), a small branch of Metro which researches and reports on viral stories spread over the internet and teaches people how to do it themselves. This branch has grown and it's thanks to their work that this day was declared as Source Criticism's day.
I think it's a great initiative, it'll hopefully help to stem the flow of fake news and other stories, and encourage people do at least a bit of research before trusting something, especially if it's something sensational or something which is controversial and emotionally charged. It can also help people who don't know how to do source criticism on the internet, or what tools are available.
While there are a lot of bashing on mainstream media, and righteously so, I really am amazed by Metro who, as far as I can tell, are as objective as they can be when reporting news, but also encourage people to do some basic source criticism. They are paid by ads so that they can be free of charge both in paper form and on the internet, but firstly it's by so many different companies that one of them won't be able to change their content by bribery and secondly they separate their content from the ads very clearly. They also refrain from using "clickbait" titles, but instead they have built a good reputation of being reliable and honest to ensure that they can keep going. I really think other news could learn from them.