How to Tell What’s Real When Everything Feels Like a Lie

A practical, vetted fact-checking toolkit for voters, organizers, and the group chat.

Jul 17, 2025

When I started this Substack, it wasn’t just to vent… though let’s be real, there’s been some of that too.

It was about equipping people.

Equipping folks who live in the places that are always first to feel the consequences and last to be heard. People who want to be better voters, better neighbors, better leaders, or at the very least, people who want to stop feeling like they’re drowning in spin with no life raft in sight.

Equipping ourselves, because no one’s coming to do it for us.

And right now, one of the most important things we can equip ourselves with is a simple skill: figuring out what’s real.
Not what’s trending. Not what’s loudest. Not what confirms what we hoped was true.

Just: what’s real.

If we’re honest, half the fight these days is just trying to figure out what the hell is actually going on.

We are saturated with content. There’s more information than ever, and less clarity. Outrage spreads faster than facts. Headlines are designed to provoke, not inform. And disinformation doesn’t just come from troll farms anymore: it’s polished, packaged, and passed around by elected officials and news anchors with million-dollar sets.

You don’t need a journalism degree to feel how much of that is by design.
Confusion is the strategy. Exhaustion is the tool.

So this post isn’t a deep dive or a fiery essay.
This one’s a resource. A toolkit. A breadcrumb trail back to reality.

Something you can bookmark. Print out. Forward to your mom. Drop in the group chat when someone sends you that link with a weird font and no author name.

It’s not exhaustive. But it’s vetted. And it’s something I use. Not just sometimes, but every damn day.

How to use this post

Don’t rely on just one site /// triangulate.
Get in the habit of verifying before you share.
Use these tools proactively, not just reactively.
And most of all: don’t let the noise wear you down.

Primary Fact-Checking Sources

These are the heavy hitters. They are the ones that don’t just fact-check, but explain their process so you can follow it too.

Every site listed below is a member of the International Fact-Checking Network, which means they’ve committed to nonpartisanship, transparency, evidence-based sourcing, and publicly correcting mistakes when they get it wrong.

These are the folks who show their work:

If you’re wondering why some big names aren’t listed here, it’s not that they’re untrustworthy… it’s that IFCN membership is a high bar. These are the places that make transparency part of the mission.

And if you’re someone who still wonders, “Yeah, but who checks them”?
Start here: Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? (Poynter)

Secondary Sources (Still Worth Bookmarking)

These aren’t traditional fact-checkers, but they’re indispensable if you’re trying to understand the ecosystem of influence, bias, and agenda.

OpenSecrets – If you want to understand American politics, follow the money. This is required reading.
VerifyThis – Especially good at breaking down viral images and videos.
Media Bias / Fact Check – Not perfect, but useful for gauging how reliable and how slanted a media source might be.
AllSides – Lays out how the same story is framed across left, right, and center. Sometimes eye-opening. ← This is a really cool website.

Bonus: BBC Verify

Disinformation isn’t just a U.S. issue.
The BBC launched BBC Verify in 2023 to track AI-generated content, manipulated media, and state-sponsored propaganda.

It’s global. It’s sharp. And it’s worth keeping an eye on, even if your focus is local. The tools of disinformation evolve fast, and they don’t respect borders.

This isn’t extra credit. It’s survival.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the flood of claims, headlines, and finger-pointing coming at you from all sides, that’s not a failure of your critical thinking. That’s the whole point of the system.

But you don’t need to be an expert to cut through it.
You just need practice.
You just need a few solid tools.
You just need a place to start.

That’s what this post is.

So save it. Share it. Use it. And if someone you know is tired of drowning in noise, hand them this rope.

Because the fight for truth isn’t theoretical.
It’s lived. And it’s not just about what we believe. It’s about what we do with what we know.

Know someone who needs this? Pass it on. Let’s rebuild trust from the ground up.

Want to go deeper?

This post is about tools. But if you want to see why this matters; how disinformation spreads, who benefits from confusion, and what it actually looks like when local communities fight back - here are a few past pieces that might hit: