The Sift: Paws and verify

November 9, 2026

An educator's guide
to news literacy

Nov. 9, 2026

In this issue

Paws and verify | RumorGuard slides

Daily Do Now slides

A week’s worth of do-nows, just for you.

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➡️ To access News Literacy Project resources linked in today's newsletter, sign up for a FREE Checkology® account.

Top picks

Here are the latest news literacy topics and tips on how to integrate them into your classroom.

A golden retriever dog with its tongue out.

It’s becoming more challenging to determine whether pet content online is AI or authentic.

1. Paws and verify

Before you share the next cute dog video you come across, you may want to pause and verify it. AI-generated pets are spreading on social media, and while they may seem harmless, these synthetic posts can hurt real animals.

No AI policy: A media company called WeRateDogs has 20 million followers across social media platforms where users can submit photos and videos for posting. But there’s a strict no AI content policy. All content must be authentic.
Signs of AI: To determine whether a video is AI-generated or not, the team looks for repetitive movements or strange glitches. They also look for physical details that don’t make sense — for instance, a dog that walks in snow without leaving tracks.
Avoiding scams: Another reason real dog content is important is because WeRateDogs helps raise funds for dogs’ medical care.
Real-world harm: AI animal slop can be found elsewhere. Scammers have used AI-generated images of lost pets to demand ransom. And AI wildlife images affect scientific research.

💬 Discuss:

How might fake dog content be harmful to real dogs in need of help?
How does WeRateDogs hold itself accountable to post authentic images and videos of dogs?
Who should be responsible for detecting and labeling AI content on social media platforms? Do labels make a difference?

⭐ NLP Resources:

Lesson plan: “AI or not?”
Infographic: “6 things to know about AI”

🔗 Related:

“That Video of an Older Woman Surrendering Her Dog to the Oregon Humane Society Is AI Slop” (Willamette Week)

2. Paying homage to the Black press

A Black newspaper office in Harlem may soon be preserved for the public to learn more about its history up close.

Historic newspaper: The New York Amsterdam News is a 117-year-old newspaper that continues to print a weekly edition to this day. It has 15 employees but once had a staff of about 50, according to publisher and editor-in-chief Elinor R. Tatum.
Black perspective: The newspaper has always covered news and shared opinion pieces from a Black perspective. In 1957 it began publishing Malcolm X’s “God’s Angry Man” columns. The paper also published editorials defending the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of a 1989 rape and later exonerated.
Community hub: Plans are in motion to transform the newspaper’s building in Harlem into a community space that preserves the paper’s archives and the history of the Black press.
Black newspapers: When the paper was founded in 1909, there were about 2,000 Black newspapers in the U.S. Today, about 200 Black newspapers remain, according to the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

💬 Discuss:

How might the New York Amsterdam News’ historic coverage differ from coverage in mainstream newspapers?
If the history of Black journalism were not preserved, what might the impact be?

⭐ NLP Resource:

Interactive lesson: “Harm & Distrust”

🔗 Related:

“The Crusader was the only Black daily newspaper in the US in the 1890s” (Verite News)

3. More trust in news

New studies from Pew Research Center found that the number of Americans surveyed who trust news media has risen over the last year.

Trust in news: Americans have higher trust in local news over national news. Sixty-two percent of American adults say they have a lot or some trust in information from national news (up 6 percentage points from last year) and 75% have at least some trust in local news (up 5 percentage points from last year).
Bipartisan views: Most Americans (80%) say critical coverage from news organizations — or the news media’s watchdog role — keeps politicians in check. This includes majorities of both Democrats (89%) and Republicans (73%).

💬 Discuss:

Why might Americans have higher trust in local news over national news? What role might proximity, familiarity with local reporters or the kinds of stories covered play?
In what ways do journalists serve as a watchdog on behalf of the public?

💡 Idea: Use the “Watchdog role” slide in Week 10 of the Daily Do Now resource to discuss this topic with students in 5 to 10 minutes.

⭐ NLP Resource:

Interactive lesson: “Democracy’s Watchdog”

🔗 Related:

“In a West Virginia county of 6,540, accountability journalism gets personal” (Poynter)

These interactive slide decks help students think carefully and critically about viral claims in the digital age.

No, the FBI didn’t find 20,000 fraudulent ballots in a Houston warehouse

A post reads, “OVER TWENTY THOUSAND FRAUDULENT BALLOTS UNCOVERED IN FBI RAID OF HOUSTON STORAGE LOCKER WAREHOUSE ALL FOR DEMOCRATS” and includes three images, one of an FBI truck, another of a warehouse and a third of election ballots. The News Literacy Project has added a label that says “FALSE.”

❌ NO: The FBI did not discover thousands of fraudulent ballots at a Houston warehouse earlier this month.

✅ YES: This claim originated with a social media page that frequently posts misleading content.

✅ YES: Photographs with the claim show unrelated events in San Francisco and the greater Atlanta area, as well as an image of a warehouse in Houston.

✅ YES: Both local election officials and the FBI confirmed no raid occurred and the claim is false.

⭐ NewsLit takeaway:

A rumor on social media may feel true when it confirms a preconceived belief. For example, if you think there is widespread voter fraud in U.S. elections (there isn’t), you may be prone to believe a claim that appears to confirm that belief. Check out these Google Slides for tips to avoid being duped by confirmation bias.

VIEW ON GOOGLE SLIDES

➕ Russia’s leading independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, has been forced to close after more than three decades of reporting under relentless pressure from the government. During its years of operation, six of its journalists were murdered and authorities blocked its websites, seized its printing facility and tried to cut off reader donations.

➕ Salon is closing after 31 years of covering politics, arts and culture. In the early days of the internet, Salon was a pioneering publication that once won website of the year from Time magazine in 1996.

➕ A teenage developer in India launched a website of AI-generated audiobooks for sale after scraping data from a popular fan fiction site. The website was taken down within a day after outrage from authors and fans alike.

➕ Say you’re stopping at a café for a coffee. Would you prefer AI images of coffee or the owner’s pen-and-paper doodles of coffee? Some businesses are going with the latter to foster human connection with customers.

➕ Three men were arrested after allegedly using AI to impersonate voices of executives and lawyers to steal $129 million from various businesses including a bank, a mutual fund company, a pet food company and a hospital system.

➕ Nine out of 10 educators say they haven’t received training to detect or respond to AI deepfakes in school, according to a survey done by the EdWeek Research Center.

➕ Does your school want to turn off AI tools in Google? Starting next year, Google says that’s allowed, but there’s a catch: Turning off AI in Google means turning off search too.