Verification: Google Search

As reports emerge of a breaking news event, the likelihood of finding eyewitness experiences on social media is high. Leveraging multiple sources to verify a story is always a good practice. 

To improve your search skills, try grouping words together using quotation marks to find particular phrases. When searching social media, it’s a good idea to use phrases that eyewitnesses would use. So, instead of “airport evacuation,” try “we just evacuated” or “right outside my building”.

Finding video footage of a newsworthy event can help to both report and verify a story.

Here’s a useful shortcut: combine site-specific searches of video sharing platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo or DailyMotion with keyword searches, using the command intitle.

• For example, in a story about a helicopter rescue, you might search for: [intitle:”helicopters circling” site:youtube.com]