The Free Tools I Use to Find Quality Sources

Writing for Plagiarism Today requires reading a large number of news articles. On any given day, I’m reading 5-10 articles to assemble the 3 Count column and likely an equal number depending on the day’s main topic.

However, it’s not uncommon for me to be unfamiliar with some of those news sites. Whether they are international sites I’ve never seen, relatively new startups, or local websites that don’t usually cover the topics I do, I regularly find myself in uncharted territory.

Historically, I relied on Google News to ensure I landed on trustworthy sites. However, as I noted in November 2023, Google News has been declining for some time. A site being featured in Google News is no longer the guarantee it once was.

Over the past few years, I’ve increasingly relied on outside services to alert me to untrustworthy sites. Today, I want to share the two main services that I’ve relied on for years as well as others that be helpful.

Though all these services have problems and weaknesses, I hope that by combining them, I create the Swiss cheese effect and better protect myself (and thus this site) from misinformation.

So, for transparency, I wanted to explain this process. I hope it may also be helpful to anyone who wishes to supplement their efforts to stop misinformation.

Note: All information is recent as of May 8, 2025. I will try to update this article as things change.

NewsGuard

Founded in 2018 by former newspaper editors, Newsguard is a service that rates publishers on various factors, including the accuracy of their reporting, error correction policy and financial disclosures.

Newsguard presents the outcome on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the best score. According to their site, they have rated over 35,000 news sources worldwide, each measured on 30+ data points.

Newsguard is a paid service, costing $2.99 per month for most users. However, users of Microsoft Edge can get Newsguard for free.

I like Newsguard’s focus on reliability and its approach to grading publishers. However, this can lead to some confusion. For example, a wire service article appearing on a dubious website will be flagged as unreliable.

My biggest complaint is that Newsguard no longer displays information in the taskbar. It pivoted away from that some time ago. This means I have to click the extension on each site to get the score.

Still, it’s a powerful tool for ensuring the news site you are on is reliable and trustworthy.

Media Bias / Fact Check

Founded in 2015 by Dave M. Van Zandt, Media Bias / Fact Check (MBFC) is an independent website that rates news websites on their alleged political bias and factual accuracy. These ratings are presented as two separate scores.

The site launched a new methodology at the beginning of this year. MBFC is focusing more on transparent, weighted scores.

That said, MBFC’s methodology has been its biggest point of contention. It’s been accused of having its own biases.

That said, my biggest frustration is that the extension focuses heavily on the issue of bias. As Kelly McBride at Poynter noted in an article, “Bias is only one thing that you need to pay attention to when you consume news. What you also want to pay attention to is the quality of the actual reporting and writing and the editing.”

I focus much more on the reliability and accuracy of the reporting rather than potential bias. This is especially important for me, as many copyright news stories don’t have a left or right lean.

While there are times bias does matter when covering these stories, such as the DEI-related plagiarism allegations, those moments are still relatively rare for me.

So, while I find the extension useful, much as with Newsguard, it’s important to click through to the complete analysis to get the most important information. That said, the fact it can automatically hide untrustworthy sources is still valuable.

Other Options to Consider

In addition to the above options, I am also using/testing AllSides and Ground News.

AllSides is a public benefit corporation that operates a free website that features bias ratings for over 1,400 publishers. It has a series of free browser extensions that will show their bias ratings.

Ground News is a ubiquitous sponsor on YouTube and likely well-known even by those who don’t use it. It’s a company that parses the news and focuses on the bias and reporting of a particular topic.

For my use, neither is ideal. Both focus exclusively on bias, and, as I noted above, I care more about accuracy than bias. However, AllSides is an additional point of data when examining a new site and Ground News has occasionally proved helpful for finding a less-biased source for a major story.

That said, Ground News has been particularly unhelpful with day-to-day operations. Most copyright/plagiarism stories don’t have enough coverage for Ground News to provide insight. Instead, it’s been much more useful in my off hours, where its newsletters have alerted me to stories I had genuinely missed.

While these services can be helpful for some, they haven’t been useful to me other than as a bonus layer of Swiss cheese.

Bottom Line

There have been times, albeit rare ones, when I have been justifiably criticized for using low-quality sources. Though I have always tried to avoid it, mistakes are unavoidable over the long term.

This is why I use these services. They help me parse sites I don’t know and give me information to help me make an informed decision. To be clear, I don’t take any one service or all of them in aggregate as gospel. They are information and nothing else.

While I know many will disagree with some of the sources I regularly use and that no system will ever be perfect, these tools have helped me significantly mitigate this issue.

If you’re doing any kind of research online that involves examining news sources, I highly recommend having these or other tools available. Nothing is or will be 100% effective, but they can still protect you when your instincts fail.

They are simple, low-cost/free solutions that can save you many headaches in the long run.