Follow the incentive
Ask what the source gains from you believing this. Attention, money, status and identity all shape what gets published and what gets amplified.
Lateral reading
Do not evaluate a source from inside itself. Leave the page and see what independent parties say about it. This is the single highest-yield habit in media literacy.
Should you believe an AI?
A language model produces fluent plausible text, which is not the same as accurate text. Fluency is not evidence. Verify citations independently — confident phrasing carries no information about truth.