Check the Date
SecondsBefore reacting to a story, photo, or video, find out when it was first published or recorded, because genuine but old material recirculated as if it were new is one of the cheapest and most common forms of misinformation.
How to do it
- 1Look for the publication date on the article itself, not the date of the post that shared it. Many sites put it in small type under the byline or at the bottom.
- 2Distinguish "published" from "updated". An "updated yesterday" stamp on a five-year-old story can reflect nothing more than a changed advert or a corrected typo.
- 3For photos and video, look for clues that contradict the claimed date: weather and foliage, clothing, shop fronts, phone models, vehicles, signage, masks.
- 4Search a distinctive phrase from the headline or caption with an earlier date range, or run a reverse image search and sort by oldest, to find the first appearance.
- 5For statistics, ask what period the data cover. "Latest figures" in an undated graphic can be a decade old.
- 6If you cannot establish a date, say so when you discuss it, and do not pass it on as news.
What to say
- “When is this from? The post is from today, but the article is dated 2017.”
- “Before we get upset: is this happening now, or is it an old clip going around again?”
When to use it
- •During breaking news, disasters, protests, and conflicts, when old footage floods in within minutes.
- •When an alarming story about a recall, a law, a closure, or a missing person reaches you through a forward rather than a news outlet.
- •When a quote or a policy position attributed to a public figure may predate a change of mind or of office.
- •When a chart or statistic arrives as an image with no source.
Counters
Evidence and how strong it is
Wardle & Derakhshan (2017) classify "false context" (genuine content shared with false contextual information, most often the wrong time or place) as one of the seven main types of mis- and disinformation, and verification guides written by newsroom practitioners (Silverman 2014) treat establishing the date of capture as a required step for any user-generated image or video. The International Federation of Library Associations includes "check the date" among its eight steps for evaluating news. In 2019 the Guardian began labelling the age of older articles on the page and in social-share images because old stories were being recirculated as current. Evidence strength: practitioner consensus supported by descriptive research on how misinformation circulates; there is no randomized trial of date-checking as a stand-alone habit.
- Old does not mean false or irrelevant. A ten-year-old investigation can still be accurate; the question is whether it is being presented as something happening now.
- Dates can be wrong or manipulated. Site timestamps, file metadata, and "first seen" results from search engines are clues, not proof; look for two that agree.
- The earliest copy you can find is only the earliest copy indexed. Absence of older results does not establish that the material is new.
- Wardle, C., & Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy Making. Council of Europe report DGI(2017)09The typology that identifies false context, including re-dated genuine content, as a major category of misinformation.
- Silverman, C. (Ed.) (2014). Verification Handbook: A Definitive Guide to Verifying Digital Content for Emergency Coverage. European Journalism CentreNewsroom practice for establishing the date, place, and origin of user-generated content before use.
- International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) (2016). How to Spot Fake News. IFLA infographicA widely used library checklist that lists checking the date as a basic evaluation step.