I just read an article on Huffington Post entitled, "Almost 100 Hate Crime Killings Linked To One Website: Report" by Simon McCormack. The article states that a white supremacist website, " Stormfront.org, is linked to close to 100 killings in the last five years..." (McCormack, 2014). As I read the article to evaluate the credibility of the content based on the guidelines set forth in Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources by Virgina Montecino, I noticed that no author was credited which made it difficult. I was able to track down the author's name, Simon McCormack, eventually through some extensive research only to find out there is not much useful information published about him except that he attended college. Also, he is listed as the editor, so he many not have actually written the article.
After reading the article carefully several times to look for bias, I reached the conclusion that the article is well balanced with little or no bias. However, easybib.com did indicate that McCormack tends to lean towards the left in terms of political views. I thought the facts were presented fairly. The author was careful to include statements from both sides of the issue.
The article was current and had even been updated. There was not an official work cited list, but there were links to the various sources through out the article. I checked to make sure that all of the links were still active and relatively up to date. They linked back to what I would consider to be reputable sources based on the guidelines Montecino provided.
Even though the author was not clearly listed, I do believe this to be a credible article. The editor had a lot of past experience, the sources and links checked out and the article was written in a professional tone. The Internet is relatively unrestricted. People can publish with reckless abandon. It is up to the consumer to do research and decide if an article can be trusted. Just as I did in this article.
References:
"EasyBib:
The free automatic bibliography composer." EasyBib.
N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.easybib.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/>.
McCormack,
S. (2014, April 18). Almost 100 hate crime killings linked to one
website: Report. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/18/hate-crimes-linked-to-website_n_5173944.html?view=print&comm_ref=false
Montecino,
V. (1998, August). Helpful hints to help you evaluate the credibility
of web resources. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from
http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm
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