📰 Too Shocking to Be True
In the app, the story is read aloud and you can write or speak your answers — the site corrects your mistakes.
Listen to the story and answer the questions →Last month, a photo of a shark swimming along a flooded motorway spread rapidly across social media. Within hours, it had been shared more than a hundred thousand times, and several websites reported it as genuine.
In reality, the image had been edited. The same fake photo had appeared after several previous floods in different countries. Journalists who checked its origin discovered that it had originally been created as a joke years ago.
Experts warn that false stories spread faster than true ones, partly because they are more surprising and emotional. They recommend a few simple habits: check who published the information, look for the same story on reliable news sites, and be especially careful with content that makes you angry or scared.
As one media teacher put it, "If something seems too shocking to be true, it probably is."
Key words
Questions about the story
- What did the photo show?
- Was the photo real?
- Why do false stories spread faster?
- What do experts recommend checking?