Glossary: Lateral Reading
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Lateral reading describes the practice of leaving a website to check what other sources say about it, rather than trying to judge its credibility purely from within the site itself alone. The name contrasts with reading straight down a single page in isolation from everything else surrounding it online.
Researchers studying how professional fact checkers actually go about their work found this habit central to their entire process: rather than scrutinising a page's own design or tone for trust signals, they quickly opened new tabs to see what independent sources said about the site and its underlying claims.
The technique itself is simple enough to teach in a matter of minutes and effective precisely because it sidesteps a site's own self presentation, which can be polished regardless of underlying accuracy, in favour of an outside, considerably harder to fake perspective drawn from entirely separate, independently maintained sources looking at the very same underlying material.