Featured image: Trust in travel media is important to help discern fact from fiction in this age of information | Photo by LightFieldStudios on Envato

A Checklist to Check Sources and Dig Deeper

by Claudia Laroye

If you’ve scrolled through your Instagram feed and wondered about what’s real or fake, you’re not alone. Many of these flashy travel accounts offer enticing giveaways or listicles that promote products and brands with lots of affiliate links but don’t provide genuine travel content.

These days, the crowded information space, including travel, has the appearance of a chaos cloud, swirling with 24/7 breaking news, social media posts, photographs, rumours and a constant loop of videos. Some are produced by professionals, but also by that guy or gal in his mom’s basement.

The overwhelming information tsunami is overloading our brains, leaving us unable or unsure about what is credible news versus what’s hype, AI, the real deal or pay-to-play.

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Those of us working in travel journalism are wondering too. As travel writers, we strive to inform and educate readers and followers keen on planning trips and seeking accurate and authentic travel information. Like you, we have concerns about the accuracy of reporting, truth in advertising and being transparent about how we do what we do, and who might be paying the (unseen) bill.

Who can we trust? The answer is, it’s complicated, but not impossible. And it’s everyone’s responsibility. We all need to ensure that the information we write, publish and read is accurate and worth the hype. Here’s a checklist to help you tell the difference.

Improve your trust in travel media

1. How to tell what’s AI or not

The development and use of AI (artificial intelligence), for good or ill, is one of the major issues of our time. Its missteps may seem funny but hint at a darker challenge about truth and about what’s real and what’s not.

The LLM (large language models) of AI, like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s Gemini, have been created by scraping (plagiarizing) public works on the Internet to enable them to perform natural data processing, like answering questions. You can ask ChatGPT to plan your 80th birthday trip to Japan, or for a recipe for chicken soup, or for that ill-fated summer reading list. To do this, AI scapes content from existing websites, including JourneyWoman’s, to create content.

So what’s the problem, apart from copyright infringement? AI hallucination is a big one. The models frequently generate responses that contain misinformation (wrong) or disinformation (misleading), but present them as facts.

The information can be shockingly untrustworthy and it’s unclear if the powers that be, who’ve invested more than $500 billion into creating these LLMs, care about data quality or have a plan to make it better.

There’s also the environmental cost of AI models. All that computing power needs huge amounts of water resources and energy, and contributes to increased air pollution and e-waste.

2. Use the Triple F Method to check misinformation and disinformation

It’s important to use critical thinking and media literacy skills when reading travel or news articles, and to remember the source.

JourneyWoman’s research shows that 71% of women 50+ rely on less than 10 sources of information to make a decision, including recommendations from friends and relatives, travel company sites for and by women. Travel media and mainstream media were ranked lower in the survey.

Tracey Breeden, author, women’s safety expert and member of the JourneyWoman Advisory Council, notes that verification of information matters. “It is one of the most important methods in identifying misinformation.”

Breeden advocates using the “Triple F Method” to avoid being fooled by incorrect facts and disinformation.

Is the source Fully transparent? If not, check and verify. Fact-check the information. “If you can’t find another reputable source speaking about it, avoid it.”

If it Feels too good to be true or the information appears to be sensationalized, then don’t believe it, use it or share it. “If sources don’t pass the Triple Fs, they fail,” says Breeden.

If in doubt, you can run articles and information through an online AI detector, which is pretty good but not perfect at confirming human versus machine writing. 

3. How do you know who pays for what?

The adage of follow the money holds true for travel articles, videos and social media posts. How do some people get to travel so much? Who’s paying for it?

Traditional travel journalism involves writers collaborating with PR firms, destination marketing organizations (DMOs), hotels and cruise ships who invite members of the media on FAMs (familiarization trips) to showcase their properties, cruise ships, restaurants and destinations. There is no money exchanged, and there is hope and expectation, but not a requirement for a story to result from a FAM.

When publishing travel stories that are the result of a hosted press trip, good journalistic practice is for publishers to run a “disclaimer” at the end of travel stories saying the writer was hosted by destination X, which didn’t review or approve the story. (You can see an example of that on JourneyWoman’s website here.)

This practice ensures transparency and tells the reader that the story came about via a hosted press trip, where airfare, hotels, transportation, food and activities are paid for. Most quality mainstream media companies (newspapers, magazines, digital publications) still follow this best practice.

Some media publications, like the New York Times, BBC Travel and CNN Travel do not accept travel stories from freelance travellers that are a result of press trips. This means their stories are from staff writers on assignment, self-funded freelance writers or armchair travellers.

Proper disclosure isn’t just good practice, it’s the law. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that if an influencer or content creator has a material connection with a brand (like receiving payment, a gift, or having a paid relationship), they must disclose this connection in their content. In Canada, the Competition Act regulates truth in advertising. As with the FTC rules, the Act lists similar requirements of content creators, as well as requiring traditional media publishers to clearly label paid articles as advertorial or sponsored.

These disclosures must be clear, conspicuous, and easy to understand, and they should be placed prominently near the endorsement. These disclosures can look like this: AD, Advertorial, Sponsored, #ad #spon #sponsored #paidpartnership or #hosted. And they can appear with “Paid Partnership” labels on Facebook and Instagram.

4. What about travel influencers?

For paid content produced by social media influencers, laws exist to govern transparency because of the murky nature of the social media sponsorship universe in its early days.

“Influencers are not journalists, they are marketing providers,” says journalist, editor and writer Maureen Littlejohn. “I liken them to micro ad agencies. Ads perform an aspirational function. They catch your eye, and get you thinking, planning and dreaming.”

There’s nothing wrong with a well-produced dreamy video or article promoting a destination, provided it’s properly transparent, its information is accurate and useful and created by an influencer you trust. However, unlike travel writers, influencers are paid to produce content, and some may not have travelled to the destination they are promoting.

Content creator Solmaz Khosrowshahian agrees that honesty and trust are key to her business. “Trust is incredibly important to me and is something that can be lost very quickly in this industry,” says Khosrowshahian, who made content creation her full-time gig in 2016. As a paid ambassador with brands like Destination Toronto, her work is about connecting her audience with engaging content and promoting the things she loves, “whether it’s a destination, experience or product.”

As with any product purchased based on seeing an ad, readers and viewers need to do a bit of homework. This may involve letting your fingers do the walking and checking facts, details and doing your own research to make sure the pretty pictures present the real deal.

If you read or watch something that sounds like an ad but isn’t properly labelled, it’s likely an ad and paid content creation. If in doubt, comment on the influencer’s social media post and ask them directly. A professional content creator should have no issue with disclosure or adhering to the rules.

5. So where does this leave travel writers?

As professional travel writers, our reputation rests on experience and accuracy (actually visiting a destination and double-checking facts and information) and transparency (disclosing press trips at the end of articles and in social media by using #hosted or #presstrip).

The professional travel writers who write for JourneyWoman go through vetting and accreditation processes to become members of writing associations and prove our bona fides.

“We seek out writers who have been professional travel journalists for several decades and are accredited members of professional associations such as the Society of American Travel Writers, The Travel Media Association of Canada or the North American Travel Journalists Association,” notes Ray.

These organizations have strong codes of ethics and standards, and qualification requirements to be members, which are verified on a regular basis.

6. Look for editorial standards

Writer and former Toronto Star travel editor Jennifer Bain is a journalism grad who’s spent most of her career working at newspapers. She applies the same rigour to travel writing as she did to news. That means “fact-checking every word, making sure every name and title are correct, and quoting people who help tell the story.”

Professional writers strive to get the facts right, and when we don’t, we want editors and publishers to fix it or acknowledge it through published retractions in print publications.

“We are extremely cautious about the writers we engage to create articles for us,” says Carolyn Ray, CEO of JourneyWoman. Writers have to agree to the publication’s Editorial Standards and Ethics, which include supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and include environmental sustainability, support of women and women-owned businesses and a focus on less-travelled places. In addition to JourneyWoman, other publications who adhere to strong editorial standards include Adventure.com, Verge Magazine, and Sustainable Cities. 

At the end of the day, says Breeden, we all have a part to play in ensuring the accuracy and authenticity of the media we consume. “Follow your intuition, it is your best source.”

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