"Facts are not facts merely because they appear in newspapers or on websites."

This is an important epistemological point.

Academic history does not treat something as a historical fact simply because it appears:

in a newspaper,

on a website,

in a social media post,

or because it is widely repeated.

Historians typically evaluate claims using criteria such as:

the provenance of the source (where it came from),

authenticity,

corroboration by independent evidence,

consistency with other reliable evidence,

context,

and critical analysis of possible bias.

media influence illustrate a broader concern: media organizations, governments, corporations, or political groups may all have incentives that affect what is reported or emphasized. Historians therefore do not treat publication alone as proof. They compare multiple sources, consider who produced them and why, and assess the strength of the evidence before accepting factual claims.

That does not mean every media report is unreliable, nor does it mean every government-produced source is false. Rather, the central historical principle is that claims should be evaluated critically using evidence, corroboration, and source analysis—not accepted or rejected solely because of where they were published or who published them.