Royalty

Did Meghan Markle Have a Hysterectomy?

How to spot the real news among the fake

Fuzheado, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I keep seeing the same rumour circulating on X: that the Duchess of Sussex had a hysterectomy aged 28. According to all official records, she gave birth to her first child in 2019, when she was 38.

Now, I only got a C for GCSE Maths, but even I can see those sums don’t add up.

What scandal! Of course, when I first read this, I wanted to know more. I’ve done a little research and discovered all reports came from the same source: entertaineats.blogspot.com.

Guys, I’m so disappointed. Not by the subject matter of the article — I didn’t need to click on it to know it’s obviously made-up — but that people were reading this obviously fake ‘report’ and taking it as truth, with no questions asked.

I don’t think I even have an advantage as a trained journalist. I learnt how to critically analyse sources in GCSE history. Here’s how you can do the same.

Strike 1: useless URL

The first strike against the credibility of this article is right at the top. Take a look at the URL:

Is this a recognised news or media provider? No, it is not.

Strike 2: who is she? Who is…