“While everyone needs media literacy
education, it is certainly easier to
deliver this training to young people
in schools since they are a captive
audience, unlike adults,” she said.
Kosin believes that the first step in
getting students to identify between
fact and fiction in the media is to get
them in the habit of pausing to think
about a story before believing or
sharing it.
TEACHING NEWS LITERACY:
CLASSROOM RESOURCES
There are many resources
available online to help
journalism teachers educate
students about news literacy
and many of them are free.
THE NEWSEUM: Offers
free learning tools on news
literacy and First Amendment
freedoms. A premium sign-up
is free on the site, which gives
you access to printable lesson
plans, articles, worksheets and
activities. The newly launched
Media Literacy Booster Pack is
also available for teachers.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The
Times’ Learning Network
offers lessons plans, activities
and discussion questions
aligned with state standards
and recent articles from its
site. Lessons are also broken
down into themes and you can
choose articles and lessons
that focus on teens in the
news.
NEWSU: Offered through
Poynter’s News University, this
site gives educators access to
more than 300 online courses
and the ability to view lesson
plans and a variety of syllabi
dealing with news literacy and
the media.
Another organization that has been
reaching out to classrooms around
the country is News Literacy Project.
Based in Washington, D.C., NLP tailors
programs that push into classrooms
by offering guest speakers, organizing
visits to professional newsrooms and
working with teachers.
According to NLP, 88 percent of
Americans say that the prevalence
of “fake news” has them confused
about even basic facts. This is why
the organization thinks that it is
important to start teaching news
literacy at the middle school level.
John Silva, director of education for
NLP, said that the most significant
outcome of news literacy education
is that students become critical
not cynical consumers of news and
information.
“When [students] are able to critically
analyze a piece of information and are
able to fact-check that information
independently, then they will be
better informed and active citizens,”
said Silva. “This instills critical thinking
and reasoning skills that apply across
every subject area and discipline.”
The newspaper industry could help
itself by doing a better job identifying
news and commentary, he said.
“For young people, it’s not just about
fact and fiction. There is also a great
deal of opinion and commentary
that is published along with news
stories,” he said. “I’d like to see more
news organizations take an active
role in news literacy education and to
help teachers ensure their students
understand how news is produced.”
The good news is that there are
indications that society overall is
getting better at sourcing credible
information from the internet. A
recent study by the Reuters Institute
indicated that more and more
millennials are willing to pay for their
news and that subscriptions for The
New Yorker, The New York Times, The
Washington Post and The Atlantic are
on the rise.
The Pew Research Center also
confirmed that more and more people
are continually getting their news
from direct sources as well. The study
found that social media and direct
visits to news organizations’ websites
are the most common pathways to
online news.
Ultimately it comes down to how we
model ethical journalism in our own
classrooms and how we can help our
students become better consumers
of the news. Our job continues to be
to ensure students see all sides of an
argument while they’re forming their
own opinions, but Silva said this is
getting harder because of how people
increasingly limit their news intakes
based on their own points of view.
Recent studies, though, are showing
that media literacy training increased
young people’s ability to correctly
identify evidence-based claims online
even when they went against their
political leanings, the Newseum’s
Kosin said.
“This offers a ray of hope for our
increasingly polarized world,” she
said.