Here’s the latest installment of a feature I’ve been running for several years: lessons from the nonprofit, nonpartisan News Literacy Project (NLP) that aim to teach students and the public how to sort fact from fiction in our digital — and contentious — age. With the spread of rumors, baseless accusations, conspiracy theories and disinformation on social and partisan media sites, there has not been a time in recent U.S. history when this skill has been as important as it is now.
Education
Perspective | Biden misquote, coverage of Black Americans and more news literacy lessons
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The material in this post comes from the Sift, the organization’s newsletter for educators, which has more than 10,000 readers. Published weekly during the school year, it explores timely examples of misinformation, addresses media and press freedom topics, looks at social media trends and issues, and includes discussion prompts and activities for the classroom.
Get Smart About News, modeled on the Sift, is a free weekly newsletter for the public. The NLP has a free e-learning platform, Checkology, that helps educators teach middle and high school students how to identify credible information, seek reliable sources and know what to trust, what to dismiss and what to debunk. It also gives students an appreciation of the importance of the First Amendment and a free press.
Checkology and all of the NLP’s resources and programs are free. Since 2017, more than 475,000 students have used the platform. The organization has worked with more than 60,000 educators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and more than 120 countries.
Here’s material from this week’s issue of the Sift:
Dig deeper: Don’t miss this week’s classroom-ready resource.
1. When Canadian teen rapper Lil Tay’s alleged death was announced on her Instagram page, some news outlets reported her death as a fact — but not BBC reporter Daniel Rosney. He initially spent 10 hours trying to verify Lil Tay’s death by contacting her managers and multiple police departments. But because no one could confirm her death, the BBC wouldn’t publish a story about it. A day later, it was revealed Lil Tay was, in fact, alive. She claimed her Instagram account was hacked. The incident was a good “reminder that just because it’s online — and even on a verified Instagram account — it isn’t always true,” Rosney tweeted in a viral thread.
• Discuss: What steps did Rosney go through to verify Lil Tay’s alleged death? What red flags did he come across? What guidelines does the BBC newsroom follow to verify a story? How can social media users verify if content is legit or not? Why do you think celebrity death hoaxes are so common on social media?
• Resources: “Practicing Quality Journalism” and “InfoZones” (NLP’s Checkology virtual classroom).
— “What We Know About Lil Tay’s Rumored ‘Death’” (Danielle Cohen, the Cut).
— Opinion: “The Lil Tay death hoax reveals a broader problem with the pop culture ecosystem” (Joel Penney, MSNBC).
Dig Deeper: Use this think sheet to help students understand how journalists fact-check information and how anyone can use this information to navigate online claims (meets NLP Standard 3).
2. A local news desert in a Boston suburb now has an AI-generated local news site launched by two residents — a software engineer and a veteran foreign correspondent. The site uses AI tools to scan local government websites and generate transcripts, and from those transcripts it has ChatGPT create summaries. The site owners check the generated text for “obvious errors,” according to the article, before publishing the summaries. It’s a low-cost system (the owners call it “local news in a box”) to provide some civic information in towns that no longer have local news outlets. But journalism and digital experts say that “generative AI” technology has “no conception of truth” and that its output lacks context.
• Idea: Have students compare and contrast any local news story written by journalists with one or more AI-generated reports published by Inside Arlington, from Arlington, Mass. How are they similar? How are they different? How are sources cited? How are stories and community issues interpreted? What are the pros and cons of having AI-generated news sites in towns that lack actual local news outlets?
• Resource: “News literacy in the age of AI” (NLP’s AI page).
— Opinion: “Editorial: AI wrote this editorial. It offers persuasive arguments for why that’s a bad idea.” (Editorial Board, St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
— “The Story Behind Gannett’s AI Debacle” (Micah Loewinger, WNYC Studios).
— “Newsrooms around the world are using AI to optimize work, despite concerns about bias and accuracy” (Jade Drummond, the Verge).
3. A majority of Black American adults (63 percent) say news coverage of Black people is more negative than news about other racial and ethnic groups, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. A large proportion of survey respondents (80 percent) said they come across racist or racially insensitive news coverage of Black people “sometimes” (41 percent) or “extremely/fairly often” (39 percent). Including more Black sources in news stories, educating more journalists about issues faced by Black people and hiring more Black journalists and newsroom leaders were some of the solutions that many survey respondents said would be helpful.
• Discuss: What do you think of these survey results? Can news coverage inadvertently strengthen harmful stereotypes? If you were in charge of a news outlet, how would you ensure news coverage of Black people is fair and accurate? How can ethics and standards of quality journalism work to prevent harmful coverage?
• Resource: “Harm & Distrust” (Checkology virtual classroom).
— “What is news, anyway? Readers’ answers depend on how much they see people like themselves in the story” (Joshua Benton, Nieman Lab).
— “Pew Research finds most Black folks are critical of news depictions” (Ezekiel J. Walker, the Black Wall Street Times).
You can find this week’s rumor examples to use with students in these slides.
NO: President Biden did not say that his Sept. 26 visit with striking members of the United Auto Workers in Belleville, Mich., marked the first time he ever picketed “in person.”
YES: Biden, who became the first sitting president to join a picket line, said this was the first time he had joined “as president.”
YES: Political propagandists often use edited and out-of-context footage to push the idea that Biden is mentally unfit for office.
NewsLit takeaway: These viral out-of-context photos and videos can be quite convincing at first glance because they often appeal to deeply held political beliefs. Critics of Biden may have accepted this false quote without even bothering to watch the video — possibly because it felt true. But anyone who actually watches the video can easily see that this is not an accurate quote. Unlike legitimate news outlets — which correct errors of fact when they happen — partisan media figures with political agendas often allow falsehoods like this one continue to circulate, even after they are debunked.
NO: A high-frequency signal cannot activate ingredients in a vaccine.
YES: Federal law requires the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to test emergency alert systems at least every three years.
NO: FEMA said in a statement to the fact-checking organization AFP that claims about any dangerous emissions from the testing are false.
NO: The coronavirus vaccine does not contain graphene oxide, the ingredient frequently cited in numerous conspiratorial claims as included in the vaccine and activated by the alert.
NewsLit takeaway: Conspiracy theories thrive on fear and uncertainty. When FEMA announced in August that it would test its nationwide alert system in early October, purveyors of disinformation quickly moved to convert more conventional concerns about government overreach into conspiracy beliefs. Conspiracy theorists falsely claimed that the nationwide alert system was really an attempt to control the population. There is no factual basis whatsoever for these claims, and experts agree there is no mechanism by which a high-frequency signal can somehow activate vaccine ingredients, which are short-lived inside the body.
• Does Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos have a hand in the paper’s news coverage? No, according to legendary journalist Martin Baron, who was the paper’s executive editor from 2013 to 2021. “I mean, if Bezos were telling me what to do as a journalist, I would have quit. I’m not going to do that,” Baron said in this CBS “Sunday Morning” interview.
• NFL star Travis Kelce’s support of coronavirus vaccines has spurred anti-vaccination conspiracy theories amid his high-profile alleged romance with pop icon Taylor Swift.
• The impact of baseless conspiracy theories about the government using laser beams to intentionally start the Maui wildfires or FEMA seizing properties from people applying for assistance was not felt just online — the falsehoods also got in the way of recovery efforts on the ground.
• A Canadian QAnon-inspired conspiracy theorist who believes she is “Queen of Canada” travels the country with followers in RVs spreading sovereign citizen beliefs — and calls for violence against those who vaccinate children.
• Some teens get thousands of phone notifications a day, and about half of 11- to 17-year-olds get at least 237 notifications a day, a Common Sense Media report found.
• Options to report misleading posts and posts containing election misinformation were recently removed from X (formerly Twitter). X also has the highest ratio of disinformation among major social media platforms, according to a European Union report.
• A NewsGuard review found that engagement with Russian, Chinese and Iranian propaganda on X increased by 70 percent three months after labels indicating state-run media were removed.
• Facebook allowed a network of fake accounts pushing propaganda and hate speech run by the Indian military to remain on the platform for a full year after it was discovered, putting Kashmiri journalists in danger.
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Valerie Strauss
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