Frequently Asked Questions
The News Literacy Project is a nonpartisan education nonprofit building a national movement to advance the development and teaching of news literacy in K-12 education.
Our vision is to see all students in the United States become skilled in news literacy before they graduate high school, giving them the knowledge and ability to participate in civic society as well-informed, critical thinkers.
Any comprehensive media literacy program must start with news literacy, a foundational aspect of the discipline that:
- Seeks to teach students how to think about the news and information they consume, and not what to think.
- Places an emphasis on developing a healthy skepticism about news and information, without becoming cynical.
- Is committed to the First Amendment and the conviction that a free press is a cornerstone of democracy.
- Demonstrates a nonpartisan focus on specific, clear learning standards.
- Is a fundamental component of any comprehensive civics program.
We provide educators with programs and resources to help them teach news literacy across disciplines and grade levels.
Our browser-based digital learning platform, the Checkology® virtual classroom, empowers educators to teach news literacy to middle and high school students with topical and engaging lessons. Checkology teaches students how to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources and discern misinformation.
Checkology registrants include educators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four U.S. territories.
We also offer web-based professional development for educators through webinars and in-person opportunities for enhancing educators’ teaching of news literacy.
Our free weekly newsletter, The Sift®, provides educators with examples of the most recent rumors, hoaxes and misinformation that can be used as teachable moments in the classroom. Our free weekly newsletter for non-educators, Get Smart About News, is based on The Sift.
Our annual National News Literacy Week, presented in partnership with The E.W. Scripps Company, raises awareness of news literacy as an essential life skill and provides educators, students and the public with easy-to-adopt tools and tips for becoming more news-literate.
There are several fields of practice focused on teaching students to be critical consumers of media. Media literacy generally refers to a broad discipline that seeks to teach students how to access, analyze, evaluate, create and take action using all forms of communication (including entertainment media). News literacy is focused on helping students understand the role that credible information and a free press play in their lives and in a robust democracy, and seeks to help them determine the credibility of news and other information. Information literacy is aligned with library sciences and seeks to help students find, evaluate, and use information effectively. Digital literacy aims to teach students how to use information and communications technologies in effective, responsible and ethical ways.
Misinformation and the lack of news literacy have created an existential threat to our democracy. As a result, there is an urgent need for news literacy education.
A free and independent press and the ability to determine whether information is credible are necessary for the future of a healthy democracy. News literacy teaches students about the importance of a free press in our democracy, including how to recognize standards-based journalism and discern fact from fiction in the news and other information they consume.
Misinformation affects everything in our daily lives — from our healthcare to our finances, to our personal values. We can’t make well-informed decisions about our lives and our governance if we can’t agree on a shared set of facts.
Consider these findings from recent studies and polls:
59% of respondents are concerned about what is real or fake when it comes to online news.
64% of respondents said journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.
Foreign adversaries and domestic bad actors have used misinformation and growing mistrust and polarization against us and have actively engaged in spreading false information to sow confusion and division in our elections. The use of artificial intelligence technologies in creating video, audio, photos and other content to mislead the public has only complicated voters’ ability to make sound decisions at the polls.
The best way to fight misinformation and minimize its harm is to have a well-informed public that can discern and reject false information.
We have made assessing our work a priority since we first started working in classrooms, and the results demonstrate that news literacy education works.
During the 2022-2023 school year, after completing Checkology lessons:
- 87% of students recognized that one of the appeals of conspiracy theories is the sense of community and belonging they provide — a gain of 27 percentage points from pre-assessment.
- 72% of students recognized when a social media post failed to provide credible evidence — a gain of 8 percentage points from pre-assessment.
- 88% of students correctly identified fairness as a standard of quality journalism — a gain of 17 percentage points from pre-assessment.
We are a nonpartisan, national education nonprofit. We do not tell people what sources to trust, or distrust; instead, we teach critical thinking skills people can use to make those judgments on their own. Misinformation comes from the political right and left and from foreign and domestic sources, and we share examples of all types.
Members of our board of directors have worked across the political spectrum and have backgrounds in education, journalism, communications, business and nonprofits. National Journalism Advisory Council members represent a diverse and inclusive range of news outlets.
Our funders are also diverse, and our programs and education content are developed and implemented wholly independent of any funder’s influence.
Our organization was founded in 2008 by Alan C. Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, after he visited his daughter’s middle school classroom to discuss what he did as a journalist and why it mattered. He saw the potential value of having journalists share their experience and expertise in America’s classrooms and helped launch the field of news literacy.
NLP began with a small staff and volunteer journalists working in-person with middle and high school educators and students in select cities. We have expanded dramatically since then, primarily through online programs and resources.
Media organizations and journalists are essential partners in our work. More than 30 news organizations across the U.S., from local outlets to internationally known print and digital publications, support NLP. They participate in our work in a variety of ways: publicly endorsing our mission, donating services or resources and promoting our major initiatives such as National News Literacy week. Individual journalists share their expertise through speaking engagements, as the hosts of Checkology lessons and by joining dozens of fellow journalists as volunteers in our Newsroom to Classroom program.
We partner with a variety of organizations that share our values, have missions aligned with ours and can help us reach a wider audience. We are also partnering with numerous school districts (ranging from New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, to smaller districts in South Carolina, Missouri and Indiana and elsewhere). Other past and current partners include:
- The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)
- The E.W. Scripps Company
- SAS data management
- Older Adults Technology Services
- National Writing Project
- Metcalf Institute
- Microsoft Flipgrid
An essential part of being news-literate is understanding and appreciating the First Amendment and the role of a free press in a democracy. Censorship as a means of combating misinformation could infringe on these constitutional rights. Additionally, it’s been shown that most governments that have adopted censorship policies to protect the public from misinformation end up using these policies to protect themselves and target critics.