Dear friend of news literacy,
If I told you that Google’s AI overviews — the summaries that appear at the top of search results — are correct nine times out of 10, you might feel comfortable relying on them. That was my reaction when I saw a recent analysis estimating Google’s accuracy rate at 91%. Then I looked closer.
Google processes about 5 trillion searches each year. Even with a 91% accuracy rate, it still delivers hundreds of thousands of wrong answers every minute. That’s not all. A Pew Research Center study found that when people are fed a search engine’s AI summary, just 8% click on links to fact-based information. My news literacy takeaway: AI is not impeccable. This is just one example of the ways these technologies can reshape how we find and use information. It also shows how media literacy and digital literacy align when it comes to helping young people navigate our dizzying information landscape.
Some good news: While educators have struggled to keep up with AI, we have stepped up. AI is a focus across our free resources, including newsletters for educators and families, in professional learning and through our awareness campaigns like National News Literacy Week. Teachers also can find the latest resources on our learning hub, Teaching About AI.
And we’re not in this alone. Utah recently passed laws to incorporate AI literacy into core standards and include it in a required middle school digital literacy course. The state is at the forefront of media literacy education and has the largest footprint in our News Literacy District Fellowship program, with 16 participating districts. To date, this growing program includes 44 fellowship districts in 16 states, reaching about 1.4 million students.
Your support fuels our expanding impact, and together, we can help students thrive in a world being transformed by technology right before our eyes. My best, |
Chuck Salter
President and CEO |
News literacy and press freedom |
The annual World Press Freedom Index is out, and global press freedoms are at a 25-year low. The U.S. ranks 64th out of 180 nations, falling seven places from last year and 20 places over the last five years. But where there is news literacy, there is hope. After using our resources, 81% of students recognized that a free press is vital to a healthy democracy! When students understand their First Amendment rights, they value a free press.
That’s where you come in. Help us make news literacy education a reality in classrooms across the country. All gifts will be matched this month in honor of press freedom! Give today or make it monthly to have a lasting impact.
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OUR LATEST news literacy resources |
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🗞️ Understanding our First Amendment rights is one of the foundations of news literacy education. Our learning hub, Teaching about freedom of the press, gives educators the tools they need to teach this complex and sometimes controversial topic.
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💡 In a special issue of The Sift® newsletter, intern Katherine Weaver provides a Gen Z take on letting go of long-held false beliefs and shares what she’s learned as a student journalist and during her time with NLP.
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We are honored to have tech visionary and business leader Jon Gold join NLP’s board of directors. A managing director at X, The Moonshot Factory (an Alphabet Subsidiary), Gold brings expertise and insight that will help guide us through a time of unprecedented change. In this Q&A Gold told us why he sees skepticism as a “superpower” and why we must embrace our humanity in the age of AI.
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📝 News literacy and language fluency |
Alex Luciano, who teaches adult English as a Second Language courses on Long Island, incorporates foundational news literacy skills into his classes and believes these skills are essential to language fluency. “We look at a picture or read a story and we pause; we reflect on it. Same thing with news literacy. You pause, you look and you reflect.”
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🪄 More myth than magic to AI |
Cynthia Sandler, a library media specialist in North Salem, New York, (a fellowship district) watched with pride as her middle school students performed a magic show to reveal AI's "tricks" for teachers, administrators and the district’s school board. “I heard so much about how AI was being framed as magical. I thought it was important for my students to get some context, to demystify what AI was.”
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Meet Aji Bakare, Senior Major Gifts Officer, and get a peek into what it means to work on the Development Team at NLP. |
Read: Elliott Goodman, Director of District Fellowships, told the Deseret News in Utah how students need news literacy skills now more than ever. “We want students to be fully prepared for the reality of the 21st century, and that means being able to determine the credibility of the information they’re consuming so they can make decisions about their health, their wealth and their civic engagement.”
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Happening on social media |
- Tag along on the coffee-fueled, jam-packed day in the life of Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Sheridan in this installment of our Spill the Ink series.
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Our series, Two Truths and AI, is back with a fresh look to help viewers use critical thinking skills to spot AI-generated content. Check it out and see if you tell which video of abandoned buildings is the fake.
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Support news literacy by donating today.
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Visit us at newslit.org, checkology.org and rumorguard.org. The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit founded in 2008, is building a national movement to create systemic change in American education to ensure all students are 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. © 2026 The News Literacy Project. All rights reserved.
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