It’s certainly frustrating and discouraging when misinformation makes its way into a friendly conversation. But when it shows up on the menu for your holiday gathering, misinformation can spoil your appetite as well as your relationships with loved ones.

This holiday season, amid polarizing world events and the run-up to the election season, conditions lend themselves to combative conversations and fractured friendships. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Just like you’d prep the side dishes before guests arrive, you can get ready for engaging in civil and meaningful discourse — even with the family’s diehard conspiracy theorist — using the tips and tools the News Literacy Project provides.

While every scenario is different, following some general best practices can help keep the conversation civil and make the interaction worthwhile. To begin, use the six tips outlined in our downloadable infographic How to speak up without starting a showdown as a guide. (Click here to download the PDF.)

Further boost your confidence for entering what are likely difficult discussions with four key strategies from this week’s issue of Get Smart About News, our free weekly newsletter for the public, which we also feature on our website. (Subscribe here so you never miss out trending news literacy topics and resources.)

You can go deeper by watching the recording of our recent webinar Productive conversations without confrontation. It was led by DeMario Phipps-Smith, NLP’s senior manager of community learning, Dr. Carolyn Lukensmeyer of the National Institute for Civil Discourse and Chelsey Cartwright of the League of Women Voters.

Happy Thanksgiving and happy holidays!

The Israel-Hamas war has opened a floodgate of misinformation, with even standards-based news outlets struggling to verify facts on the ground. In this confusing information landscape, journalists across the country have turned to our News Literacy Project experts for help explaining how to find credible information.

EducationWeek

“Misinformation flourishes in times of breaking news, especially on social media,” said Pam Brunskill, senior manager of education design at NLP. “There’s going to be a lag in what’s happening and when it can be verified.” Read the story here.

NBCU Academy

“There are literally hundreds of falsehoods going around,” said Dan Evon, senior manager of education design at NLP. “So, one of the things that people have to keep in mind, especially during these breaking-news events, is making sure they know where they’re getting their information from.” Read the article here.

WBEZ Chicago’s Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons

“Taking things out of context and presenting them in a new, false context is far and away the most common type of mis- and disinformation. It’s very easy to produce and in breaking news events it proliferates quite quickly,” said Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for research and design. Listen to the program here.  

CSPAN’s Washington Journal

“Anytime you have a situation like that, and people’s biases are strongly invoked, that is a perfect recipe for people to lean into information that they like or they prefer and to dismiss information they don’t. The more strongly people feel about the situation, the more vulnerable they are to falsehoods, half-truths, to quick takes that they see online,” Adams said. Watch the segment here.  

NewsNation

“The first thing we tell people is just number one, remember that misinformation does thrive during breaking news events, including wars, and we absolutely have to be cautious about what we share. Just because something has [a] huge amount of views or likes does not mean it’s credible,” said Hannah Covington, director of education design at NLP. Read the piece here.  

Boston Globe

In a front-page story, John Silva, senior director of professional and community learning at NLP, said: “It is so easy to create things, especially with these new generative AI tools, or even with basic Photoshop.” Read the article here.  

Cap Radio’s Insight with Vicki Gonzalez

When we are processing information emotionally, it is far easier for misleading and false information to manipulate us into believing that it’s true. So, especially in breaking news situations, especially issues where lots of people are talking about it, that’s when we need to pause and wait, and try to think, ‘OK, where can I get credible information?’” Silva said. Listen to the program here.  

2022 Misinformation Year in Review

In 2022, misinformation continued to spread on social media and make its mark on the news cycle. From “cheap fakes” to miscaptioned videos to conspiratorial claims and rumors made entirely out of whole cloth, we review some of the biggest misinformation claims of the year and offer tips on how to better navigate social media in the new year.

1. Breaking news rumors

Even during the earliest stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, propagandists swarmed social media to muddy the waters and alter the narrative. The driving focus behind many of these rumors was to downplay the severity of the attack by claiming the war was somehow faked or staged. Social media posts used miscaptioned news footage and altered news reporting, and behind-the-scenes movie footage that had nothing to do with the war to support the false claims.

Other purveyors of misinformation took a different approach, connecting the conflict to a wide range of conspiracy theories, including that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was related to billionaire George Soros and that the United States was operating secret biolabs across Ukraine. Video game footage was also passed off as “shocking” evidence of military attacks, and a spate of rumors amplified Russian disinformation narratives, including false claims that the Ukrainian resistance is made up of Nazis.

NewsLit takeaway: Breaking news events — especially those that occur in foreign countries and during chaotic times in which information is scarce and the situation is in flux — provide ample opportunities for purveyors of misinformation to spread false claims. Russia, arguably the world’s leading producer of disinformation, has a strong interest in manufacturing confusion and doubt about its invasion. Be cautious about sharing information during breaking news cycles before it has been confirmed by credible sources.

2. Anti-vaccination falsehoods

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rise of anti-vaccination sentiments that persisted in 2022. Vaccine denialist narratives that were prominent in 2020 and 2021 gained more mainstream traction as they were amplified by celebrities and repackaged into slick pseudo-documentary films. While many of the anti-vaccine rumors that circulated in 2022 were simply rehashed versions of previously debunked claims — a nonexistent increase in athletes collapsing, bogus claims about vaccines altering DNA, misattributed celebrity deaths and a false depopulation theory — their prevalence and proliferation meant that health misinformation continued to spread.

NewsLit takeaway: Anti-vaccination rumors infected a wide range of communities, from alternative health and wellness groups seeking “natural” remedies to anti-government followers opposed to regulations and mandates. These false rumors (like many conspiracy theories) appeal to people because they seem to provide answers during times of uncertainty, but they merely shelter people from the truth. Seek out health information from credible sources, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

3. Election fraud allegations

Ripples from the “Big Lie” of the 2020 presidential election continued to reverberate into the 2022 midterm contests. Some social media users repackaged familiar tropes — exaggerating mundane technical problems, misrepresenting the actions of poll workers, and spreading baseless lies about election laws — to cast doubt on the process and results.

NewsLit takeaway: Despite the false claims, very few cases of voter fraud occurred during the midterms. And election fraud falsehoods didn’t have the same impact as in 2020. One reason for this may be the rise of “prebunking” — or identifying examples of rumors that users are likely to encounter as an event approaches. The News Literacy Project produced this infographic to alert people about the types of rumors they would likely see during the midterms.

4. Economic conspiracies

The world in 2022 continued to experience interruptions in the supply chain that contributed to food and product shortages and inflation, while demand and supply imbalances led to higher gas prices. The effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic rippled throughout the global economy as well. Some social media users exploited the issues by catastrophizing their impact and spreading falsehoods about their causes. Alarmist falsehoods politicizing shortages in infant formula circulated, as did baseless claims that the U.S. was on the brink of running out of diesel fuel. Conspiracy theorists also pushed absurd claims that a government cabal was intentionally causing shortages — by representing videos of crops being burned or cows dying in a heat wave to contend these resulted from deliberate state actions.

NewsLit takeaway: Partisans and conspiracy theory communities often spin and exaggerate real world events to fit their own agendas. Following standards-based news organizations on social media can help mitigate the spread of these misleading takes. Practicing lateral reading also helps avoid conspiratorial rabbit holes.

5. Altered audio

One popular form of misinformation in 2022 involved genuine video clips with unrelated pieces of audio added to them. Anti-Biden chants and jeers were added to videos of first lady Jill Biden at a football game, former President Barack Obama at a rally, and President Joe Biden during a visit to London for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral. Digital software capable of impersonating celebrity voices was also used to spread misinformation, such as this doctored video of former President Donald Trump appearing to praise Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, shortly after West showed support for Nazis, and this video of Elon Musk seeming to mock “crybaby liberals” shortly after taking over Twitter.

NewsLit takeaway: Deepfakes tend to attract attention, but purveyors of misinformation also can create quick and convincing videographic fakes with simple manipulations of context, or by merely swapping out the audio. These altered videos can be detected by tracking down the authentic source footage, but it’s a step few people take as they scroll through their feeds, especially when the message resonates with their existing views and biases.

6. Fake litter boxes and anti-transgender claims

One of the biggest stories of the year never happened. A baseless, transphobic internet falsehood about (nonexistent) schools accommodating (nonexistent) students who “identify as cats” made its way into school board meetings as secondhand anecdotes, then were amplified by right-wing podcasters and pundits. Influential podcast host Joe Rogan, for example, shared a claim on his show that his friend’s wife worked at a school that was forced to install such a litter box to accommodate a student; he later retracted the story because there was no evidence that it was real. Litter boxes quickly became a modern-day urban legend.

NewsLit takeaway: Confirmation bias can be incredibly powerful. The right-wing media ecosystem regularly highlighted controversies over transgender people using bathrooms, competing in sports and choosing their own pronouns. Anger and fear over this issue intensified in some partisan circles and paved the way for implausible scenarios (a school installing a litter box for a child to use instead of a bathroom) to be credulously believed and repeated as a political talking point. Be sure to check other sources of credible information before sharing a viral or controversial post.

7. Flat Earth and climate-change lies

Even as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured images of distant galaxies, social media users were busy spreading rumors that the Earth was flat. Even more disconcerting, there was a general rise in climate misinformation in 2022, including false claims maligning electric cars, a fabricated magazine cover that indicated climate change is a hoax and accusations that the media was doctoring weather maps to sow panic.

NewsLit takeaway: Misinformation relies on the rejection of credible and authoritative sources. This is exemplified in the flat Earth conspiracy theory and, more importantly, in the rejection of overwhelming evidence of Earth’s changing climate. To follow climate change developments, seek out information from standards-based news organizations and credible science sources.

On Dec. 14, it will be 10 years since a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 first graders and six adults. Soon after, conspiracy theories calling the massacre a hoax emerged. And they have persisted for a decade, thanks to amplification and profiteering by “alt-right” media figure Alex Jones.

In a special two-part episode of our podcast Is that a fact? — “Sandy Hook at 10: Tragedy, conspiracy theories and justice” — we explore the aftermath of the shooting and how what seemed like an aberration of untruths would instead develop into a bellwether for a shift in public discourse, with conspiracy theories becoming a common element of tragic events. We also discuss how victims’ families have fought back against the lies and harassment and brought about lasting change.

‘Typhoid Mary of the Sandy Hook hoax’

In part one, Elizabeth Williamson, a feature writer with The New York Times and author of Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth, explains the incomprehensible need to deny reality and the lucrative market that exploits people’s vulnerability. “He is a sort of a Typhoid Mary of the Sandy Hook hoax,” Williamson said of Jones. She noted that he “has been there at every stop along our descent as a nation down the rabbit hole.” 

A father fights back

In part two, we speak with Lenny Pozner, father of Noah, the youngest victim at Sandy Hook. Pozner knew early on that the hoaxers’ movement would be widespread, lasting and harmful. So, he chose to fight back on behalf of his child and other victims. “Noah’s story will always need to be told because there’ll always be someone misusing it,” he said. “I knew that I needed to do everything that I’m able to do to help debunk, to help clarify, to tell my story as best as I can, which really is just telling Noah’s story.”

We hope you’ll listen to these compelling interviews and share them with your community, helping to make sure facts and evidence are front and center in these conversations.

For more insightful interviews about misinformation, news literacy and society, be sure to check out the first two seasons of Is that a fact?. Season One analyzes misinformation and elections, and Season Two addresses false narratives and the harm they cause.

For those celebrating holidays this season, it can be a joyful time to get together with loved ones. However, navigating conversations with family and friends — especially any who have been misled by mis- and disinformation — can also be stressful.

Educators can help students develop the skills to confidently manage these situations, and understand and debunk misinformation they may encounter, using resources from the News Literacy Project in their lesson plans. Below is a curated selection of lessons, exercises and articles that can be useful to integrate into a middle or high school news and media literacy curriculum.

Start with our article and infographic “How to teach news literacy in polarizing times” for strategies on how to approach issues such as partisanship and credibility.

Assign

Educators can help students analyze the information landscape by assigning lessons through our Checkology®virtual classroom. These suggestions — just three of the platform’s 18 lessons for grades 6-12 — help students understand misinformation, spot conspiracy theories and discover the primary purpose of individual pieces of information.

• Misinformation
• Conspiratorial Thinking
• InfoZones

Supplementary Exercises

By assigning supplementary Checkology exercises, challenges and missions, educators can help improve students’ recognition of misinformation and strong evidence. (A free Checkology account is required to assign these exercises; register now.)

• MisinfoQuest: Weather
• Evidence or Not?
• Check Center Mission: Evaluating Evidence Online

Read

These articles provide some basic skills for recognizing misinformation and confronting it — plus, they include helpful infographics for visual learners.

• Tools for recognizing information and helping others to do the same
• How to speak up without starting a showdown

Discuss

Check out our collection of topics on Flip, packed with relevant classroom activities and discussion-starters. The topics below cover how to conduct conversations with empathy and respect, how to share information responsibly online and more. (Note: To add topics to a group, be sure to create a Flip account.)

• Flip topic: How to (respectfully) speak up
• Flip topic: Take care when you share
• Flip topic: Don’t just react. Reflect!

By teaching classes how to apply critical thinking and news literacy skills in their lives, you’ll equip students with the ability to identify fact from fiction — an invaluable gift during the holiday season and beyond. A great starting point (especially if you are looking to fill shorter, end-of-semester days) is Checkology; get started today!

In response to a Connecticut jury decision that ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his company to pay at least $965 million to those harmed by his lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting, the News Literacy Project released the following statement:

“There are few things more heinous than deliberately and repeatedly spreading conspiracy theories and false information about a mass school shooting where families lost loved ones. Yet, that’s what Alex Jones did and today a jury in Connecticut is making him suffer the consequences for his lies.

“Jones spread disinformation about the murder of young children and school officials at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that caused the parents, loved ones and an FBI agent to be relentlessly harassed about the horrific tragedy. According to the Washington Post, ‘Within hours of the shooting, Jones was telling his audience that it was staged as a pretext for confiscating guns. Within days, he began to suggest that grieving parents were actors. In the years that followed, he repeatedly said the massacre was faked.’ He also used these outrageous claims for self-promotion — both to raise his profile and generate revenue.

“Now juries in Texas and Connecticut that heard all the details and defenses about the two cases have ruled against him and ordered him to pay more than $1 billion in punitive and compensatory damages. The message they sent is clear: Jones must be held accountable for spreading lies that led to the harassment of innocent and already suffering families and for distorting the national debate about one of the most urgent issues of our time. The enormous sum he must pay should serve as a deterrent to others who hope to profit from disinformation.”

‘Unite around facts’

“At NLP, our work is dedicated to helping people learn how to recognize fact from fiction. We are dedicated to stopping the spread of mis- and disinformation by providing free resources to prevent people from falling for conspiracy theories and to help them gain the skills to determine the credibility of information sources. This verdict is a major victory for those who want to unite around facts and credible information in people’s lives, and it is a bright spot in the often overwhelming fight against misinformation. We can all rest a bit easier with the knowledge that at least some purveyors of lies and disinformation who seek personal gain at the expense of the public good will be held accountable.”

How are you celebrating the Fourth of July — with fireworks, a parade, a family cookout?

Try sharpening your news literacy skills! Our nation’s founders would be proud of you.

While they didn’t have to contend with the 24-hour news cycle, internet trolls or dangerous conspiracy theories, the Founding Fathers were concerned that misinformation and siloed thinking could weaken our young democracy.

In PoliticusUSA Tim Libretti, an Illinois university professor, wrote that the founders worries extended beyond meddling by foreign powers. They also were concerned about the vulnerability of the population to deceit and manipulation by their fellow citizens. However, the Founding Fathers put great stock in the people’s ability to make sound decisions based on facts that served the public good.

But John Adams had his doubts, Libretti noted. He feared that “human reason, and human conscience, … are not a match for human passions, human imaginations, and human enthusiasm.”

Factionalism, then and now

Adams wasn’t the only Founding Father with concerns. In America Magazine, a Jesuit publication, Matt Malone wrote that James Madison worried about factionalism, or the public breaking down into small, single-minded groups that act at the expense of the greater whole. And the Father of the Constitution provided an example: Tiny Rhode Island, which was beset by factionalism. “Madison believed that only a large society, occupying a vast expanse of space, could be effectively governed as a republic. If the place were too small, then like-minded people could too easily find one another and form a faction,” Malone wrote.

He quotes Madison as saying,“In the extended republic of the United States a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and common good.”

Today, millions of Americans need not cram themselves into 1,200 square miles — the size of Rhode Island — to form a powerful and destabilizing faction. Thanks to the internet and social media they can just look at their phones.

With little effort, anyone can find groups of like-minded, passionate people whose beliefs are often based on misinformation and conspiracy theories, with QAnon being one of the most widespread and dangerous. Many adherents were among the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Education is the antidote

What can you do on July 4 to stand up for the Republic? Become more news-literate so you are not vulnerable to conspiracy theories and factionalism.

And put your faith in the power of education, as Thomas Jefferson did. “I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness,” he wrote in 1786.

Of course, his idea of diffusion of knowledge excluded enslaved Africans and all women.

At NLP, we strongly believe that education is the most effective and equitable approach to developing a more news-literate public. Our society relies on people who can think critically, engage responsibly with information, value our democracy and participate in keeping it robust. That’s why we hope you’ll spend some time with our resources to sharpen your ability to recognize misinformation. And please share that knowledge with your family, friends and network.

Happy Fourth of July!

A big part of being news-literate is knowing what to watch out for and being able to recognize misinformation. That way, you can pause when you see it — and NOT share!

You can also respond to posts in replies and comments, letting others know — without amplifying —content that is false, misleading or taken out of context.

Why do people share misinformation? Bad actors and those attempting to cause confusion share disinformation, typically for personal, political or financial gain. But many people, often with good intentions, are fooled into sharing falsehoods, further polluting the information landscape.

Our misinformation infographic can help you understand what misinformation is and how to recognize it.

Talking with family and friends

While always problematic, when misinformation appears alongside pet photos and family updates on social media, it can be especially frustrating and unwelcome. It’s one thing if a stranger spreads falsehoods online. While every scenario is different, following some general best practices can help keep the conversation civil and make the interaction worthwhile. It may not be easy but talking to loved ones about false or misleading content can help them think twice about what to share in the future. Stepping into the role of fact-checker when it comes to loved ones can be tricky and stir strong emotions, so it’s worth preparing for — especially as more falsehoods seep across social media and into family and friend group chats. Check out this poster, How to speak up without starting a showdown, which outlines six steps to guide you through a conversation with family and friends.

Critical points to remember about misinformation:

• Falsehoods always reach more people than corrections.
• Once misinformation is online, it spreads quickly.
• Anyone can fall victim to falsehoods.
• There’s no such thing as good misinformation — facts matter!

As the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection neared, the importance of combating misinformation and its real-world impacts were as relevant as ever. How would educators teach this topic now and in the future – particularly to young people who lived to witness it?

Many of the people who participated in the insurrection believed they were fighting to protect democracy. But due to a lack of evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, most of them were misled by misinformation. How does a democracy protect itself from self-destruction when its citizens can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction? It starts with news literacy.

The 74’s Jo Napolitano spoke with Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, and Brian Winkel, an Iowa educator, about the importance of  news literacy skills and their approaches to teaching them in this difficult climate.

To read the full piece, click here.

2021 marked another year of rapidly spreading misinformation following breaking news events, from the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to the Biden presidency. Get ready for 2022 by reviewing our news literacy takeaways from the past 12 months. You’ll be prepared to recognize and debunk falsehoods, conspiracy theories and hoaxes in 2022, and know what information to trust, share and act on.

1. Science misinformation

   No, vaccines don’t magnetize you, increase the risk of infertility, contain tracking devices, or cause cancer and HIV. But misinformation surrounding vaccines — along with other science-based topics like climate change — continued to deluge social media feeds throughout the year.

   News literacy takeaway: Turn to credible, authoritative sources to confirm or debunk science-related content, such as NLP’s COVID-19 resources page or reputable institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And know that bad actors will even resort to cute cat videos as “engagement bait” to draw you to their sites and spread falsehoods.

2. Protests and crowds

   Photos supposedly showing large crowds protesting or supporting controversial issues appeared frequently through the year in misleading ways. For example, this photo does not show a large crowd gathering in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before a demonstration to support former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election ended in riots. Instead, it shows people participating in the “March for Our Lives” gun control demonstration in 2018. A photo of mass demonstrations in Moscow in 1991 circulated online as “evidence” of large crowds protesting COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates in Austria in November 2021.

   New literacy takeaway: Using photos of large crowds in false contexts is a common disinformation tactic used to exaggerate the level of support for a cause. Do a reverse image search to help you find the original context of a photo.

3. Jan. 6 rumors

   The attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 resulted in a stream of misleading social media posts, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories that began immediately after the riots and continued throughout the year. A fabricated tweet in October that was attributed to Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene circulated online days after social media “sleuths” hatched a baseless conspiracy theory that she was the Capitol pipe bomber.

   News literacy takeaway: Conspiracy theorists often engage in motivated reasoning and confirmation bias to manufacture “evidence” for their beliefs. When you encounter a far-fetched or controversial claim, check to see if major fact-checking organizations have debunked it. Or go a step further and do your own research by practicing some basic digital verification skills, like reverse image search, lateral reading and other techniques that fact-checkers use to identify doctored images.

4. Biden Presidency and QAnon

   QAnon followers continually promoted false claims that Former President Donald Trump actually won the election and President Joe Biden is either posing as president or is being played by a body double until Trump returns to power. In March, false claims spread on social media that video of Biden speaking to reporters at the White House was staged or manipulated using a green screen or computer-generated imagery.

   News literacy takeaway: Be aware that false claims about staged political events are often connected to dangerous and baseless QAnon beliefs. Find videos and posts that debunk the claims through a basic Google search.

5. Misleading gas prices

   Misleading photos of unusually high gas prices have been used to try to score cheap partisan points online for years, and 2021 was no exception — particularly as prices rose from historic lows during the pandemic. A November photo from a station in Lancaster, California, displayed premium fuel costing nearly $9 per gallon. But the photo was taken out of context and did not reflect actual prices at the time. Other false and misleading examples can be found here, here and here.

6. Empty supermarket shelves

   Supply chain problems in the news sparked numerous misleading social media posts, photos and videos, exaggerating the problem or falsely assigning blame. Posts featuring photos of empty supermarket shelves claimed that President Biden’s policies were responsible for food shortages. But the photos were used in false contexts. Some were taken in Australia and England. A photo of empty shelves in South Carolina was from 2018.

   News literacy takeaway: Viral rumors presenting photos of empty store shelves are common during disasters and other events that cause disruptions in the supply chain. Be wary of such photos and seek out trusted, standards-based news sources for accurate coverage of supply chain issues.

7. Staged skits out of context

   Faked scenarios tied to real events and aimed at building followers on TikTok and other platforms continued as a trend. A video from November that appeared to capture a conflict among crew members on a commercial flight and a passenger demanding a seat change after another passenger refused to show proof of vaccination was actually staged for a short film.

   News literacy takeaway: This film was produced by a social media influencer with a history of creating films designed to go viral. Such videos often are published without disclosures that they’ve been staged. These videos can seem authentic at first because there are genuine cellphone videos of fights over COVID-19 rules on planes. Search online to see if a video has been debunked; the fact-checking site HoaxEye found selfies posted by the film’s creators.

8. Vaccine harm claims

   Each development in the COVID-19 vaccines rollout — from approval by the Food and Drug Administration, to private company mandates, to the inclusion of shots for children — has sparked viral rumors. As the year began, celebrity deaths, like that of baseball icon and civil rights activist Hank Aaron, also were immediately and falsely tied to vaccines. Rather, Aaron died of natural causes at the age of 86 on Jan. 22.

   In November, a photo of a vaccination clinic in Foxborough, Massachusetts, was digitally altered to push an anti-vaccine narrative. Text in a sign in the photo said that COVID-19 vaccines were available without an appointment — but was changed to read “Don’t forget to donate your childrens (cq) organs.”

   News literacy takeaway: Many claims of vaccine harm involve sheer assertion and false context. Text on signs, for example, is easy to alter with photo manipulation software and is a common target of bad actors online. Check credible sources regarding the accuracy of any claims regarding vaccine harm, including those that tie deaths or injuries to vaccines. See our lateral reading guide for more tips.

9. Celebrity t-shirts

   Doctored images of celebrities wearing t-shirts with provocative slogans were shared widely … again. This post featured George Clooney with a shirt that compared MAGA supporters to Confederates and Nazis. Another showed Captain America actor Chris Evans wearing an anti-Trump shirt. But in both cases the political messages had been digitally added, and the original photo of Clooney was taken in 2015.

   News literacy takeaway: Printed messages, including those on t-shirts, are particularly easy to alter and should always be approached with skepticism — especially when they spark a strong emotion or confirm your biases. Also, many of the provocative t-shirt designs that have been digitally added to celebrity photos were created for profit and sold online.

10. Outrage bait

    Posts and tweets designed to evoke strong emotional reactions remained a fixture on social media. A tweet took a statement from Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis about COVID-19 vaccine mandates out of context to falsely push the claim that Florida schools will no longer require any vaccinations, even for polio, measles and mumps. Critics of vaccine mandates seized on the cancellation of thousands of Southwest Airlines flights in early October to spread baseless rumors that the service disruptions were due to pilots and crews refusing to work to protest the policy.

    News literacy takeaway: Outrage and anger drive engagement on social media. Users casually scrolling through their feeds may react without pausing long enough to figure out a tweet like this was inaccurate, especially if they have strong feelings about the topic. DeSantis said only that there would be no mandate for children to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The Southwest cancellations were due to air traffic control issues and bad weather. Follow our “Sanitize before you share” infographic to help you avoid unintentionally spreading misinformation.

A news literacy learning series for older adults 

The News Literacy Project is hosting a free webinar series Understanding Misinformation and How to Talk to People Who Believe It to foster more productive conversations free of misinformation among friends and family members and across generations — particularly during the holidays. The series is sponsored by the Fore River Foundation and is being offered in partnership with AARP’s OATS/Senior Planet program. John Silva, NLP’s senior director of professional learning, and Elizabeth Price, NLP’s manager of professional learning, will lead the sessions.

These free webinars will help participants understand what misinformation is, how people come to believe it and how to effectively and compassionately communicate and debunk those beliefs. While older adults play a critical role in sorting fact from fiction and helping others to do so, everyone can benefit from resources and support to help prevent harm from mis- and disinformation.

We’ve recorded the four webinars, complemented with additional resources, in case you missed a session or want to revisit a topic. Links are below. We hope you find the program valuable as you become more news-literate and help others to do the same.

In case you missed it:

Watch session 1, The Misinformation Landscape, which discusses how to move beyond the unhelpful term “fake news” to more precisely identify the many types of misleading, inaccurate and false information that we encounter regularly. The session explores how propagators of misinformation use our emotions and cognitive biases to manipulate us. Access the presentation slides here.

Watch session 2, Essential Fact-Checking Skills, which dives into the tools and skills needed to fact-check and verify the authenticity of information as well as how to source its origins for yourself. Access the presentation slides here.

Watch session 3, Productive conversations without confrontation, which shares the skills needed to talk with someone whose beliefs are fueled by misinformation — and still have a productive, non-confrontational conversation. Access the presentation slides here.

Watch session 4, Understanding news media bias, which explores the adjacent subject of bias in news coverage and its potential to mislead and misinform the public. This session will help you think more clearly about what causes bias in reporting, what it looks like in coverage and what you can do when you encounter it in your news diet. Access the presentation slides here.

Coming up  in 2022

Please save the date for National News Literacy Week, Jan. 24-28, 2022!

Misinformation and disinformation target all of us, with purveyors of falsehoods often exploiting our deeply held values and beliefs, including patriotism. That’s why the News Literacy Project is partnering with We the Veterans, a nonpartisan nonprofit created by veterans and military families, to present a free webinar, Exploring the misinformation landscape: Understanding how and why people believe false information, Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 7 p.m. ET.

We are honored to have the opportunity to reach this audience, but you do not have to be a veteran, active military or a family member to participate. The webinar is open to all.

In this session, John Silva, NLP’s senior director of professional learning and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, will discuss how to move beyond the unhelpful term “fake news” to more precisely identify the many types of misleading, inaccurate and false information that we encounter regularly.

Silva will explore motivations behind different propagators of misinformation and different ways that they use our emotions and cognitive biases to manipulate us into believing something is true. In  addition, he will demonstrate key fact-checking and verification skills for identifying misinformation. By getting to a deeper understanding of misinformation, we all can become less susceptible to it and more likely to prioritize reliable, verified sources of news and information.

About We the Veterans

We the Veterans is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization created by veterans and military family members, united for democracy and committed to building a more perfect union. Its mission is to harness the strength of veterans and military families to support the pillars of American democracy. We the Veterans unites private and public sector experts and leaders to find solutions to our country’s biggest challenges. The organization’s programming is designed to engage and empower the veteran community, supporters and allies to take action in their local communities and beyond.

We’ve just launched the second season of NLP’s Is that a fact? podcast, and this time we are going beyond examining misinformation’s ability to mislead to look at the origins of false narratives and the actual harm they have caused. The new episodes will explore how fictional information  emerges and then bubbles to the surface to misdirect the country’s civic and cultural discourse.

As the 20^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approach, we look back at the untruths and myths that surround that fateful day. One of the core catalysts of 9/11 misinformation was the film Loose Change. Our first guest, Esquire magazine correspondent John McDermott told us, “remains probably the single most popular piece of conspiracy media ever created.” He explains how the film started a movement of conspiracy theorists that planted the seeds for today’s Qanon believers.

The second guest, James Meigs, former Popular Mechanics editor-in-chief, discussed how his team of journalists debunked many of the myths propagated by  Loose Change even before the film came out. “What was really powerful about Loose Change wasn’t the specific claim,” said Meigs. “It was the overall mood of the filmmaking …  It had really cool music. It had all this slow motion. It had this very compelling narration, even if a lot of it didn’t make a lot of sense. It was quite powerful to watch.”

9/11 impact: A personal perspective

Our final guest, Ann Van Hine, whose husband was a firefighter killed the day of the terrorist attacks, explained how she deals with the anniversary in personal terms.  “Everybody has a part of that day. Everybody knows where they were. Everybody has a memory, but you’re actually talking about the day that my daughter’s dad died, the day my husband died. I told my girls early on, if people started saying weird stuff about September 11^th, which happened as time went on, then just blow them out of the water. Just say flat out with no preparation for them, ‘My dad was one of the firefighters killed that day.’ Cause that’ll suck the air out of the room. Not to be mean, but sometimes people need a reality check.”

We hope you’ll listen. Over the rest of the season, we’ll examine false narratives about the misperceptions that Democrats and Republicans have about each other, the Sandy Hook shootings, race relations and more. Please join us every other Wednesday for new episodes of Is that a fact? Listen here or on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Amazon Music and wherever podcasts are available.

NLP’s app is now heavy on TikTok content! Our game-like app, Informable®, has added a Mix-Up Mode made up entirely of videos from the hugely popular social media video platform. Users are challenged to develop a news-literate mindset — identifying whether a video has credible evidence for a claim or whether it’s an ad or not, for example.

Informable, free on iOS and Android, is for people of all ages. It helps develop key news-literate habits of mind with four brain exercise modes each made up of three levels. The questions become more difficult as a user progresses from level 1 to level 3. The four modes are:

• Checkable or Not? (Is each item fact-based or opinion-based?)
• Evidence or Not? (Does each item provide strong evidence for the claim it makes?)
• Ad or Not? (Is an item advertising or something else — news, opinion, personal endorsement on social media, etc.)?
• News or Opinion? (Is each item news or opinion?)

To advance, players must correctly identify at least seven of the 10 examples presented in each level. Points are awarded for accuracy and speed. Users can review their answers to learn more about each item and see why they were right or wrong.

Once users complete all three levels in all four modes, they reach Mix-Up Mode, which presents random examples from all modes to simulate the information flow they might experience in real life while scrolling a social media app. This is where the new TikTok examples come in.

The first level is generic, while the second focuses on COVID-19 and the third, newest level is made up of 10 TikTok videos. The game is perfect for anyone who uses the platform regularly or someone who doesn’t. It challenges users to use a critical eye to look for things like #Ad and sources with credible information. Users will leave any Informable experience as smarter news consumers, with a more informed view of TikTok and other content they see on social media.

Download Informable today on iOS or Google Play.

How can consumers figure out fact from fiction in the current media landscape? What strategies should they use to know whether the news they are following is credible? John Silva, NLP’s senior director of education and training, shared his expertise on this topic during a recent panel discussion with CT Mirror, a nonprofit news site in Connecticut.

Silva was joined by Marie Shanahan, associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, and Izaskun “Sassy” Larrañeta, managing editor of The Day of New London. CT Mirror presented the June 29 event in partnership with the Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut.

Silva explained that false context is one of the most frequent types of misinformation consumers face.

“One really common example is how often people will take a fake screenshot from a satirical article and post it as if it’s a real screenshot,” Silva said. “There was an example from the Babylon Bee, where they had a fake CNN screenshot and it was taken out of the satirical context, published as if it was a real CNN screenshot, and that created this false context and misinformation.”

Silva said NLP tries to teach consumers to dig deeper when they come across content that creates a strong emotional reaction.  “You have to look at who’s posting it, where it’s from,” Silva said. It’s easy, he said, for someone to take a snippet of a longer video or an excerpt of a quote, or even to alter a caption for an image, and present it in a misleading way. That’s why understanding the context behind a post is so important.

You can watch the panel discussion here.

As an intelligence analyst at the CIA, Cindy Otis was trained to assess how our country’s foreign adversaries deploy divisive rumors, destructive conspiracy theories and other kinds of disinformation against us.

Several months after the 2016 presidential election — which saw both the concerted Russian campaign to undermine trust in democracy and a surge in domestically created false content — she decided to leave the agency and deploy her skills on a different front. The analytic skills she had acquired, she reasoned, could be used to help the public learn how to responsibly assess what they’re reading, watching and hearing. 

Her new mission: to educate Americans how to become more discerning about the news and other information they encounter and share. Her goal: to inoculate the public against unwittingly helping our foes undermine our country’s civic life. 

“The primary consumers and generators of false information are average American citizens who don’t realize they are propagating false information,” she told me last week. They are assisting “foreign actors who seek to take advantage of Americans who are doing their work for them.’’  

Otis has quickly made her mark. In her book True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News, published last year and targeted to young adults, she traces the history of misinformation and provides a primer on recognizing it. She is active on social media and has more than 35,500 Twitter followers. She has donated her services to the News Literacy Project, both for events and for the creation of infographics, such as “Eight Tips to Google Like a Pro.” In her day job, she conducts investigations and analysis for the Alethea Group, which advises businesses on detecting and mitigating disinformation and social media manipulation. 

The Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol — a harrowing demonstration of the real-world consequences of disinformation — has given her work a heightened sense of urgency. A new ethos of personal responsibility around evaluating and sharing content of all kinds is needed to stem the further growth of conspiratorial thinking that leads to violence, she said.  

“Think about the good we can do as a society if we all take part in the process,” she told me, comparing recycling’s positive impact on the environment with the unceasing necessity to detoxify the information ecosystem.  

Otis started writing True or False after people began asking her basic questions — for example, which sources could be trusted. Even though the phrase “fake news” has been politicized and weaponized in recent years, she used it in the title as a way of “retaking it and getting it back” to its original meaning, she said. In the book, she defines fake news as “an attempt to deliberately spread inaccurate or false information in order to mislead others” by making it appear to be true. 

The book starts in 1274 B.C. with Ramses II, a young pharaoh who circulated a false, and long-believed, account of his heroic victory over Egypt’s archenemy, the Hittites. She moves seamlessly from ancient times to the invention of the printing press, the partisan newspapers that sprang up during the American Revolution, “yellow journalism” in the early 20th century, Nazi propaganda, the dawn of television and, finally, the advent of the internet. This is where the history ends and the practical examples, case studies and advice begin. 

“Knowing the history of fake news gives us a road map to follow to combat it,” she writes in the final chapter. “Truth still exists and … journalists are out there working hard every day to make sure we know what it is. So it’s up to each of us to help fight fake news.” 

When Otis isn’t advising businesses on dealing with disinformation threats, she is deep into revising early drafts of her second book, a young adult novel. Currently titled At the Speed of Lies and scheduled for publication in 2023, it tells the story of a high school student who discovers that her Instagram account is being used to spark a cult-based conspiracy theory and has to figure out how to stop it spreading virally. 

“It’s meant to show actual consequences from disinformation and conspiracy theories,” she told me. “Showing a fictional character trying to come to terms with that and put the genie back in the bottle once it’s been unleashed.” 

As a society, we are long past the point where we can put the disinformation genie back in the bottle. But Otis is right to encourage everyone to recognize its destructive power and to push back against it. We need to appreciate what our adversaries already know: The future health of our democracy is at stake. This is a fight that, together, we must win. 

Read more from this series:

• Alan C. Miller: Upon Reflection
• Jun. 17: The media’s dismissal of the Wuhan lab theory
• Jun. 3: Recalling a great newspaper editor and what he represented
• May 20: Supporting journalists serving local communities of color
• May 6: The First Amendment and the need for vigilance
• Apr. 22: Spotlight — a special resonance
• Apr. 8: The 19th* — a nonprofit news startup made for the moment
• Mar. 25: How I became a ‘pinhead’ — a news literacy lesson
• Mar. 11: Fighting the good fight to ensure that facts cannot be ignored
• Feb. 26: Students’ enduring rights to freedoms of speech and the press
• Feb. 11: We need news literacy education to bolster democracy
• Jan 28: 13 lessons from our first 13 years
• Jan. 14: Media needs to get COVID-19 vaccine story right
• Dec. 17: Journalism’s real ‘fake news’ problem also reflects its accountability
• Dec. 3: Combating America’s alternative realities before it’s too late
• Nov. 12: “Kind of a miracle,” kind of a mess, and the case for election reform
• Oct. 29: High stakes for calling the election
• Oct. 15: In praise of investigative reporting
• Oct. 1: How to spot and avoid spreading fake news

When the Sunday Spotlight on NBC’s Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist chose to explore the misinformation crisis and efforts to combat it, the show’s producers turned to NLP. The May 16 segment Misinformation education: How schools are teaching kids to find the truth featured NLP’s Senior Vice President of Education Peter Adams. Correspondent Joe Fryer also spoke to Georgia high school teacher Erin Wilder and New York City educator and NLP Ambassador Sandra Street and two of their students to find out more about how they’re using Checkology^® to learn to recognize misinformation.

Then, in a follow up story for NBC News Now on Monday, Fryer interviewed NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller about how students — and adults — can challenge the credibility of information.

“While students may be digital natives…they are by no means well-equipped to navigate this incredibly fraught information landscape that they have inherited,” Miller told Fryer. “And what we’ve found is that by giving them the tools to discern credible information, to be more mindful consumers of everything that they encounter wherever and however they encounter it. This is incredibly empowering. They are their own editors. They can be their own publishers. We want them to play these roles in ways that are credible, responsible and empower their voices.”

Watch the segments to learn more about the impact of NLP’s work.

More than 40 years ago, the United States first celebrated the heritage of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) with a commemorative week in May 1979. But this year, amid disturbing violence and abuse targeted at Asian-Americans, immigrants and other people of color, appreciating the culture and contributions of the AAPI community is more important than ever.

Photo credit: Franz Lopez on Flickr, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

For Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, NLP is highlighting AAPI journalists and news organizations — past and present — on social media. We begin with Rappler co-founder and CEO Maria Ressa. She received the 2021 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, May 3. Ressa, a Filipina-American journalist, and her team continue their unflinching coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte’s authoritarian rule in the Philippines despite harassment, threats and jail time. In 2020, Ressa was a guest on NLP’s podcast Is that a fact?, where she discussed her work and why she presses on despite the risks. “… you don’t wake up and you say, ‘I’m going to fight for press freedom.’ I never did. I just did my job,” she told us.

Important AAPI milestones

So why is May Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month? The U.S. Congress selected this time of year to celebrate the AAPI community because of important milestones. “The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants,” according to the Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month website. Educators will find lessons plans and other classroom-ready resources for teaching about AAPI heritage on the site.

And be sure to follow our thread on Twitter throughout the month as we focus on the impact of AAPI journalists and news organizations @NewsLitProject.

This article is from a previous issue of our Get Smart About News newsletter for the general public, which explores timely examples of misinformation as well as press freedom and social media trends and issues. Subscribe to our newsletters.

By Hannah Covington

It can be tempting to view the public’s distrust of the news media as simply a matter of political differences. But a recent study offers new ways of looking at and addressing the “media trust crisis.” It suggests that not all Americans embrace the core values that journalists follow in their work, and that this misalignment — rather than partisanship — may help better explain media trust divides. For example, people who value authority and loyalty may be wary of journalists’ role as watchdogs over the powerful.

“When journalists say they are just doing their jobs, in other words, the problem is many people harbor doubts about what the job should be,” the report said.

The study was released on April 14 by the Media Insight Project — a collaboration of the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research — and examined “public attitudes toward five core values of journalistic inquiry.”

Most agree on importance of facts

These values include acting as watchdogs over powerful people; making information open and transparent; valuing facts in pursuit of truth; offering a voice to those lacking power; and shining light on societal problems.

Only 11% of Americans fully embrace all five of these principles, the study found. The importance of facts in pursuit of truth attracted the most widespread support (67%), while just 29% of Americans embraced spotlighting social problems as an effective way to solve them. Distrust among these groups, the study points out, “goes beyond traditional partisan politics.”

The study highlights ways that news organizations can rebuild trust without compromising core values. Simple tweaks to headlines, first sentences and story framing, for instance, can go a long way to broaden the appeal of news reports among a wider audience.

Related:

• “American Views 2020: Trust, Media and Democracy” (Gallup and Knight Foundation).
• “Americans See Skepticism of News Media as Healthy, Say Public Trust in the Institution Can Improve” (Pew Research Center).

NLP’s Peter Adams, senior vice president of education, and Charles Whitaker, the dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School, took part in an in-depth conversation about how misinformation spreads and what newsrooms and social media companies should do about it. The segment News Educators Say Journalists Should ‘Slow Down’ on Social Media aired April 20 on WTTW, Chicago’s PBS station.

Photo Credit: Lori Lightfoot at MacLean Center by MacLean Center on YouTube is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Adams begins by sharing advice for news consumers. “Our recommendation is to pause, to slow down because misinformation appeals to our emotions. The most important step is to slow down, not amplify anything that isn’t confirmed, and to try to work your way back to the source. So, ask questions about it even if a lot of people are saying it on social media or repeating it on social media—where did it come from and try to figure out if it came from a verified source,” he says.

He also weighs in on the role and responsibility of tech companies. “I think [social media companies] bear significant responsibility for the spread of [misinformation] not only because they built the biggest amplification machines and disinformation networking machines in human history… but also because they profit from the engagement on their platforms.”

Check out the full WTTW segment on its website.

On April 21, Adams was interviewed by John Howell of WLS-AM in Chicago on a similar topic, why journalists need to slow down and check first before reporting false information found online. You can listen to the segment Lightfoot fake resignation tweet exposes reporting flaws on the station’s website.

This article is from a previous issue of our Get Smart About News newsletter for the general public, which explores timely examples of misinformation as well as press freedom and social media trends and issues. Subscribe to our newsletters.

Written by: Peter Adams

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions about his state’s COVID-19 response at a press conference at the Urban League of Broward County on April 17, 2020.

An April 4 report from the long-running CBS News newsmagazine 60 Minutes on disparities in Florida’s vaccine rollout has touched off a wave of criticism questioning the piece’s accuracy and fairness.

The controversy stems from the report’s unsupported suggestion that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis used the state’s vaccination program to engage in a “pay-to-play” scheme with the supermarket chain Publix when he announced a distribution partnership with the company in January, shortly after it donated $100,000 to his political action committee.

But critics of this segment of the report say it failed to provide substantive evidence of wrongdoing and mischaracterized key details. The report also included footage from a press briefing at which 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi asked DeSantis about the Publix relationship. However, important parts showing DeSantis denying wrongdoing (at 32:30 in footage of the briefing) weren’t included in the clip. The director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Jared Moskowitz, and Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner, who are both Democrats, have backed up the governor’s account.

CBS News defended the edits and stands by the report. At the conclusion of its April 11 episode, 60 Minutes acknowledged criticism of its report and read several letters from viewers. DeSantis, meanwhile, has responded to the incident by going on the offensive, broadly accusing “partisan corporate media” of maliciously trying to damage him.

Note: Most of the 60 Minutes report presented accurate information about well-documented racial and economic disparities in the state’s COVID-19 vaccination distribution. But the controversy over the DeSantis allegations overshadowed that reporting.

Also note: CBS said DeSantis declined to be interviewed by 60 Minutes for the report.

Related:

• “Opinion: ‘60 Minutes’ embraces innuendo in Ron DeSantis story” (Erik Wemple, The Washington Post).
• “Not everything was wrong with the ‘60 Minutes’ story on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and COVID-19 vaccines” (Tom Jones, Poynter).
• “Ron DeSantis is Taking His 60 Minutes Feud All the Way to the Bank” (Charlotte Klein, Vanity Fair).
• “Why Being ‘Anti-Media’ Is Now Part Of The GOP Identity” (Meredith Conroy, FiveThirtyEight).

Discuss: Can journalists include everything a source says in their reporting? How should journalists decide what portions of interviews to include and which to leave out?

Idea: Use this video comparison from NLP to highlight for students the edits 60 Minutes made to the governor’s response to Alfonsi’s question. Do they agree with CBS’ claim that these were justifiable edits made for clarity? Or do they agree with claims by DeSantis that the editing was deceptive and unfair?

What happens when you bring together a news literacy expert and an experienced reporter who covers all things media? Find out during our first Instagram Live event!

Join the News Literacy Project and Axios on Instagram at 4 p.m. ET on Thursday, May 6, for a conversation between Peter Adams, our senior vice president of education, and Sara Fischer, Axios’ media reporter. They will chat for 45 minutes about everything from how to spot and avoid misinformation on Instagram to why misinformation — and especially visual misinformation — appeals to us. They will describe the real-world costs of misinformation and will discuss possible solutions to the problem, including steps you can take when browsing your feed and stories.

Viewers will be able to ask questions during the IG Live. No registration needed — simply mark your calendar for Thursday, May 6, from 4-4:45 p.m. and then hop over to the @newslitproject feed (and follow us!) to tune in. We’re looking forward to it!

What: Instagram Live

Who: Peter Adams (NLP) and Sara Fischer (Axios)

When: Thursday, May 6, 4 p.m. ET

Where: Instagram (@newslitproject)

This column is a periodic series of personal reflections on journalism, news literacy, education and related topics by NLP’s founder and CEO, Alan C. Miller. Columns are posted at 10 a.m. ET every other Thursday.

Ninety years before the jaw-dropping notion of “alternative facts” made its debut on the North Lawn of the White House at the dawn of Donald Trump’s presidency, the British author Aldous Huxley wrote, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Increasingly, that lesson is lost on far too many Americans. Facts often struggle to be read, seen and heard in a tsunami of misinformation, conspiracy theories and hoaxes. We all need to do our part to keep them front and center.

Among those on the front line of this battle — one that is essential for survival of democracy — are the fact-checkers.

At their best, these dogged practitioners are independent, nonpartisan and scrupulous in their work. They do not ask the public to merely trust their judgment; they are transparent with their sources and the reasons for their ratings. They disclose their funders. They have ethics codes. And when they themselves make a mistake, they acknowledge and correct it.

“We believe nonpartisan and transparent fact-checking can be a powerful instrument of accountability journalism,” states the Code of Principles of the International Fact-Checking Network, based at the Poynter Institute. “Conversely, unsourced or biased fact-checking can increase distrust in the media and experts while polluting public understanding.”

That’s why it’s important for everyone to know the most relevant sources to turn to when looking to check if the latest viral rumor is true, misleading, false or fabricated.

This list, presented in alphabetical order, is not intended to be exhaustive — and for fact-checkers reading this, I ask your forgiveness if you are doing good work and are not included here. I hope this will prove helpful to others who want to know what to trust and to everyone who is committed to giving facts a fighting chance.

• AFP Fact Check. This global fact-checking organization employs journalists and editors around the world to debunk misinformation and other harmful content. Other reputable international sites include Africa Check and Full Fact.
• The Associated Press, The Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, and USA Today. These major news organizations provide timely fact-checking, using a variety of formats. The AP’s Not Real News rundown provides a “look at what didn’t happen this week.” The Washington Post’s Fact Checker uses Pinocchios to rate political and other claims (“mostly true” gets one; “whoppers” earn four). CNN’s Daniel Dale gained renown for his rapid-fire fact checks of presidential debates and other live events. Reuters’ Fact Check unit investigates videos and claims on social media. USA Today has its own Fact Check site.
• BuzzFeed News’ Jane Lytvynenko and Craig Silverman. A well-known fact-checker and debunker, Lytvynenko posts real-time threads on Twitter analyzing false claims and rumors in breaking news situations. Silverman is an award-winning editor and analyst in the misinformation world. He edits the Verification Handbook, a valuable fact-checking resource.
• FactCheck.org. A self-described “consumer advocate” for voters, this site is one of the most prolific in tackling social media viral rumors and hoaxes. It also monitors the accuracy of political statements and information. It is a project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.
• FactStream. This mobile app created by the Duke Reporters’ Lab provides summaries from a group of major fact-checking organizations and custom notifications for new fact checks and ratings. This is a good way to connect to corrective, credible information from a single site.
• First Draft. This verification nonprofit focuses on research and training to fight online misinformation and disinformation. Co-founder Claire Wardle is a well-known expert in this field.
• Lead Stories. This site detects trending stories that are fake or hoaxes and seeks to quickly debunk them. It says it has been fact-checking “at the speed of likes since 2015.”
• PolitiFact. This prominent fact-checking site rates the accuracy of claims by politicians and policymakers. It is best known for its Truth-O-Meter rating (and its extreme “Pants on Fire” designation). Its coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign earned it the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
• Snopes.com. This site got its start debunking urban legends and other rumors in 1994. It describes itself as the oldest and largest online fact-checking site.
• TruthOrFiction.com. This site is designed to help internet users quickly and easily debunk widely circulating hoaxes, rumors and other misinformation. It does fewer posts than others on this list, and its fact checks are often a little deeper and more analytical.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention a fact-checker with a narrower lens: HoaxEye (Janne Ahlberg), whose Twitter feed focuses on images that have been manipulated or are taken out of context. People frequently “tag” @hoaxeye in comments under tweets that contain dubious or too-good-to-be-true photos and video. As HoaxEye notes in its metadata, “A fake image is worth zero words.”

Read more from this series:

• Apr. 22: Spotlight — a special resonance
• Apr. 8: The 19th* — a nonprofit news startup made for the moment
• Mar. 25: How I became a ‘pinhead’ — a news literacy lesson
• Feb. 26: Students’ enduring rights to freedoms of speech and the press
• Feb. 11: We need news literacy education to bolster democracy
• Jan 28: 13 lessons from our first 13 years
• Jan. 14: Media needs to get COVID-19 vaccine story right
• Dec. 17: Journalism’s real ‘fake news’ problem also reflects its accountability
• Dec. 3: Combating America’s alternative realities before it’s too late
• Nov. 12: “Kind of a miracle,” kind of a mess, and the case for election reform
• Oct. 29: High stakes for calling the election
• Oct. 15: In praise of investigative reporting
• Oct. 1: How to spot and avoid spreading fake news

Connecticut Public Radio interviewed NLP’s Peter Adams for a March 9 All Things Considered segment, Why Disinformation Preys On ‘Our Most Sacred Beliefs And Values. He spoke about why misinformation has become a significant problem, what he thinks social media companies should do to curb it, why he believes legislation is coming to fight it and why all students deserve news literacy education.

“We have to understand how misinformation works — that it’s fundamentally exploitative, that it seeks to capitalize on our most sacred beliefs and values, our patriotism, our desire for equality, for fairness, our religious faith and seeks to use that against us, right, to provoke a strong emotional reaction, kind of override our rational mind, and get us to click share and reshare without thinking,” Adams says.

On the topic of whether legislation to mandate news literacy education is needed, he says, “It’s too vital, and in my view we really owe it to young people because this is the basis for their civic agency. If they can’t differentiate between something that’s true and something that’s false, they can’t make good decisions for their lives, for their families, for their futures and for the country.”

Register here for this free webinar from AARP/Senior Planet OATS initiative

Join us Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 1 p.m. ET when the News Literacy Project (NLP) presents the free webinar Exploring the Misinformation Landscape for AARP’/Senior Planet. The session, part of the Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) initiative, will help older people recognize the motivations of those who propagate misinformation online and help participants learn how to fact-check and verify basic information. NLP’s John Silva will share tips on how to be less susceptible to misinformation by becoming more news-literate, and to prioritize reliable sources of news and information.

In the Feb. 21 segment of the Truth for Teachers podcast, host Angela Watson interviews NLP’s Peter Adams on How to be informed media consumer and advocate for truth.

Adams begins by discussing why misinformation is more prevalent and provides a brief overview of how extremists of all kinds have become better networked and influential. He also explains how hate groups and conspiracy theorists have leveraged our polarization to promote their own agendas. The deeply informative conversation goes on to cover several other aspects of the information landscape. These include, among others:

• Why objectivity does not mean staying neutral
• What’s actually news-worthy (“How come the media isn’t talking about this?”)
• The difference between a conspiracy and conspiracy theory
• Intellectual humility and not demonizing everyone on “the other side”
• Looking for disconfirming evidence of our beliefs
• Having open, offline conversations with people who think differently
• What it means to “do your own research”

The Life of Gusto podcast host Augusto Andres interviews Chuck Salter, NLP’s president and COO for a Feb. 21 segment on truth and misinformation.  Salter shares his insights into how we arrived at this period where truth itself is under siege, the challenges of navigating our complex information landscape, and most importantly, why civics education is a key component to helping preserve our democracy.

Strengthening our democracy by transforming civics education  

As the U.S. Senate begins the confirmation hearing for Miguel Cardona to become the next Secretary of Education, it must ensure that he prioritizes a robust civics curriculum for the nation’s middle schools and high schools that includes news literacy education.

One of the primary purposes of public education is to teach the next generation about the functioning of a democratic society — and to foster its engagement as equal and engaged participants who will seek to preserve and improve democratic norms and practices. But those who lead by falsehoods represent a threat to our democracy, in part because many people lack an understanding of how our system of government works and how they can become informed about it. If we fail to teach civics, our young people — tomorrow’s voters — will be at a great disadvantage. And the fewer people who can engage in rational, fact-based debate, the greater the chance that we will be unable to govern ourselves, jeopardizing the future of our democratic way of life.

We can commit to resolve this problem by making civics the centerpiece of a quality education. An effective civics curriculum must include news literacy at its core to help young people develop critical thinking skills to discern fact from fiction and determine the credibility of the news and other content that bombards them daily. News literacy gives people the ability to become smart, active and engaged consumers of news and information and empowers them to participate in the civic life of their communities and country.

We understand the many challenges that Secretary of Education nominee Cardona faces in overcoming the unprecedented obstacles imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but this moment is too important to let civics fall by the wayside. As President Biden said in his inaugural address, “We must reject the culture where facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.” Cardona can take the lead on this by recommitting the country and our education system to a civics education that has news literacy has a key component.

Students in Lisa Ruehlow’s Media Literacy class at Amery High School in Wisconsin combined creativity and their Checkology® lessons to create public service announcements about the importance of news literacy for young people. And two of them took top honors for the national PSA contest sponsored by the News Literacy Project (NLP) and The E.W. Scripps Company. The new contest was part of National News Literacy Week (Jan. 25-29.) One of Ruehlow’s students won first prize, and another was selected as runner-up.

The winners are:

First prize: Nicholas Hahn, senior

His video featured clips from current events to demonstrate the real — and often harmful — impacts of misinformation. Watch Nicholas’ PSA.

Runner-up: Mary Mallum, senior

She used animated graphics to provide tips for parsing the false from the factual. Watch Mary’s PSA.

NLP and Scripps, sponsors of National News Literacy Week, asked students taking Checkology virtual classroom lessons to submit a 30-second video PSA related to the week’s theme: Get NewsLit fit. The PSA contest aimed to encourage young people to promote news literacy to their peers.

The winning students took a new course that Ruehlow created and taught for the first time last  fall. The class of 20 included mostly seniors, plus a few juniors and sophomores. All completed the PSA assignment for class. Throughout the semester the students enthusiastically embraced the topic of news literacy, Ruehlow says.

“I am exceedingly happy that students see the value of the tools they have learned — they are sharing their insights with others, and are quite passionate about it,” she says. “Many have told me that they think this class should be required of every high school student since this topic is so incredibly important to their daily lives.”

The importance of media literacy

When she asked students why they thought media literacy was important, they offered thoughtful responses.

• “Media Literacy is more critical than ever as people spend so much time on social media, where anyone can post something and claim it as ‘news.’”
• “It’s important to know what’s true and how to verify or debunk it for ourselves. With people spending so much time-consuming media, it can help our relationships, our country, and our digital communities by knowing what’s real and not allowing it to evoke such a severe emotional response.”
• “Media literacy is important because being misled by false information can result in harmful or incomplete understandings. That can result in action being taken, such as storming the Capitol.”

Her students clearly grasp the significance and urgency of becoming more news-literate.  Ruehlow — and other educators like her — who are dedicated to this work — make that possible.

Opinion: Urge un consumo responsable de información entre la comunidad latinx
 en Estados Unidos

In Texas, an air conditioning repairman is run off the road and assaulted by a former police captain trying to find forged presidential election ballots. Closer to home, you learn your cousin is convinced of widespread voter fraud. A suicide bomber detonates a massive explosion in downtown Nashville, possibly targeting the AT&T building over 5G technology paranoia.

Meanwhile, your college roommate frequently posts about 5G causing coronavirus. A Wisconsin pharmacist is accused of deliberately ruining doses of the COVID-19 vaccine because he believed it would alter human DNA; your spouse is worried the vaccine contains a microchip.

Conspiratorial beliefs are seemingly everywhere, and they’re being shared by friends, family and loved ones.

Talking to conspiracy believers

You might be struggling with how to talk to these otherwise rational people about obviously irrational beliefs — and you’re not alone. According to the Pew Research Center, 71% of U.S. adults have heard one or more conspiracy theories about the coronavirus outbreak and 25% see at least some truth in them. You may feel like there’s nothing you can say or do to persuade friends or family from beliefs like these that are thoroughly and credibly proven false. You might feel too discouraged to even try, but you’re not powerless to confront this.

Addressing a person with entrenched false beliefs requires what I call an ongoing “PEP” talk – an approach based on patience, empathy and persistence. It’s more than just one difficult conversation. You’ll need to understand the feelings and emotions that motivate people to dive deeper into these false narratives. You’ll have to recognize that these are genuine beliefs that “feel” true to the people who share them. Do not criticize or attack. This causes a “backfire effect,” making the person reject contradictory information and hold tighter to anything that reinforces their belief.  You need a base level of respect and a genuine desire to commit to a shared set of facts to succeed.

Start with patience, then empathy

The person you care about did not develop these beliefs overnight. Your friend or relative may have joined an online community of believers and soon become immersed in their echo chamber.  You must listen to how and why they formed their beliefs and understand the sources of their information. This can be frustrating. Take a deep breath and pause before getting angry and shutting down any conversation.

Confronting someone to tell them they may be wrong about something they firmly believe in is uncomfortable – for both sides involved. That’s why empathy is so important. Respect that this person genuinely believes their thinking is accurate and recognize how they arrived at it.  Many had fears and anxieties that they sought to alleviate, leading them to these new beliefs. This likely led to conflicting and contradictory ideas and cognitive dissonance, a form of psychological and emotional stress created by those conflicted feelings. They engaged in motivated reasoning, or the active searching for any and all information that reinforces the belief and eases the stress. The belief was reinforced in their new community and eventually became part of their identity, making it significantly more difficult to dissuade them. Understanding this will help you to be empathetic about their feelings.

Be persistent

Finally, use persistence. Regularly share new, verified information in a way that encourages the person to evaluate that information for themselves and to begin questioning their existing beliefs. Ask them, politely, to read new articles, consider new sources and tell you what they think. Express your feelings about their sources as skepticism, not outright rejection, and ask them to explain how and why they trust them. Using their criteria for a trustworthy source, share more reputable sources that might meet them and discuss why you trust them. Make this a dialogue, focusing on sharing ideas, beliefs and information.

Resolve to not give up on your friend or relative. Consider including other friends or loved ones who share your approach. The News Literacy Project has created a new Checkology® lesson to help people understand how conspiratorial thinking works; be sure to share it. Try to keep an the conversation going, without pestering. The goal is to ensure that your friend or relative gradually will accept your guidance and recognize your effort is out of love, respect and friendship, not derision and mockery.

Many of us are dealing with deep rifts among friends, family and loved ones, which are only likely to expand with persistent conspiracy theories, like recent false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. We can stop this from tearing us apart, if we devote the effort to trying. That’s at least one thing we can all agree on.

The Jan. 27 editorial in the Hutchinson Leader of Minnesota, This National News Literacy Week, pledge to be a more discerning consumer of media, makes the case for news literacy and offers readers advice on how to become more news-literate.

Now is no time to let down our guard on fact-checking, Darragh Worland, NLP’s vice president of creative services, tells Bob Oswald of The Daily Herald, a newspaper outside of Chicago.

“It would be a mistake to go too easy on Biden because (fact checkers) are fatigued from Trump fact checking,” she says in the Jan. 27 piece The News Literacy Project keeps pressure on fact checking. “People need to know what their leaders are doing.”

In his column, Oswald notes: “Although misinformation has been flowing since the beginning of time, Worland admits that fact checking over the past four years has been even more exhausting for news consumers and journalists.”

Getting to the facts is not easy for anyone, she notes. “With the opposing narratives, it has been hard for anybody to wrap their head around the truth,” Worland says. “But we’re not going to stop until every American is news literate.”

Darragh Worland lays out the urgent need for news literacy education to readers of The San Francisco Chronicle in the Jan. 27 piece We need news literacy education in our schools — now! (Please note: Article is behind a paywall.)

She opens the piece by noting the role of conspiracy theories and misinformation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Dear reader: By now you likely know that the shocking Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was largely the result of millions of Americans believing in an alternative reality (that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, even though it wasn’t). The attack was a terrifying example of the destructive, harmful impact of disinformation.”

“The reality that an alternative information ecosystem can come dangerously to life provides even more urgency to the need for news literacy education as a national priority, taught in schools across the spectrum, from Bangor, Maine, to San Diego, Miami and Seattle. Failing to provide our children with the knowledge and skills needed to recognize credible and accurate information is more than a disservice — it’s disempowering, putting them at a significant civic disadvantage as they face a more complex information environment than ever before.

“If a student doesn’t understand the difference between a news story and an opinion column or how to spot dangerously misleading disinformation, the consequences can be dire. Those who believe falsehoods about COVID-19 have flouted public health guidelines, endangering family members and friends. Some have been sickened by ingesting bleach, touted falsely as a COVID-19 treatment; others have died as a result of taking false cures (one example).”

Worland also explains how the loss of standards-based sources of news is only worsening the problem.

“The number of quality, standards-based news organizations — especially at the local level — is shrinking. As news consumers let newspaper subscriptions lapse, gravitating instead to free online sources (many of which are not standards-based), advertisers follow. One in five newspapers across the country has closed, leaving communities across the country with little to no coverage and stripping them of their local watchdogs. By some estimates, 1,300 communities across the country lack any local news outlet, leaving them with no independent oversight of local government and business.

“Why should we care? that the loss of local news outlets results in greater polarization in voting, as residents retreat to those echo chambers online where their biases are encouraged and left unchallenged.

“Add to that a lack of appreciation for the role of a free press in a democracy and growing public disdain for journalists, and you have a recipe for what we saw on display at the Capitol.

“If we don’t teach the next generation of Americans what sets quality journalism apart, give them an appreciation for the central watchdog role journalists play in holding the powerful to account, or help them understand why democracy can’t function without a working independent news media, then we have no hope of turning this dangerous situation around.”

A student’s poster depicting the information ecosystem as the solar system using InfoZone categories.

During a news literacy unit, seventh-graders in Jeff Rosen’s history class learned about different categories of information and the dangers of misinformation. They also learned about themselves and their place in the information ecosystem.

“They began to identify some of the harmful things they were seeing,” says Rosen, a social studies teacher at The Joseph Sears School in Kenilworth, Illinois. “I don’t think the kids knew they were being exposed to misinformation.”

An educator for 14 years, Rosen led his history class through a two-week unit on media literacy using NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom. He focused on the “InfoZones” and “Misinformation” lessons and COVID-19 misinformation resources. But the learning didn’t end there.

“I try to find ways for the kids to apply the skills they learn to their everyday lives through tracking documents and reflection,” he says. “There’s a really urgent need to learn this now. They’re consuming information every day from a variety of sources and are not equipped with skills to differentiate what they are seeing.”

Measuring behavior

To accomplish this, students connected what they learned to their own lives by tracking information they consumed over two days. They categorized content by primary purpose — news, opinion, entertainment, advertising, raw information and propaganda/misinformation. Students then illustrated their findings in pie charts and reflected on what they found.

Examples of student work tracking their media consumption and reflecting on their habits.

Here is one student’s honest insight.

“I spent 90% of my time watching entertainment. One positive is that I read the news and saw some respectful opinions on the internet, which shows that not all opinions are bad propaganda. However, I only read one news article. This was disappointing to me because if I don’t read articles or watch TV, the only news I will see is the posts on Instagram. I want to be more aware of all the problems in the world, not just the ones that make it onto people’s stories.”

Recognizing dangers of misinformation

The students also discovered that so-called “fake news” is actually part of the information they see and engage with every day, underscoring the dangers of misinformation.

To reinforce this, Rosen had his class delve deeper by creating posters that describe a system with symbols for the “InfoZones” categories. They then demonstrated how misinformation poses a threat to a healthy system. One student represented misinformation as an asteroid in the solar system. Another labeled misinformation as pollution in a marine ecosystem.

“This shows that the kids have a deep understanding of these kinds of information. Applying symbols to them requires abstract thinking,” Rosen says. “It’s not just a surface skill they’re learning. They’re starting to internalize it and put it into practice.”

Rosen has also learned a good deal over the four years that he has been teaching Checkology. Originally, students simply enjoyed Checkology’s use of examples they could relate to — familiar YouTube stars or advertisements for favorite products.

“Now kids really recognize the importance of being able to identify what they’re seeing, and it’s an important skill to them. I’ve seen a change in their attitudes toward the media. Kids recognize the importance and urgency of being able to do this,” he says.

And that urgency and importance are never going away, Rosen notes. “We’re never going back. We’re never going to be able to say ‘don’t use these platforms.’ There’s so much good information out there but so much that’s bad. We need to teach them how to navigate it.”

With his creative approach, Rosen is doing just that.

KATC participates in second annual News Literacy Week, the television station based in Lafayette, Louisiana, reports on Jan. 25. The station will premiere stories related to the topic of news literacy on-air and online at katc.com.

In the piece Facts over PACs: How corporate America can fight political misinformation for Fortune magazine on Jan. 19, NLP board member Tucker Eskew calls on executives to take a stand against misinformation. He cites NLP’s work and urges business leaders to use their voices to promote facts over fiction during National News Literacy Week (Jan, 25-29).

“Corporate leaders don’t need to be Clark Kent—much less ignore the global aspects of this infodemic—to see how every worthy business goal, from profit-making in a stable nation to the social cohesion that is essential to freedom and prosperity, is at risk.” he writes. “This is a fight we cannot afford to lose. As we say at NLP, we must have a future founded on facts.”