Today marks 30 years since the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed World Press Freedom Day to commemorate the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of free press principles issued in 1991 by African journalists.

On the 30^th anniversary of the designation, the U.N. is calling out threats to press freedoms around the world, including the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation, and underscoring the foundational right of free speech for all. “The right to freedom of expression, enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a prerequisite and a driver to the enjoyment of all other human rights,” according to the U.N.

But violence and intimidation directed at journalists continue to threaten their ability to do this important work. In March Russia arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and detained him on false charges of espionage. The nonprofit organization Reporters Without Borders (also known as Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF) monitors press freedoms in 190 nations and regions. Each year it releases its press freedom index, and this year the United States fell to 45th place, down three spots from 2022.

Every year, World Press Freedom Day serves as a reminder for governments to respect their commitment to press freedom, a time of reflection for journalists and other media professionals, and an opportunity for the public to recognize the impact these freedoms on their lives.

Press freedom and news literacy

And an understanding of press freedom is essential to news literacy. To mark the day, NLP is sharing a suite of free resources for educators and the public to enhance the appreciation of press freedoms and free speech and to highlight the need for continued vigilance to protect these rights.

For educators

• Explore the Checkology® virtual classroom lessons “Press Freedoms Around the World”and “The First Amendment” as well as these related lessons: “Democracy’s Watchdog,” and “Citizen Watchdogs.”
• Test your students’ knowledge with this Checkology challenge: Know your rights: What freedoms does the First Amendment protect?
• Download this poster about the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment.
• Discuss recent items from The Sift® newsletter for educators, including, Russia’s arrest and detainment of Wall Street Journal reporter Even Gershkovich.
• An explore Dig Deeper classroom material: What press freedom challenges do journalists face around the world?, the 2022 World Press Freedom Index: What are the effects of news and information chaos? and Two journalists win the Nobel Peace Prize. Why is this significant?

For all

• Test your knowledge with our quiz, So, what’s the First Amendment?
• Check out the results of a survey of Americans’ knowledge of and appreciation for the First Amendment.
• Learn about the United States’ ranking in the World Press Freedom Index. It might surprise you!
• On May 3, proclaim your support for freedom of speech on social media by sharing @newslitproject posts or writing your own posts and using #PressFreedom and #WPFD2023 hashtags.

The expansive legacy of Black History Month is rooted in the celebration and upliftment of African American history, culture and perseverance through unspeakable adversity. It is also deeply intertwined with our mission here at The News Literacy Project to solidify a future founded on facts. First established in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, Black History Month began as Negro History Week, coinciding with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Woodson knew first-hand the power of credible information as a transformational tool. As a Black man and the direct descendant of former slaves, his options to obtain early education were limited.

So, even while working in coal mines and caring for his family’s small farm in West Virginia, he taught himself, eventually earning undergraduate degrees from Berea College in Kentucky and the University of Chicago, and, finally, a Ph.D. from Harvard University. His career blossomed as he established himself as a celebrated teacher, school administrator, researcher and champion of Black history and culture.

As Woodson’s influence grew, so did the impact of Black History Month. Black scholars, journalists and community members alike deepened their knowledge and sharing of crucial American history. This, in turn, encouraged allies across all races and ethnicities to support and uplift the myriad contributions of African Americans throughout our nation’s history.

Today, NLP celebrates this critical month in American history by re-emphasizing the role that accurate, credible information plays in our perception of the news media and our trust in its work. Most importantly, we examine how that trust can vary across communities, especially among those that have been historically marginalized and underrepresented.

We invite you to check out the following new resources as you celebrate the indelible legacy and impact of African Americans throughout this month:

Thanks to you, our mission to realize a news-literate future continues to grow. Please join us in honoring the contributions of Black Americans this month as we strive to build an equitable information landscape for all.

During the third annual National News Literacy Week, NLP unveiled a new framework for teaching news literacy to students. The framework offers standards, questions, objectives, performance tasks and learning activities for educator planning.

As the framework was announced, The 74 spoke with Pamela Brunskill, senior manager of education and content, and Shaelynn Farnsworth, director of educator network expansion, to better understand the framework, its purpose, and why it’s needed now.

Brunskill said the new framework will help teachers manage what feels like unlimited information: “The idea of educating the next generation to be news-literate is daunting, particularly because we’re faced with the most dynamic and complex information environment in history,” she said. “For many educators, it’s hard to know what to teach and where to begin.”

“Instead of developing healthy skepticism, students read with a cynical eye instead of a critical one, often not believing any information they consume online,” Farnsworth said. “To combat this, educators hone skills, so students know what to believe, who to trust and what to share.”

To read the full article, click here.

In spring 2020, with the world in lockdown and pandemic misinformation surging, Brad and Charlotte Krugh of Jackson, Wyoming, turned to NLP’s Checkology® e-learning platform to augment their older daughter’s distance learning.

Julia, now in eighth grade and attending school in-person, no longer uses NLP resources. But the Krughs remain committed to news literacy education. Charlotte Krugh’s perspective comes from her dual roles as a parent and as an NLP supporter. Her family’s Fore River Foundation is a funder of NLP.

“I really wish more schools would provide these programs. I can talk until I’m blue in the face about it, but when the librarian, the social studies teacher and the language arts teacher say you need to check your sources and verify information, it gets the kids’ attention,” she said.

The Krughs’ younger daughter Eliza, now a sixth grader in middle school, clearly paid attention when peering over Julia’s shoulder. When Eliza is watching TV or online, “she’ll shout out ‘fake news’ whenever she sees anything that’s not true.”

News literacy a family value

Krugh’s family was in the newspaper business, which is why news literacy is a focus of the family foundation. The importance of literacy and access to credible news was instilled early in her and her siblings. “There was a lot of education around how to be a literate human being,” she said, explaining why news literacy is a focus of the family foundation. “It’s one of the ways we want to give back. We really believe that being informed citizens is essential to democracy.”

She doesn’t have to look far to see that people need better access to credible information. While Jackson has a small but well-supported local newspaper, it is the community’s only local news outlet. That’s why some residents turn to social media for their news. “Many older people in this area get all their news from Facebook. We can’t get access to major news sources unless we go online,” she said.

For Krugh, this is a good illustration of why readily accessible news literacy education is needed not only for students in the classroom, but also for adults dealing with a wide range of information sources.

Just weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, we spoke with Iowa high school teacher Brian Winkel, who was helping his students navigate a flood of misinformation about the virus. The school had transitioned to distance learning, and Winkel was glad he had already discovered NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom. A few years earlier, he had developed a course on media awareness called 21^st Century Literacy, with the e-learning platform as an essential component of the curriculum. At the time, Winkel  told us Checkology was a “godsend.”

Inside an Iowa classroom

Educators and students returned to their classrooms at Cedar Falls High School this school year, and we recently caught up with Winkel and some of his students, creating videos of their lives in and out of school. Winkel told us why he believes news literacy remains so important to his students’ education and to their lives as they enter adulthood. “They have a hard time sorting out the truth,” he said of students when they begin his 21^st Century Literacy course. “I do see a change with kids after they come up through this class. I feel like not only am I teaching this class; I’m training kids to make this democracy work.” Hear more about Winkel’s story in the video below.

Student perspectives on news literacy

Seniors Ande McMorris and Colin Seeks might have different interests and world views, but they agree on the value of becoming more news-literate. Ande, captain of the football team, told us he knows there is a great deal of misinformation on social media, and thanks to Winkel’s class, he now understands the harm it can do and is better able to recognize it when he sees it. Watch Ande’s video below to hear his story:

Colin, who loves working on cars, said Winkel’s class introduced him to news literacy concepts, and this has helped him better appreciate his First Amendment rights and the impact that his vote has in a democracy. Watch the video below to hear Colin’s story.

At the start of the year, Miriam Romais, NLP’s senior manager of educator engagement, was interviewed by Colorado radio station, KRFC- ‘Community @ Work’ show. The interview covered news literacy broadly, the work being done at NLP, and what steps people can take to become more news literate.

When asked if a lack of news literacy was detrimental to America’s democracy, Romais responded, “I think it is indeed a threat. It’s important to note, everything that we see, that we read, that we hear, is going to affect our thoughts and how we think about things, and therefore our behaviors and our actions. If we’re basing our decisions on faulty information, that can ultimately have adverse effects on our lives. Being able to discern fact from opinion and opinion from fiction is critical because we are living in the most complex information landscape that has ever existed.”

To listen to the full interview, visit KRFC’s website or click here.

 

 

As part of Illinois Public Media’s special week of coverage, “Who’s in charge of the news,” Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, helped to empower listeners of The 21^st Show with ways to distinguish fact from fiction in the news.

The segment, How can you tell if the news you read is real?, featured Adams along with Stephanie Craft, head of the journalism department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Michael Spikes, a Ph.D. student in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University.

When asked how to know if a post, meme, or GIF on social media was fact-based and okay to share, Adams said, “When it comes to sharing posts about civic matters, like politics or social issues, it’s best to make sure that what you’re sharing is accurate. If there’s a link to another source involved, make sure it’s a standards-based source that has processes of verification in place and strives to be as fair and accurate as possible in the information it produces. I would add that lots of people, including people who we love and generally trust in our lives, share or reshare false claims. Sometimes these are just statements, what we call, ‘sheer assertions,’ with no evidence at all. But sometimes these kinds of baseless claims can take other forms. So, a photo without attribution or context, or a screenshot of a headline with no link, or a meme.”

To listen in full, click here. (Adams is quoted at the 7:40 and 16:00 minute marks.)

Please join us on Thursday, Oct. 28 for an important, free, day-long event, Summit: In Community, hosted by the School Library Journal (SLJ). The virtual summit seeks to highlight that community can mean a lot of things, beyond only geography. We all work and live in the context of community, and our interdependence has never been made more apparent than in our shared experience of the pandemic. 

Shaelynn Farnsworth, director of network expansion at the News Literacy Project (NLP), and Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt, director of library services at The Overlake School in Redmond, Washington, and NLP’s 2021 News Literacy Educator of the Year, will present during the summit. “Tips and Tricks for Integrating News Literacy in the 6-12 Classroom” will underscore why it is essential for students to determine fact from fiction, fight misinformation and have the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy. Presenters will share various free, ready-made classroom resources and programs that all educators can use in a short lesson or an extended unit.  

Join this session to learn practical, hands-on ways to teach news literacy skills to your students. To learn more and register, click here. 

Please note that the event environment and the sessions have attendance capacity limits. If on the day of the event you find that you are unable to access the environment or join a session, please know that sessions will be available for on-demand viewing within 24 hours, and the entire event will be accessible for three months from the event date. 

By Hannah Covington and Suzannah Gonzales 

While discussing the Derek Chauvin murder trial in the death of George Floyd, a student alerts the class about the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright. On a separate day, another student asks why there was little coverage about a certain aspect of the deadly Atlanta-area shootings. The morning after a grand jury’s September decision in the Breonna Taylor case, a student wants to talk about it. Others bring up national politics.

In a school year of historic upheaval, partisanship and vitriol can easily seep into the classroom when controversial current events come up. Faced with charged students — as well as parents and guardians — some educators may question whether it is worth broaching these difficult topics at all.

But teaching current events through the lens of news literacy can help students engage meaningfully with the headlines they encounter without exacerbating strong emotions or divisions — and also empower them to identify credible news and information. Below are six tips and strategies for teaching news literacy in polarizing times.

1. Approach news reports like other texts

News coverage — like poetry, short stories and other class texts — offers rich opportunities for discussion and analysis. Remind students to approach news stories as they would other texts in class: closely and critically, evaluating each piece of information and any supporting evidence. If a student makes a polarized claim during class or in an assignment, challenge them to support the claim with fact-based evidence.

2. Focus on journalism standards

Center discussions of news articles on the standards of quality journalism, which can help build common ground. Even those who disagree on controversial issues can agree that credible news coverage should incorporate standards, such as fairness, accuracy and transparency.

For instance, asking students to read a news article with credible sources in mind — “Where is information coming from? How many different sources are there? Are any relevant voices or perspectives missing?” — can sharpen the focus of a class conversation and help move students beyond kneejerk reactions to a story topic.

3. Emphasize specifics

Rather than labeling an entire news report as “biased,” students should concentrate on particulars, such as a specific headline, caption or word choice. Pose questions like, “Is this specific element of the story fair and accurate?” or, “If you had to write a headline for this story, what would it be?”

Students, for example, could compare wording in breaking news alerts about the decision in the Breonna Taylor case. Or, they could focus on how news organizations label coverage of major developing stories, such as the deadly Atlanta-area spa shootings.

Focusing the conversation on specific parts of news coverage may help avoid fights over the topic itself.

4. Reflect on personal biases

Students benefit from becoming aware of their own biases as news consumers. Personal backgrounds and life experiences — as well as factors like race, ethnicity and gender — shape how we see the world. Ask students to consider how these biases might affect their perceptions of news reports and opinion pieces.

Following the Atlanta-area shootings, for example, students could read guidance published by the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) for newsrooms reporting on the shootings. Then, they could review news coverage and see how it compares to AAJA’s recommendations, taking note of language choices, context and sources.

5. Consult diverse news sources

Encourage students to explore various points of view by diversifying their media diet and turning to credible news sources that take journalism standards and ethics seriously. It’s easy to fall into partisan news bubbles, especially on social media. Challenge them to seek out multiple sources and perspectives — not just the ones they typically consult and agree with or that confirm their existing views. Being open to opposing viewpoints can help combat polarization.

Coverage comparisons, including headlines, work especially well: How did different news organizations cover this same topic? What similarities or differences do you notice?

One way to discuss the Chauvin case, for instance, could involve comparing coverage from local, national and international news organizations.

6. Remember learning outcomes

News literacy can give students practice using critical reading and observation skills. It aims to teach students how to think — not what to think — about news and other information (including sensitive issues). And with so many recent breaking and controversial news events that affect students and their communities, learning outcomes for news literacy apply well beyond the classroom.

*           *           *

Journalism documents today’s history. The unprecedented events and major news of the last school year have made teaching news literacy more crucial than ever. The current polarized climate may raise concerns over angry students, parents and guardians, but it also can present opportunities for productive dialogue. While recent events and controversies may feel overwhelming to teach, incorporating news literacy alongside a few simple strategies can help address important stories of the moment while making classroom conversations worthwhile.

Hannah Covington is the senior manager of education and content at the News Literacy Project. Suzannah Gonzales is a university adjunct instructor and former director of education and content at the News Literacy Project.

 In part one of a two-part series for the Education for Sustainable Democracy podcast, John Silva, NLP’s senior director of education and training, and Miriam Romais, NLP’s senior manager of educator engagement, discussed the importance of news literacy and strategies to help young people become smart news consumers.

“We have the assumption that because students are digital natives, they aren’t digitally naïve,” Romais said. But young people don’t always know how to tell the difference between social media posts that are misleading, and ones that are credible.  “If you’re basing all of your decisions, actions, and emotions on something that is false, how do you move through life? So, we try to get to the point where we help the educators and the general public [with news literacy skills], and educators specifically because they’re going to amplify this to their students.”

Silva, a former educator who taught for 13 years in Chicago Public Schools, said integrating news literacy into the classroom strengthens the overall curriculum. “As a history teacher, as a social studies teacher, we are continually talking about, ‘How do we know what happened? What are the sources we can go to in order to know the who, the why, the where, and the when?’ News literacy  helps provide a different understanding of journalism, because that… is what reporters are doing, they’re telling us what happened – the who, the what, the where, the when. There’s a famous quote, ‘Journalism is the first draft of history,’ and understanding how to evaluate that, in the modern sense, helps to understand history, but it also helps when we’re talking about current events and things that are happening in civics.”

You can listen to all of part one of the podcast here.

NLP’s John Silva explained in a piece for the nonprofit news site MinnPost why news literacy education  must be integrated into K-12 education across all subject areas and grade levels and be mandated as a high school graduation requirement. 

“Adults struggle to navigate this overload of information, yet we assume young people, incorrectly called ‘digital natives,’ somehow know how to do so from birth. The fact is, no one is born with innate technology skills; they must be taught and reinforced through practice. We are failing young people by not preparing them for the problematic information ecosystem they are growing up with and inheriting,” Silva wrote. “This is why young people have a right to news literacy.” 

This piece ran in MinnPost’s Community Voices section in advance of NLP’s June 15 NewsLitCamp® with the Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio. Silva is NLP’s senior director of education and training.