The holidays are a time to be together with loved ones, but conversations can get contentious if the topic turns to falsehoods circulating on social media or elsewhere. Luckily, the seventh-grade students at North Salem Middle/High School in New York know how to keep the mood civil around the dinner table by relying on news literacy skills.

In a segment for CBS Mornings Plus,  students in educator Cynthia Sandler’s media literacy class set a mock dinner table and gathered around a blow-up turkey to model how to listen with empathy, share verified information and separate fact from opinion – without starting an argument.

“Classrooms are a microcosm of society,” Sandler said. “What we can simulate in a class – listening, questioning, talking with one another, respecting one another – that is what is possible in society.”

Sandler, a media specialist, uses resources from the News Literacy Project to teach her lessons. The North Salem Central District is an alumni member of NLP’s  News Literacy District Fellowship program, which provides training and support for school systems to implement their own news literacy curriculum.

Watch the full segment here.  Check out the News Literacy Project’s resources for how to speak up without starting a showdown this holiday season here.

 

The New York Times asked educators how they helped their students stay savvy when it comes to reading the news. In response, several librarians named the News Literacy Project resources that let them create “informative and timely” lessons that guide students in recognizing credible sources.

Says one: “My students have been very receptive to and interested in media literacy.”

Read the New York Times piece here.

Some 8 in 10 teens say they tend to believe one or more conspiracy theories they see online, according to a new study from the News Literacy Project.

 “Anyone who’s worried about our democratic system, our civic dialog, education, or even the future of journalism, the future of media, should really be concerned,” notes Charles Salter, CEO and President of NLP.

But the study also shows positive associations with media literacy instruction. As one teacher in this article notes, NLP lessons help students “sift through the murky online marketplace of misinformation.”

Watch the Scripps News piece here.

More than ever, philanthropies are funding ways to strengthen news at the local level. That focus will benefit students in Los Angeles, thanks to a three-year, $1.15 million grant to the News Literacy Project to support a partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“The News Literacy Project is recognizing that there’s been a shift in how people consume and interact with the news,” says Gerun Riley, who heads the Foundation. “We really want to make sure that young people develop the skills to be able to interact with news to differentiate fact from fiction and identify reputable and verifiable sources of news and use that news in a productive way.”

Read the Los Angeles Business Journal piece here. Read more about the Broad Foundation’s support for the News Literacy Project’s work with LAUSD here.

 

Teens are “inheriting the largest, most complex, most frenetic information environment in human history,” notes Peter Adams, the News Literacy Project’s Senior Vice President of Research and Design, in an interview with Education Week about the findings of a new study by NLP. That might be why 81% of teens who see conspiracy theories on social media say they believe at least one of them. But the survey also showed promise: 94% of teens said media literacy should be taught in school.

Read the Education Week piece here. The study, News Literacy in America: A survey of teen information attitudes, habits & skills, is available here.

KCBS Radio’s Ask an Expert series featured Peter Adams, the News Literacy Project’s Senior Vice President of Research and Design, in an interview that highlighted findings from NLP’s new study of teens and their media habits. The news anchors focused on the encouraging news that most teens wanted media literacy lessons in schools. Adams also offered advice for adults: Seek standards-based sources and multiple credible reports.

Listen to the KCBS interview here. The study, News Literacy in America: A survey of teen information attitudes, habits & skills, is available here.

News literacy efforts in California schools received a boost from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation in the form of a $1.15 million grant. The funds will support a partnership between the News Literacy Project and Los Angeles Unified School District through NLP’s News Literacy District Fellowship program. “Students are at a civic disadvantage if they aren’t taught how to be news literate and to engage with the news and information that they come across every day,” said Charles Salter, NLP president and CEO. Helping make it happen is California philanthropist Melanie Lundquist, an LAUSD grad and NLP board member.

 Read the Inside Philanthropy piece here. Read more about the Broad Foundation’s support for the News Literacy Project’s work with LAUSD here.

For the editor: this is from the article: “The News Literacy Project’s partnership with the Broad Foundation and LAUSD came about thanks to leading California philanthropist Melanie Lundquist. An LAUSD graduate, she sits on the board of the News Literacy Project and is the organization’s largest individual donor.”

 

 

The News Literacy Project’s election misinformation dashboard was prominently featured in an article examining the falsehoods proliferating during this year’s elections. Experts in the fields of public health and political misinformation assessed NLP’s data reflecting hundreds of false claims about the candidates and the election, and spoke of the confusion that murky information causes among would-be voters.

Read the piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (paywall) here. Visit the News Literacy Project’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024 here. Read more about the misinformation trends NLP is tracking here.

 

 

Satirical posts online can spread out of context and fool people into thinking the joking claims are real, the News Literacy Project told the AFP for a recent story that examined this trend being used to spread election misinformation. Says NLP’s Hannah Covington, Senior Director of Education Content: “People who aren’t in on the joke take it at face value.”

The News Literacy Project has been tracking election-related rumors and the tactics being used to spread falsehoods in its Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024.

 Read the AFP article on Yahoo News here. Read more about the misinformation trends NLP is tracking here.

NEA Today, a publication of the National Education Association labor union, notes that only a few states mandate that media literacy be taught in schools – even as young people increasingly struggle to make sense of an online onslaught of facts, opinions, rumors and news. But critical thinking skills can still be built into learning with tools like the News Literacy Project’s RumorGuard, the organization’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024 and Newsroom to Classroom journalist visits.

“Students are growing up in an ‘infodemic’ where they are presented with copious amounts of information,” said Brittney Smith, a Senior Manager of District Partnerships for NLP.

Read the NEA Today story here.

Educators who have taught news literacy skills in their classes — how to spot biases, recognize ads versus news, and more — say their students find the courses invaluable. But few states require that media literacy be taught. News Literacy Project President and CEO Charles Salter notes why some states hesitate, even as educators who teach those skills praise the results.

Read the USA Today story here. Learn more about the News Literacy Project’s strategic approach to systemic change in the U.S. education system here.

A judge has allowed the auction of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars media outlet to compensate victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, and the news platform Semafor reports that some of his opponents hope to bid on his properties.  

News Literacy Project President and CEO Charles Salter noted that, “selling InfoWars won’t end the misinformation that Jones has platformed.” 

“But it is gratifying to see some accountability,” he added.  

In a podcast series marking the 10th anniversary of the school shooting, NLP explored the rise of conspiracy theories pushed by Jones – including the false claim that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a hoax – as well as progress in the fight against disinformation in the decade following the shooting.  

Read the Semafor piece here.   

The News Literacy Project President and CEO Charles Salter recently joined entrepreneur Steve Harper’s podcast, The Ripple Effect, to talk about his professional journey and NLP’s mission.  

Salter talked about the people who most impacted his career and why his social media algorithm serves up cat videos. He also explained why ending misinformation is not NLP’s goal. Rather, it’s working to ensure all students practice news literacy.  

“Our ultimate goal as an organization is to solve this problem at a systemic level,” Salter said. “We want to see every student in the United States graduate high school skilled in news literacy. We think it’s a fundamental life skill for the 21st century.” 

Watch the podcast episode here. Or listen on Apple, Spotify or Amazon Audible and Alexa.  

 

There are ways to prepare and maintain your social media feed during the election season to better “manage your political information diet.” The News Literacy Project’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024 is highlighted as a reason to be cautious in believing everything you see. The dashboard list hundreds of instances of altered photos, videos and misleading memes being used to spread falsehoods about the candidates and voting. If need be, step away from the scrolling for a bit, the article recommends.

 Read the article in The Conversation here. Visit the News Literacy Project’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024 here. Read more about the election misinformation trends NLP is tracking here.

An article that explores the role of artificial intelligence in journalism quoted NLP’s Hannah Covington on the importance of newsrooms engaging their audiences in decisions about how they use the technology. 

“Transparency is key,” said Covington, Senior Director of Education Content. “I think these decisions, when a news organization is looking at AI, should be made with input from audiences.” 

For news consumers, Covington offered this advice: “It’s important to not let AI undermine your trust in all news and information.” 

Read the full article here. Explore more about on NLP’s resource page, News Literacy in the age of AI. 

The Washington Post’s Tech Brief newsletter dove into a new report that studies how TikTok users navigate misinformation on the social platform. Hannah Covington, Senior Director of Education Content at the News Literacy Project, provided analysis about why some of the findings are worrisome.  

“I’m glad that some of the people surveyed indicated they expect to encounter mis- and disinformation on TikTok, and even expressed confidence in spotting it,” Covington said. “But people are often overconfident in their own ability to fact-check.” 

Read the full newsletter here.  

Voters should be on the lookout for AI-generated misinformation and other false rumors about the presidential elections, warned a CBS News Philadelphia report that highlighted the News Literacy Project’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024. 

Peter Adams, Senior Vice President of Research and Design at NLP, explained that the dashboard helps voters identify misinformation trends so they can avoid them. The stakes are high, he said.  

 “When we have divergent understandings of what actually is and isn’t real or factual, democracy falters,” Adams said. 

Watch the full piece here. Visit the Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024. Or explore more resources at Election 2024: Be informed, not misled.  

NBC News tracked down the origins of viral rumors that claimed Venezuelan gangs had taken over an apartment complex in Colorado, and linked to a post on RumorGuard®, the News Literacy Project’s digital resource that helps debunk falsehoods.  

Christina Veiga, NLP’s Senior Director of Media Relations, cautioned that misinformation about immigrants has been widespread this election cycle. 

“People need to be aware that immigration is a common theme that misinformers are exploiting this election season. We should be extra cautious when we come across claims that seem designed to provoke anger, outrage, or fear — or that seem designed to divide us,” she said. 

Read the full piece here. Visit NLP’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024. Or explore more resources at Election 2024: Be informed, not misled. 

The monthly magazine focused on what’s in store for the news industry and the importance of news literacy. 

The September issue of What the Future, a monthly magazine by market research and consulting firm Ipsos, focused on what’s in store for the news industry and the importance of news literacy. 

Peter Adams, Senior Vice President of Research and Design NLP, noted in a Q-and-A that, “students are inheriting the largest and most complex information environment in human history.” 

“If we don’t teach them media literacy, we’re actively disempowering them civically. We kind of owe it to them,” Adams said.  

Read the full story here.  

Trying to stay informed with credible news sources can be hard when you hit a paywall. In an AARP magazine feature, the News Literacy Project’s Kymberly Deane, Senior Manager of Development, suggested a workaround.  

“I’m a big fan of news aggregators and apps,” she said. “I love having the ability to customize my news feed to topics I really care about and having a range of sources to refer to conveniently.” 

Read the full piece here. (Page 6 of special section, Tech for Everybody.) 

A common theme of rumors swirling this election season claim that celebrities like Taylor Swift and Aaron Rodgers have endorsed – or snubbed – the presidential candidates, according to a CNN analysis of data in the News Literacy Project’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024.  

CNN found that about 1 in 10 rumors in the dashboard dealt with these false claims.  

“If you repeatedly see these falsehoods that exaggerate a candidate’s popularity, it can still stick, even if you know it’s not legitimate as you scroll past it in your feed,” said Peter Adams, NLP’s Senior Vice President of Research and Design.  

Read the full piece here. Watch the coverage here or here. Visit the Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024. Or explore more resources at Election 2024: Be informed, not misled. 

Beverly Hills Unified School District in California has been accepted to the News Literacy Project District Fellowship Program, a two-year grant that provides funding, professional support and resources for school systems that want to design and implement plans to teach news literacy. Beverly Hills joins school districts across the country, including the nearby Los Angeles Unified School District. NLP’s Ebonee Otoo, Senior Vice President of Educator Engagement, explains that the program’s goal is for students to graduate from high school skilled in news literacy.

Read the article in the Beverly Hills Courier here. Read more about the district fellowship here.

Fake celebrity endorsements, video clips taken out of context, rumors that start small and end up spreading worldwide: In an on-camera interview, the News Literacy Project’s Peter Adams, Senior Vice President of Research and Design, focuses on the need to identify and resist election-related falsehoods. Adams points to NLP’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024, which is full of examples of rumors swirling around the candidates and voting, and suggests that people turn to standards-based news sources to verify what they see.

Watch the NBC news clip here. Visit the News Literacy Project’s Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024 here. Read more about the election misinformation trends NLP is tracking here.

We are all susceptible to misinformation, but news literacy skills can protect you from being misled. On the In Clear Terms podcast, presented by the AARP, NLP Senior Manager of Education Design Dan Evon emphasizes the importance of verifying content before sharing it.   

“If we can resist engaging with this content, resist sharing this content, we can really dampen its spread. And the less it spreads, the less it fools people and the less power it has,” Evon says.  

NLP’s Five Factors teaches people how to evaluate the credibility of news and information. 

Listen to the full episode here. 

Misinformation about the upcoming presidential election is rampant on social media.  In a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article, Dan Evon, Senior Manager of Education Design of NLP, highlights the challenges with finding credible information on social platforms.

“When news breaks, there’s so much more activity on social media and from accounts of people you shouldn’t trust,” Evon says. “Their goal is to create doubt and chaos, but it’s up to you to be extra careful about what you’re consuming.”

Read the full piece here.

With advancements in artificial intelligence, news literacy skills are key to recognizing when photos are faked or altered. The Washington Post recently published a guide for identifying  doctored  images and included NLP’s expertise.

Peter Adams, Senior Vice President of Research and Design at NLP, advises in the story to look out for images that are circulated out of context, which changes their meaning. These images can be hard to spot because they appeal to “intuitive, gut thinking,” Adams says.

Read the full story here.

For more resources about finding credible information in the age of AI, browse our free resource page.

In an Education Week article, Pamela Brunskill, Senior Director of Education Design at NLP, offered advice for teachers to help their students avoid conspiracy theories that swirled after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. 

She explained the importance of seeking out credible news and information sources, saying: “That’s one of the biggest habits I think we need to break, allowing social media to feed you the information instead of controlling what you see.” 

Read the full piece here. 

In a CNN interview, the News Literacy Project offered strategies for determining whether news coverage is AI-generated.

Christina Veiga, NLP’s senior director of media relations, explained how to read laterally – leaving one online source to read what others have to say about a topic or issue – and how to conduct a reverse image search to investigate whether humans or AI are behind the news you consume.

Watch the full report here.

A San Francisco-based news outlet with coverage spanning several major cities across the country is publishing AI-generated articles attributed to non-existent authors. News literacy experts warn that this use of artificial intelligence could lead to declining trust in news organizations.

“In trying to use a human-sounding name, they’re trying to game the system and taking advantage of people’s trust,” Hannah Covington, NLP’s senior director of education content, said in a recent Bloomberg article

“It’s a kind of flagrantly opaque way to dupe people into thinking that they’re reading actual reporting by an actual journalist who has a concern for being fair, for being accurate, for being transparent,” Peter Adams, NLP’s Senior Vice President of research and design, told CNN.

Read the full Bloomberg article here and the full CNN article here.

In the “Decoding Democracy” series on American Public Media’s Marketplace Tech program, NLP’s senior manager of education design, Pamela Brunskill, discussed how to have a constructive conversation with loved ones who may be misled by misinformation.

“Ideally, you would navigate into a conversation about the ethics of reporting and standards of quality journalism,” she said.

The episode also highlights NLP’s suggestion to use PEP — patience, empathy and persistence — in these conversations.

Watch the full installment here.

The CBS News station in Pittsburgh featured NLP’s 2024 Alan C. Miller Educator of the Year Lindsay Downs, a librarian at Sewickley Academy. Downs discussed empowering students to find credible sources, conduct in-depth research and find answers for themselves.

“My students will be in casual conversations talking about checking sources and I’m realizing that they are listening,” Downs said.

Watch the full segment here.

Pink slime outlets pose as legitimate local news organizations, but they lack the ethical standards of trustworthy journalism. In a recent mLive article, Hannah Covington, NLP’s senior director of education content, weighed in on a pink slime newspaper circulating in Michigan and emphasized the need for news literacy skills to detect unreliable stories, especially ahead of this year’s elections.

“These websites are often paid for by political groups, and they’re often pushing partisan politics and advocacy stories that are making a policy, candidate or party look good,” Covington said.

Read the full article here.

A recent NJ Spotlight News segment featured a middle school class at Princeton Montessori School in New Jersey, where News Literacy Project Ambassador Aish Sami uses free educator resources from NLP to teach a media literacy course.

“My hope and dreams for the students when they walk out of the classroom is that they feel empowered to analyze information,” Sami said.

Watch the full segment here.

In a recent update to Encyclopedia Britannica, Pamela Brunskill, the News Literacy Project’s senior director of education, broke down the meaning of news literacy. She detailed how to assess different types of information, understand the First Amendment, detect misinformation and practice civic responsibility.

“News literacy teaches people how to think critically about timely issues and sources of information, not what to think,” Brunskill wrote. “It helps foster healthy skepticism while avoiding cynical distrust of all news and information.”

Read the full entry here.

This April Fools’ Day, NPR offered tips for people to avoid falling for online pranks, and included news literacy tips from Dan Evon, NLP’s senior manager of education design. Evon debunks viral rumors and misinformation as the lead writer for NLP’s RumorGuard platform.

“Social media is really fast, and there is so much information that comes at us at once,” Evon said. “You don’t have to go through this stuff so quickly, you can take some time — just a few extra seconds — to examine these posts.”

He also cautioned people to consider the context of claims, and to look for multiple sources to confirm whether something is true. Read the full piece here.

In a recent episode of The Strategerist podcast, presented by the George W. Bush Presidential Center, NLP president and CEO Charles Salter discussed why news literacy is a critical life skill, how to help young people navigate information on social media and evidence supporting the efficacy of news literacy instruction.

“We’re empowering the individual to apply these skills and this kind of analysis to any news and information — even their preferred news and information — and make the choice themselves,” Salter said.

Listen to the full episode here.

NLP news literacy ambassador and Chicago high school teacher Alba Mendiola recently appeared on PBS station WTTW to talk about misinformation in Spanish-speaking communities.

Many Latinos rely on social media sites for their news and other information, according to data from a Pew Research Center survey. Since fact checking in Spanish is less available, Latinos can be exposed to viral misinformation, Mendiola explained.

She shared advice that she gives her students: “I always tell them, ‘Do you want to be informed, or do you want to be influenced?’ Because those influencers out there have their own agendas,” she said.

Watch the full interview here.

During this year’s election season, it’s important to be prepared to encounter AI-generated misinformation, Christina Veiga, NLP’s senior director of media relations, said in a recent interview with BronxNet.

Veiga discussed signs that indicate content is generated by AI or that videos are digitally altered “deepfakes,” how these technologies can impact young people and NLP’s efforts to help voters make informed decisions.

“The rise of AI… really just makes it more important than ever for people to be news-literate, which means that they can identify credible sources, they know where to turn for information and they know how to spot the signs of mis- and disinformation,” Veiga said.

Watch the full interview here.

To learn more about how to navigate evolving AI tools, browse our free resource page.

Young people are glued to screens, putting them at risk of exposure to toxic misinformation, Ebonee Otoo, senior vice president of educator engagement, wrote in an op-ed for The Hechinger Report. More states must respond by requiring that media literacy skills be taught in classrooms.

“We need to do away with the myth of the ‘digital native,’” Otoo wrote. “Just because young people have grown up with technology does not mean that they instinctively know how to navigate the challenges of our information landscape.”

As misinformation surges amid federal, state and local elections this year, states must prepare students to be fully informed participants in our democracy, Otoo said. She called students “our next generation of voters.”

“It’s important that we teach young people how to recognize the different types and quality of information they’re bombarded with, or we will leave them vulnerable to information that is unreliable or even intentionally misleading,” Otoo wrote.

Read Otoo’s full piece here.

The fifth annual National News Literacy Week turned a spotlight on local news and its role in a healthy democracy. Through free events for educators and the public, this initiative provided people of all ages with the knowledge and tools to become better informed and more civically engaged. NLP staff and partners shared their expertise with media outlets around the nation. Some highlights:

United Press International

“In a functioning democracy, high-quality local journalism is essential to ensuring that community leaders are working in the public’s best interest,” NLP President and CEO Charles Salter wrote, “Local news unites communities, serving as the proverbial ‘water cooler’…”

The Chicago Tribune

“We will never stop the supply of bad information. There will always be new sources that create and spread it and algorithms that promote it,” wrote David Hiller, a member of NLP’s National Journalism Advisory Council. “Instead, we must fix the demand side and ensure that everyone has the skills they need to separate fact from fiction and seek out quality news.”

Governing

“The increasing adoption of news literacy education is an acknowledgment that students need help understanding our chaotic media environment so they can become well-informed citizens with the skills to participate effectively and knowledgeably in our democracy at every level of government,” said Shaelynn Farnsworth, senior director of education partnership strategy at NLP. “Just because young people are digital natives doesn’t mean they can sort through and make sense of all the content that bombards them.”

The Fulcrum

“It’s easy to get angry when we’re confronted with misinformation — that’s what it’s designed to do,” said Susan Minichiello, senior manager of education design at NLP. “But learning how to sort fact from fiction online while also practicing empathy will go a long way in fixing the misinformation crisis.”

Scripps News Reports

“This year, news literacy is focusing on responsible sharing, something that’s become so important given how much Americans rely on social media for their news and information,” said Adam Symson, CEO of the E.W. Scripps Company. “So, we really want to focus on arming people with the tools they need in order to think before they share, in order to research before they start spreading.” Listen to the episode here.