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Dan Evon on spotting misinformation in the Israel-Hamas war

The best way to help people avoid misinformation is to give them the tools to spot it, NLP’s Dan Evon said in a recent interview with CBS News.

When young people view conflicts like the Israel-Hamas war through the lens of social media, false information can seep into the views they develop about the world, he noted.

“The same tip that I give every single time is to slow down,” Evon said. “Look for authenticity; look for the source; look for evidence; look for reasoning and to look for the context.”

Watch or read the full piece here.

‘It’s really our responsibility’: Los Angeles NPR station speaks with NLP

Students need to learn news literacy skills so they can navigate our complicated information landscape and avoid misinformation, said Ebonee Otoo, NLP’s senior vice president of educator engagement, in a recent interview with L.A. NPR station KCRW. 

California recently joined a growing number of states requiring media literacy instruction in schools. Otoo explained what the new requirement will mean for students, why it’s important to include media literacy instruction across subjects like math and science, and the challenges young people face when it comes to navigating our complicated information landscape.  

“It’s really our responsibility to make sure that we’re teaching these skills to young people so they can participate in civic life,” Otoo said. 

Listen to the interview here.  

Brunskill’s commentary featured in The Horn Book Magazine

The November-December issue of The Horn Book Magazine, a noted publication in the field of children’s literature, features a piece by Pam Brunskill, senior manager of education design, on teaching news literacy across grades and subject areas.

 

In the news: NLP experts on navigating Mideast war misinformation

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.  

In Chronicle of Philanthropy, NLP calls for more advocacy for news literacy education  

In an opinion piece for The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Charles Salter, NLP’s president and CEO, calls for donors to support advocacy efforts for more news literacy education.  “To effectively address the misinformation crisis and build a future founded on facts, more states and school districts need to make media-literacy instruction a requirement,” he wrote.

Citing misinformation around the latest Israel-Hamas war and the rise of artificial intelligence, Salter argues that it is more important than ever to teach students how to recognize credible news and sort fact from fiction.  

“This work is urgent. Misinformation threatens all of us,” he wrote. “Without a shared set of facts, our health, our lives, and our democracy are at risk.” 

Read the full piece here. 

Now is the time to teach news literacy in every grade, writes NLP’s Charles Salter

To help strengthen our democracy, news literacy skills should be taught to students of all ages, writes News Literacy Project President and CEO Charles Salter in a piece for the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

“If we expect students to become well-informed, engaged, and equal participants in our democracy, we need to teach media literacy, and we need to start now,” Salter argues.

Salter’s piece was included in a roundup of the best articles and columns in School Administrator Magazine’s recent “best of” 2022-2023 edition. The magazine is a publication of The American Association of School Administrators.

Among other tips for integrating news literacy into classrooms, Salter suggests that educators spend time cultivating trust in quality journalism, using real-world examples, and avoiding the introduction of conspiracy theories to students.

“Media literacy is essential to the functioning of a healthy democracy,” Salter writes. “America’s singular form of governance can’t survive if the public is uninformed, misinformed, or drowning in news and content of questionable credibility.”

NLP in the news: Twitter’s verification changes and AI standards for newsrooms

The information landscape gets more complex by the day, with changes in how to verify Twitter accounts and challenges in keeping up with the rapid spread of generative artificial intelligence technologies. In America’s classrooms, a decline in history and civics national test scores emphasizes the need for more robust instruction in the subjects, with a focus on news literacy.

In an interview with AARP,  Dan Evon, NLP’s senior manager of education design, helped older adults make sense of the recent removal of verification checkmarks on Twitter. With the checkmarks now available to anyone who pays for them, Evon explained that the symbols should no longer be used as a shortcut for deciding which accounts to trust.

“The one tip that I always come back to is to slow down,” he told AARP. “You come across misinformation, whether it is something that confirms your political beliefs, or something that appeals or triggers some sort of emotion. It happens so quickly that you just see it, you believe it, you share it.”

In an opinion piece for Poynter, Christina Veiga, NLP’s senior director of media relations, encouraged news organizations to set standards for how their journalists will use AI. The piece also calls on newsrooms to disclose when AI is used to report, write and disseminate stories.

“Building trust with audiences, committing to transparency, and ensuring accountability are more important for newsrooms than ever, given the potential for generative AI to be weaponized to spread disinformation at a pace we’ve never experienced before,” Veiga wrote.

In the Washington Post, Kim Bowman, NLP’s manager of educator support, wrote a letter to the editor calling for more news literacy instruction after a decrease in students’ civics and history test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“Social studies and civics are most meaningful when we use past and present events to teach students how to evaluate the credibility of sources and evidence with healthy skepticism,” she wrote. “Historical thinking and news literacy skills should form the foundation of social studies and civics standards and evaluation.”

Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss showcases The Sift

Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss features content from The Sift®,  NLP’s free weekly newsletter for educators, in her blog throughout the school year.

 

 

 

NLP in the news: touting the importance of news literacy in the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Two Reporters podcast, and Word in Black

With information generated by artificial intelligence suddenly flooding our virtual spaces, news consumers are struggling to understand what to think and how to feel about the technology. NLP’s Darragh Worland, senior vice president of creative strategy and host of NLP’s Is that a Fact? podcast, was recently featured in the Washington Post offering tips for how to make sense of this rapidly changing information environment.

“AI literacy is starting to become a whole new realm of news literacy,” Worland  said in the piece.

In the Chicago Sun-Times, John Silva, senior director of professional and community learning at NLP, helped readers spot faulty logic, motivated reasoning and propagandistic techniques in a letter to the editor.

“Malinformation has a seed of truth, or makes selective use of facts, but is repackaged and shared with the specific intent to cause harm,” Silva writes, urging readers to consult multiple sources and look out for the hallmarks of conspiratorial thinking.

On the podcast Two Reporters, Ebonee Rice, NLP’s senior vice president of educator engagement, explained the need for news literacy instruction in classrooms, detailed how our organization supports educators, and described the impact of our work.

“We see how students are growing in their knowledge of misinformation,” Rice said on the podcast.

Brittney Smith, a senior manager of education partnerships for NLP, highlighted why it’s particularly important for Black students to be taught news literacy skills, since communities of color are often targeted with misinformation.

“It is imperative that students are graduating from high school with the skills they need to evaluate information and to think critically about claims they are encountering,” Smith told Word in Black, a digital news publication that served the Black community.

NLP founder Alan Miller on avoiding the looming information dystopia

In a new and widely praised piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, News Literacy Project founder Alan Miller explores the many reasons for today’s information crisis and explains what everyone from journalists to educators and news consumers can do about it.

Miller describes how conspiratorial thinking and hoaxes have gone mainstream as trust in institutions has dropped precipitously, traditional media outlets have struggled financially, and social media platforms have become  a gathering place and megaphone for extremists.

He argues that without a shared foundation of facts, “we are on the path not only to an information dystopia, but very possibly to autocracy.”

Still, Miller finds cause for hope and outlines ways to push back against an information dystopia, including regulating social media platforms, doubling down on the tenets of credible journalism, and supporting news literacy education efforts.  The need is urgent, he writes.

“NLP is working to change the culture in ways like the evolution in attitudes about smoking, drunk driving, and littering. The difference is that it took a long time to achieve those societal shifts, and there isn’t much time,” Miller writes. “Democracy barely survived the stress test it underwent after the 2020 presidential election. America may not be so fortunate next time.”

Read the piece here.

‘I want to be part of a society that gets things right’: Los Angeles Times features new push for news literacy

The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday featured the News Literacy Project extensively in a story that explains increasing advocacy efforts to include media literacy instruction in the nation’s classrooms.

The piece profiles NLP’s impactful work in the classroom for almost 15 years and notes the Checkology™ virtual classroom’s impressive growth, with students registered in both liberal-leaning and conservative states.

NLP’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Middle School Student of the Year, Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini, is quoted saying: “Our society has a value system, and you don’t want to degrade it by spreading misinformation. I want to be part of a society that gets things right.”

The Times also highlights NLP’s expanding mission to reach the public. It notes the urgency of creating a more news-literate electorate “as broad segments of the American populace have been consumed by election denialism, global warming skepticism, and COVID conspiracy theories.”

Says NLP founder Alan C. Miller: “We’ve lost any sense of a common narrative, of a shared reality. We not only can’t agree on what the facts are, we can’t even agree on what a fact is.”

NLP ‘is a model’: Journalist Margaret Sullivan’s new book

In her new book, Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life, Margaret Sullivan writes about her career in journalism and notes the pioneering work of the News Literacy Project under the leadership of founder Alan C. Miller.

She describes the impression that Miller made on students in her media ethics class at Duke University when he spoke to them in 2021 and argues that there is a vital need for news literacy programs and resources like those NLP creates for people of all ages.

She writes: “It’s important, too, for news consumers, also known as American citizens, to take responsibility for their own news literacy. I’m not terribly hopeful about this happening on its own, given the trends. I’m worried, too, about what it would mean to legislate it. Trying to get news literacy taught in public schools, given the turmoil over curriculum in recent years, could have unexpected negative consequences. I still think it’s worth pursuing. I might even put Alan Miller in charge of it if I had the power.

“…We need a widespread effort to educate the public — not just schoolchildren but adults, too, about news literacy and about the deadly harm of not knowing the difference between truth and lies. The News Literacy Project, which has expanded to include adults, is a model.”

A widely respected journalist, Sullivan was the media columnist for The Washington Post, leaving the paper in August. Before that, she served as the first woman to hold the position of public editor of The New York Times, acting on behalf of readers regarding the paper’s reporting and writing or lapses in coverage, and she was the first woman to serve as editor of the Buffalo News.

NLP in the news this October: How to navigate elections misinformation, a spotlight on RumorGuard, pink slime everywhere

It’s fall during a busy elections cycle, which means everything tastes like pumpkin spice – with a big dash of misleading elections information and frustrating conversations about politics. NLP experts were quoted in a number of stories in which they not to only explained the big problems facing our electoral system, but also  offered some hope with useful advice and a new effort to teach people news literacy skills.

A headline in Mashable said NLP’s new RumorGuard learning platform could be “the winning tool in those frustrating Facebook fights.” A feature about the site launch describes RumorGuard as “a one-stop shop for misinformation debunking and a glimpse into the fact-checking process, on top of a library of authoritative tools to help individuals spot, verify, and fight against rapidly spreading misinformation themselves.” Alee Quick, our civic marketing manager, and Dan Evon, our lead writer for RumorGuard, provided insightful interviews for the piece.

In this Washington Post feature, John Silva, senior director of professional and community learning, offered tips for engaging in productive conversations about politics this holiday season. Included was this solid advice for why you should avoid debate at the Thanksgiving dinner table and take the conversation to another setting: “None of us want to feel humiliated… We want to provide a safe pathway for these people to acknowledge that they were manipulated.”

Jake Lloyd, who manages social media at NLP, outlined news literacy tips for voters in his home state, Michigan. In this op-ed published in the nonprofit news site Bridge Michigan, Lloyd assures voters: “Learning how to tell fact from fiction is a powerful and empowering way to avoid being fooled by election-related hoaxes and conspiracy theories, without having to rely on social media platforms or anyone else to sift out and label all the nonsense out there.”

In pieces for the Columbia Journalism Review and WIRED, Peter Adams, who heads research and design at NLP, offered insights into partisan-driven news sites and misleading “pink slime” publications attempting to sway elections. Of the pink slime strategy  in Illinois, Adams told CJR: “It has all the appearance and trappings of an official news organization, and it’s trying to hitch a ride off the credibility of newspapers built over time.”

NLP in the news this September: Misinformation in the classroom, the military and sports

This fall, experts at the News Literacy Project have been trusted sources to give guidance for best practices to teach news literacy, explain why certain communities are more vulnerable to mis- and dis-information, and share tips for finding and sharing credible news and information.

As more schools and educators see the need for incorporating news literacy into their classrooms, Peter Adams, who heads research and design, told The New York Times that it’s important to have best practices. Without them, Adams warned lessons could backfire. “Some methods have become entrenched in schools that almost imply that students should question everything they see with an equal amount of skepticism,” Adams said in the piece. “This can invite young people to conclude that all sources of information are equally suspect or, even worse, to inflame a kind of nihilism.”

Before coming to NLP, John Silva, our senior director of professional and community learning, served in the Marines. In this piece by The War Horse, Silva shares insight into why members of the military community are vulnerable to mis- and dis-information campaigns. “When we start to talk about these big things—like patriotism, like our respect and admiration for our troops and our veterans—there’s deep emotions there,” Silva says in the article. “It’s really hard to have a critical conversation.”

Misinformation is everywhere – even in your sports news and information. Mike Webb, our senior vice president of media and marketing and long-time Pittsburgh Steelers football fan, penned an opinion piece full of helpful news literacy tips. Webb writes about a “teachable moment” when he enthusiastically retweeted a claim about head coach Mike Tomlin, only to later discover the post may have been too good to be true. Read it in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Peter Adams talks news literacy on Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone podcast

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, joined the Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone podcast on May 24 for an episode on news literacy. (The interview begins at 36:00 and ends at 1:09:00.)

Peter explained why conspiracy theories are appealing for so many. “Conspiracy theories – as complicated and as convoluted as they are – give people really simple explanations,” he said. “They break the world down into good and bad, noble patriots and evil people or whatever, and that’s a very comforting narrative.”

He also described how the current complex news and information environment differs from the past, and why it’s necessary to help students learn how to tell fact from fiction online. “We really see this as an issue of student rights and justice,” Peter said. “Students didn’t create this information environment we’ve been living in and talking about with all kinds of backwards incentives and intractable problems – they’re inheriting it.” To listen to the full episode, click here.

NLP response to Buffalo mass shooting

In response to the mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York this past Saturday, the News Literacy Project released the following statement:

“The horrific May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo was inspired by the ‘great replacement theory,’ a racist, antisemitic ideology that festers in extremist echo chambers online and has seeped into mainstream political discourse. The shooting — which killed 10 people, most of them Black — was briefly livestreamed on Twitch before being taken down, but copies of the video continue to proliferate across social media. Meanwhile, news organizations took different approaches to describing the attack and some failed to accurately describe the racist motivation that led to the shooting.

“Racist conspiracy theories like this have very real consequences and we must do a better job of responding to them. We urge these institutions to take the following steps:

  1. Our education system must teach young people about conspiracy theories that can lead individuals to fall for false narratives that have violent, real-world consequences. News literacy education helps people learn to think critically and gain the skills to be smart, active consumers of news and other information and engaged participants in a democracy.
  2. Social media companies should strengthen their content moderation standards and devote necessary resources to strictly enforce their own terms of service policies. Devastating shootings, such as this one, happen frequently enough that these platforms should be able to respond immediately to limit the spread of hateful attacks.
  3. News organizations should avoid using euphemisms to describe these kinds of incidents. Once it was clear that the shooter intentionally targeted Black people, using language like “racially motivated” without also describing the attacks as racist dilutes and sanitizes the intent behind it. Accuracy matters, particularly when actions are fueled by disinformation and conspiracy theories. The news media should not hesitate to use strong but accurate language — such as “racist,” “antisemitic,” “extremist” and “white supremacist” — to describe the shooting and the “great replacement” ideology that appears to have motivated it.

“Until these issues are forcefully addressed, we will continue to be vulnerable to the actions of those who have fallen down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking.”

NLP in the news this spring

Between our leadership transition, op-eds and interviews, NLP has had quite a few media hits recently. Here are a few of the highlights.

EdSurge recently reported on NLP’s leadership transition. Our founder and CEO, Alan Miller, will step down and hand the reins to our president and COO, Charles Salter, as the next CEO. Reporter Emily Tate spoke to both about our plans for the future. “As NLP evolves, it will continue its work in education and build out more programming on that side,” wrote Tate. “One effort is to help more states adopt media literacy requirements, as Texas and Illinois have done. Others include plans to develop a graduate-level course that trains educators to teach news literacy and a national news literacy conference for educators and students.” Read the full story here.

NLP’s soon-to-be CEO, Charles Salter, wrote the third in his trilogy of opinion pieces about why news literacy is an essential part of civics education. In an article in School Administrator, Salter notes, “The idea that public education must play a central role in sustaining our democratic system is older than the republic itself.” He adds that “democracy cannot survive with a people uninformed – or worse, ill-informed. Today, the work to renew civic education with news literacy as a fundamental skill is not about perpetuating our democratic system. It is about saving it.” Read the full piece, “Teaching Fact from Fiction,” here.

Peter Adams was joined by NewsGuard’s Jim Warren as a guest on WBEZ Chicago’s Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons to talk about how misinformation spreads online and what people can do to protect themselves from it. When asked about what people should think about when controversial issues arise in the news, Adams told listeners, “Anytime you have a highly polarizing, contentious social issue, purveyors of misinformation and bad actors and hyperpartisans really glom on to those issues and push a lot of falsehoods…As consumers, we see a lot of information and we see a lot of posts from people we don’t know and to really gravitate toward and focus on straight news reports from credible, standards-based outlets. We’re going to see a lot of punditry, we’re going to see opinion pieces and those sometimes get the most engagement in our feeds, so they can rise to the top. But we have to be really deliberate and seek out straight coverage.” Listen to the complete interview here.

And TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp spoke with Alan Miller about how and why we’re educating the public to become news-literate. Alan told Depp, “We do teach people not what to think, but how to think. We don’t steer them to any particular platform or outlet, or away from any. We want to give people the tools to make the judgments about everything that they encounter. Should I trust this? Should I share this? Should I act on it?…We want people to be able to have the tools to look at anything they see and ask themselves basic questions before they decide what to do with that information.” Watch the full interview here.

SVP of communications discusses importance of teaching news literacy skills to students

Mike Webb, senior vice president of communications, recently spoke with The Hill about the desperate need for news literacy curriculum in K-12 schools. The piece opened with data collected by NLP, noting that 55 percent of students were not even moderately confident in their ability to recognize false information online.

When asked about NLP’s work and mission, Webb explained, “It’s really about helping people determine fact from fiction, and its nonpartisan. We don’t have a political agenda. We believe that everybody needs to make decisions that are founded on facts. So it’s really just about giving you the skills to think critically about the news and information you encounter, whether you should act on it, share it, whatever it is.”

To read the full piece, click here.

Peter Adams, Al Jazeera discuss Russian disinformation about war in Ukraine

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, joined a March 16 Al Jazeera livestream to discuss Russian disinformation around the war in Ukraine.

In a video comment, Adams shared that, “There’s a lot of state-sponsored disinformation being pushed around and some of that is just aimed to create confusion and doubt, making people not sure of what they can believe. The second thing that’s happening is conspiracy theories and narratives are starting to leak into the conversation. And finally, there’s a lot of slacktivism going on. A lot of people don’t know how to help and they want to amplify positive things. They want to amplify important videos of things that seem like what other people should know about, but they’re getting duped into quick likes and shares when they should be more careful.”

To view the full, archived stream, click here.

NLP’s Peter Adams and NBC News discuss myth of digital natives’ immunity to misinformation

NBC News recently reported that despite occasionally thinking they’re less susceptible to falsehoods on the internet, Gen Z can sometimes accidentally amplify misinformation. To flesh this out further, reporter Kalhan Rosenblatt spoke with NLP’s, Peter Adams, senior vice president of education.

“If your primary way of [consuming news] is input-grazing through TikTok or Snapchat or some other platform, there’s an impulse to just kind of react in passing and not really interrogate the source,” Adams said.

He also went on to suggest that young people who want to avoid sharing misinformation should begin practicing advocating for their right not to post, particularly during breaking news events, and to abstain from the possible spread of misinformation. One way to do so? Adams offered that young people can post “something like ‘I’m going to stay quiet to let the expert voices take the floor during this difficult time’ and kind of normalize that as a statement of support.”

To read the full article, click here.

NLP’s Peter Adams discusses discerning fact from fiction on Fox 5 DC

In an interview with Fox 5 DC’s Jeannette Reyes, Peter Adams, senior vice president of education, discussed how to separate online fact from fiction.

When asked how big of a problem online mis- and disinformation actually are, Peter responded, “It’s an enormous problem and I think that is made ever more evident when you’re in a situation like the one we are in now with Ukraine and Russia. Lots of fakes [are] circulating online. The public sentiment, in the United States for the most part, is behind Ukraine and there are a lot of fakes, even on that side of the debate, where people are amplifying things that feel good and that feel right. Maybe with the best of intentions, but they’re actually out of context from 2014 or another year.”

To watch the full clip, click here.

 

John Silva and NewsNation on how to spot misinformation about Ukraine and Russia

Almost immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, mis- and disinformation began to seep into the information landscape. In a conversation with NewsNation, John Silva, NLP’s senior director of professional learning, discussed how the public can consume Russia-Ukraine news responsibly without feeling overwhelmed.

“The first step is to look at the language that’s being used. A standards-based news organization is going to try to report on what’s happening and try to avoid superlative-loaded language,” Silva said. “They’re trying to avoid language that is making a judgment, for example. It’s about describing what’s happening in a way that is fair and accurate.”

To read the full piece and for more tips on consuming news media without feeling overwhelmed, click here.

Carol McCarthy pens op-ed: ‘Put women who capture history with a camera in the big picture’

For Women’s History Month, Carol McCarthy, NLP’s director of communications, penned an op-ed titled, “Put women who capture history with a camera in the big picture.” The piece, published by Stars and Stripes, an independent news source about the U.S. military, honors some of the female photojournalists who brought their unique visions to important stories, usually in harm’s way and often in unwelcoming workplaces.

McCarthy notes that, “…recognizing their accomplishments is about more than acknowledging gender barriers. It’s also about valuing different voices — or visions — in news coverage. Reporting on complex events, such as war and its consequences, requires context, accuracy and insight that demand varied perspectives. This is something students of news literacy learn.”

To read the full piece and to celebrate Women’s History Month by learning about influential female journalists, click here.

John Silva joins CapRadio to talk misinformation amid Russian invasion of Ukraine

In an interview with CapRadio’s Insight program, John Silva, NLP’s senior director of professional learning, discussed how to navigate the misinformation swirling around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Insight provides background and understanding on breaking news, big events, politics and culture in the Sacramento region and beyond.

“The first thing we have to do is take a step back and just pause how we’re scrolling through information,” Silva explained. “We have to acknowledge our role in the spread of misinformation. So much of what gets shared is not because of the sources that created it and put it out there, it’s us – we’re amplifying it.”

To listen to the full interview, click here.

 

NLP’s John Silva speaks with the AP about how to avoid spreading misinformation around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

This week, Russia invaded Ukraine, and with it came a blizzard of mis- and disinformation across social media platforms. John Silva, NLP’s senior director of professional learning, spoke with The Associated Press about propaganda and fake videos circulating on social media as Russia invaded Ukraine.

A video captured by The AP in Libya more than a decade ago was shared widely, for example, with users incorrectly stating that it showed a Russian fighter jet plummeting to the ground after being shot down by Ukrainian forces. Other social media users shared misleading video of soldiers supposedly parachuting into Ukraine, after a Russian account posted the years-old footage as the invasion was underway.

“People who see these videos, photos and claims online are likely to watch them, share them and move on with their day,” Silva said. “We see a paratrooper, he’s speaking Russian, and so we don’t take the time to question it. If we see a piece of information that’s new to us, we have this compulsion to share it with others.”

To read the full piece, click here.

NLP experts took to airwaves for National News Literacy Week 2022

The third annual National News Literacy Week, presented by the News Literacy Project and The E.W. Scripps Company, underscored the vital role of news literacy in a democracy and provided audiences with the knowledge, tools and abilities to become more news-literate. It also aimed to inspire news consumers, educators and students to practice news literacy and to strengthen trust in news media by reinforcing the role of credible journalism through the theme Stop the flood of misinformation… care before you share.

In order to spread the word, NLP experts took to the airwaves on Scripps stations nationwide. Below are a few of the highlights from NNLW 2022:

  • NLP’s founder and CEO, Alan C. Miller, spoke with Scripps national correspondent, Ash-har Quraishi about why news literacy is an essential skill for everyone – watch here.
  • ABC10 San Diego interviewed Peter Adams, senior vice president of education, and a local educator who is using NLP resources to better understand NLP’s work and how to find credible news sources.
  • KJRH 2 News in Oklahoma interviewed Darragh Worland, vice president of creative services, to discuss sharing carefully on social media and how parents can speak with children about doing the same.
  • 23ABC News in Bakersfield, California, spoke with John Silva, senior director of professional learning, to explore the ways that reverse image searches help stop the spread of misinformation. Full interview here.
  • Ebonee Rice, senior vice president of NLP’s educator network, spoke with KGUN 9 in Tucson, Arizona, about how to have productive conversations with people who believe
  • Shaelynn Farnsworth, director of educator network expansion, placed an opinion piece in the Honolulu Civil Beat: We Can Solve The Misinformation Crisis With News Literacy.

In addition to the above coverage, The 74 highlighted a new framework for teaching news literacy unveiled by NLP during NNLW, and both AdWeek and AdAge covered the phenomenal pro bono campaign for the week, courtesy of Saatchi & Saatchi.

To learn more about NNLW, visit: http://newsliteracyweek.org/.

NLP’s new framework for teaching news literacy highlighted in The 74

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.

NLP experts, educators speak with The 74 one year after Jan. 6 insurrection

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.

Cover story features NLP’s founder, highlights his impact and future of the organization

The January 2022 cover story of The Beacon features the News Literacy Project’s very own founder and CEO, Alan C. Miller. The story highlight’s Miller’s recent acceptance of the 2022 AARP Purpose Prize, which celebrates people 50 and older who use their life experience to solve social problems. Miller received the prize in recognition of his work with NLP, which he founded in 2008.

“What I’ve done with the News Literacy Project is a second kind of calling,” Miller explained.

When asked about NLP’s future, Miller stated, “We feel a great sense of responsibility to move as quickly as we can to expand our reach and impact… There’s just so much more disinformation out there,” he said, especially during the pandemic. “The threat is so much more urgent now — to not only our public life, but to our public health.”

To read the full piece, click here.

NLP’s Miriam Romais and KRFC’s ‘Community @ Work’ talk news literacy

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.

 

 

NLP’s head of communications discusses how misinformation leads people astray

Mike Webb, the News Literacy Project’s senior vice president of communications, discussed the dangers of misinformation as a guest on The Black Agenda Podcast. The conversation also covered conspiracy theories vs. credible news, offered tips for separating fact from fiction and stressed the importance of heightening awareness around news literacy.

Explaining the significance of news literacy, Webb said “…it helps everybody make fact-based decisions. [People need to] understand how the news is reported, why it’s reported, how to make sure that what you’re reading is actually verified, fact-based information.”

The full episode is available on Apple and Spotify, and on The Black Agenda Podcast website.

Talking to a loved one about misinformation? Here’s what to do

In an interview with CapRadio’s Insight, John Silva, NLP’s senior director of professional learning, explained how to speak with loved ones about misinformation. Noting that misinformation can be compelling because it’s designed to evoke an emotional reaction, Silva said, “If we feel our beliefs are being attacked, we’re going to hold on to them a little bit more tightly. The key thing is [what] we call “patience, empathy and persistence.” It’s really important in the sense that we have to recognize that this is something that the person genuinely believes, and we have to find ways to talk to them in a way that’s respectful of this belief and open it as a conversation.” 

To read more, listen to the interview, and learn how to speak with a loved one who believes misinformation, click here. 

To listen to an earlier interview with CapRadio and John Silva about why it’s so easy to fall for misinformation, click here. 

For more on how to approach difficult conversations with family this holiday season, click here.

NLP’s director of educator network expansion and 2021 Educator of the Year share news literacy strategies

On Oct. 28, the School Library Journal held SLJ Summit: In Community, a virtual gathering about how community can mean a lot of things, noting that we all work and live in the context of community.

The summit featured Shaelynn Farnsworth, director of network expansion at the News Literacy Project, and Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt, director of library services at The Overlake School in Redmond, Washington, and NLP’s 2021 Educator of the Year. Their presentation, “Tips and Tricks for Integrating News Literacy in the 6-12 Classroom,” underscored why it is essential for students to determine fact from fiction, fight misinformation and become smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy.

Following the summit, SLJ summarized the presentation in this write-up.

NLP’s president writes, “For the sake of democracy, teach more civics in schools”

The News Literacy Project’s President and COO, Charles Salter, recently placed an opinion piece in The Cap Times, For the sake of democracy, teach more civics in schools:

“We must elevate social studies generally — and civics specifically — in our schools, and news literacy must be central to this curriculum. Why? We live in the most complex information landscape in human history, with disinformation being created more easily and spreading faster online than ever before. A 2019 study by the Stanford History Education Group found nearly 70% of students surveyed could not differentiate between news and advertising on a website. This problem continues into adulthood. And in 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that only 35% of adults surveyed could correctly tell the difference between opinion statements and fact-based news. We cannot hope for our democracy to continue unless citizens have the skills they need to sort fact from fiction — a prerequisite to being fully informed, equal participants in all aspects of the democratic process.”

To read the piece in full, click here.

Young people have a right to news literacy – MinnPost 

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. 

‘Sunday TODAY’ features NLP’s efforts to combat misinformation

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.

 

Adams joins discussion on how misinformation spreads

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.

 

Ms. publishes commentary on pioneering women journalists

NLP’s Ebonee Rice shares the stories of pioneering women journalists and how their work helped make the careers of current women journalists possible. She wrote the piece in honor of Women’s History Month.

“For many years, women played less visible roles in national and international media, doing their jobs while fighting for their seats at the leadership table,” Rice writes in the March 16 Ms. magazine piece, A Tribute to Women in Journalism Who Cracked Glass Ceilings.

“But this month reminds us that we need to do more to ensure young women aren’t excluded and that they have the opportunities to help create a better-informed and more news-literate world,” Rice concludes

Conn. Public Radio: How disinformation preys on our values

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.”

The Sift featured weekly in blog by Valerie Strauss of Washington Post

The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss features content from The Sift® in her blog Answer Sheet weekly throughout the school year. These are the installments for the 2020-21 academic year.