In the N.Y. Daily News, NLP’s Darragh Worland writes on how social media use has been shown to skew news judgment. The commentary, Don’t let social media spoil your news judgment: A guide to navigating our information jungle,  ran on Sept. 30. The piece also addresses how news consumers may be falsely confident about the ability to spot unreliable information.

“It is simply dangerous to be misled and falsely confident about content you encounter. This is particularly true when it relates to information on which you base decisions that can impact your health (COVID-19), safety (wildfires) and future (government elections),” Worland writes.

She also offers readers advice on how to strengthen news literacy skills and be more savvy news consumers.

“In this digital age, no one can expect a total eradication of misinformation. But you can learn to counter harmful content and help others do the same by becoming news-literate. Armed with these skills and habits, you can make decisions and take action with confidence, knowing that the information and sources you rely on are credible and reliable.”

Education is the solution to combating misinformation, NLP’s Ebonee Rice says on the Arlington, Va., radio show Choose to Be Curious. Her interview, The News Literacy Project, with Ebonee Rice, aired on Sept. 30.

Host Lynn Borton asks, “With so much coming at us, how are we to tell fact from fiction, truth from fabrication?”

“We believe that education is the solution to help combat misinformation, and educators are on the front line of that fight,” says Rice. She is the vice president of NLP’s educator network.

School Library Journal (SLJ) led its Sept. 29 news section with a write-up promoting NLP’s upcoming webinar series.

Professional Development Course on News Literacy describes the free, four-part series as a way to “hone your skills in helping students make sense of news and other types of information. Essential concepts for students to be reliably informed begins Oct. 6, with What it means to be ‘news-literate’: introduction to news literacy education. Learn key news literacy skills that students must know to be reliably informed. Essential concepts for students to be reliably informed begins Oct. 6, with “What it means to be ‘news-literate.'”

NLP’s John Silva explains how misinformation exploits our emotions in the Sept. 29 article Fact or Fake? How to Help Kids & Adults Spot Misinformation Online on the website 30 Seconds. The media platform’s target audience is busy women, and particularly moms.

“Misinformation manipulates our emotions into believing something is true,” Silva says. “If you find yourself experiencing a strong emotional reaction, pause what you’re doing, open a browser tab and search for key details to verify if what you are seeing is accurate.” It turns out that anger, sadness and even humor can make us accept things as true without evaluating them closely enough, especially if it lines up with something we already believe.

Datanami, a news site that provides insight, analysis and information on big data, writes about the partnership between data firm SAS and NLP. The Sept. 29 article, Testing Data Literacy on Main Street,  focuses on data literacy quiz that NLP and SAS developed. The quiz allows the public to test their data literacy in news consumption. The five-question quiz asks test-takers to gauge the validity of claims based on the supporting evidence or the lack of it.

Election misinformation is the topic of a Sept. 25 article in The Hill, Disinformation, QAnon efforts targeting Latino voters ramp up ahead of presidential election.  NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller weighs in on why NLP and the Open Mind Legacy Project joined forces on an election misinformation PSA campaign. “We know that in the current climate disinformation is rampant and we wanted American voters to have very clear guidance, especially during the pandemic, on how to vote,” Miller says.

“We all need to become upstanders for facts and give facts a fighting chance,” he says. “I think that we need a new sense of personal responsibility around the news and information that we consume, and particularly that we share.”

Miller likened it to shifting the ethos around other issues, such as drunk driving, littering and smoking.

“Because ultimately, the consumer is really in charge of what they see and where and when and how they see it, and most important what they do with it. I think people need to play a more responsible role and also push back against those who are sharing and creating and sending things that they should not be.”

The Sept. 13 edition of CNN”s Reliable Sources newsletter, by Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, included a paragraph about NLP’s election misinformation PSA campaign, with a link to a USA Today op-ed about it.

“The News Literacy Project and The Open Mind Legacy Project are distributing PSAs “to combat malicious fabrication, bots and online trolls that seek to mislead voters and suppress voting.” Alan C. Miller and Alexander Heffner explain the initiative here… (USA Today).”

NLP’s founder and CEO Alan C. Miller and Alexander Heffner, host of The Open Mind on PBS and president of The Open Mind Legacy Project, discuss how the two organizations joined forces to develop a national PSA campaign in a commentary for USA Today Sept. 13. The piece We’re launching an election-season ad campaign to fight fake news, and we need your help outlines the threat misinformation poses to the 2020 election and our democracy and how the campaign aims to reach the most vulnerable voters.

“Our PSAs, which will air in Spanish and English, debunk myths about voting, encourage voters to break out of their filter bubbles, and advise them to verify facts with multiple sources before sharing social media posts. The campaign will focus especially on Black and Latinx populations particularly hard hit by the pandemic that were targeted in previous election-related misinformation campaigns and remain vulnerable to suppression,” they write.

NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller tells the The New York Times about NLP’s expanded mission, which includes addressing misinformation and older adults. “Our hope is that older adults will be major consumers of these resources and become part of the information solution, instead of the misinformation problem,” Miller says in the Sept. 11 piece Getting Wise to Fake News.

NLP’s Peter Adams explains how  Russian disinformation campaigns likely fuel U.S. racial divisions in a Sept. 2 segment on Newsy, False Information Escalates Anger At Protests Across The United States.

“We know from the actions of the Internet Research Agency and Russian agents in 2016 that racial division in the U.S .was something they targeted a lot. And, you know, this is another opportunity for them to do that. And they are no doubt, you know, seizing on it,” Adams says.

He reminds viewers: “When falsehoods are repeated enough times, when we hear them enough times, they can take on a kind of truth. It diminishes the impact of assembly and organized protest.”

Peter Adams explains digital trickery, including deepfakes and cheapfakes, in the Mozilla Foundation’s Aug. 31 installment of Misinfo Monday: Deepfakes and Other Trickery in Imagery.

“Deepfakes are algorithmically-manipulated digital assets,” Adams says. “Deepfakes can be video or audio or even, nowadays, just an image.”

While deepfakes are computer-generated, they are not the same as the  computer generated imagery (CGI) found in many films. “CGI that movies use is imagery that is entirely fabricated in post-production by digital artists,” he says. “A deepfake, on the other hand, uses an algorithm that has learned how someone’s face looks and moves, and maps that onto authentic footage.”

But far more common on the internet are easier-to-create cheapfakes. “A cheapfake is a video or image that simply gets taken out of context,” Adams explains. “For example, taking an old photo of a crowd and saying it was an anti-Covid 19 protest. Or the crudely doctored video of slowed-down Nancy Pelosi. Cheapfakes are incredibly easy to do, since they generally only require you to copy/paste.”

NLP’s Peter Adams discusses COVID-19 misinformation causes and contributing factors in an Aug. 31 segment for Northern Public Radio, What Contributes to COVID-19 Misinformation?

Some causes include a lack of understanding about the science involved in addressing a pandemic, the public’s inability to recognize the difference between fact-based journalism and opinion, the proliferation of news sites and postings that lack credibility, and consumers’ failure to identify credible information.

On the latter point, Adams says: “Trustworthy information doesn’t actually ask you to trust it. It shows you why you should.”

The segment was rebroadcast Sept. 1 on Peoria Public Radio (WCBU)  and on All Things Considered on NPR affiliate WSIU.

In the article What Really Happened? The Value of a Diverse Media Diet for the nonprofit organization The Field Foundation of Illinois, NLP’s Peter Adams discusses how having a varied news media diet helps news consumers stay reliably informed. “One mistake I think a lot of people make is to say flat out don’t get your information from social media,” he says “That’s a broad brush because it depends on who you are following and who you are following who you trust. Facebook is not a source, but what trained journalists post is going to be more credible than what random people are posting.”

The Washington Post’s education reporter Valerie Strauss revisits a lesson from The Sift about the QAnon conspiracy theory. Her Aug. 25 column A lesson on QAnon for teachers to use in class includes updated information about QAnon’s resurgence in recent days. The next day blogger The Big Education Ape Blogspot  picked up the column.

The role of a free press in a democracy was the topic of discussion between NLP founder and CEO Alan Miller and former Library of Congress Publishing Office writer/editor Linda Barrett Osborne during a Poetry & Prose Live event Aug. 20. The virtual discussion, Guardians of Liberty: Freedom of the Press and the Nature of News,  explored how the First Amendment right to a free press has been essential to a functioning democracy throughout American history.

On Aug. 20 The School Library Journal included news of NLP expansion efforts: News Literacy Project Creating Educator Network and Offering Free Checkology.

Veteran tech reporter and NLP board member Walt Mossberg discusses whether social media platforms finally understand the dis/misinformation crisis, how guardianship of literacy could be enacted, and why users need to take more responsibility on the Aug. 20 episode of The Open Mind podcast It Didn’t (and Doesn’t) Have to Be This Way.

In the piece Misinformation in MT Impacting November Election NLP’s Senior Vice President of Education Peter Adams discusses how misinformation can target elections, in this case in Montana, but in any state or nation. “Our religious faith, our patriotism, our care and concern for our community, our desire for justice – and weaponize those in a way that is intended to make us have a strong emotional reaction to a false claim,” Adams notes.

John Silva, NLP’s senior director of education and training, talks about Navigating Misinformation in the Time of COVID-19 in Flipboard’s Aug. 19 educators blog. “What we don’t talk about enough is that while we are self-isolating and social distancing, we can’t maintain our social connections. So we are turning to social media to maintain those connections, and social media is where so much of this misinformation is so easily spread,” Silva notes. He offers simple steps and overall guidance for avoiding misinformation and determining the credibility of information and sources regarding the coronavirus and any other topic.

Ebonee Rice, vice president of NLP’s educator network, offers advice in the Mozilla Foundation’s Aug. 17 installment of the Instagram series, Misinfo Monday, on avoiding misinformation.

The segment How to Tell Fact from Crap in the Newsfeed includes important tips, such as remembering to “search your feelings” because misinformation likes to prey on emotions. The piece asks: “Have you ever shared an article before reading the whole thing? It’s because your emotions about the article led you astray.”

Rice advises: “It’s important to take a beat. When you see a piece of news that causes you to have an emotional reaction, such as laughter, anger or sorrow, take a minute. If something causes a visceral reaction, pause before your emotions take over and you share something immediately.”

Other guidance includes scrolling through story comments to see if other readers have fact-checked content or doing independent research. The piece concludes by asking the question: “So how can you make sure you don’t share something that’s misleading or even flat out wrong?”

In answering the question, Rice says, “whenever you’re emotional about something, just don’t share it in the moment. If you see an article that looks really interesting to you, bookmark it until you have the time to read through it. It’s not going anywhere!”

Kris Locker, recipient of NLP’s 2020 Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Award is featured in an article for Florida Gulf Coast University’s news site on Aug. 14. In the piece Journalism grad with knack for news literacy earns national award Locker describes the satisfaction applying what she learned in a news literacy class and teaching it to incoming students. “It was fascinating to see freshmen grow from what they thought about news to how they see it now,” she tells her alma mater. “I believe it is important to be open to having a conversation with someone who might think differently from you and be able to sit there together to find the facts about the topic.”

The podcast Inside the Chrysalis, which examines social and psychological concepts through the context of the real world, featured NLP’s Peter Adams  in its Aug. 7 episode. In the segment These Kids Don’t Play: Anxiety About Bias in the Media, host Michelle Quist talks with Peter and mental health professional Maliha Khan.

NLP’s John Silva gave the presentation What It Means to be News-literate: Key Skills to be Reliably Informed for Long Beach Public Media on Aug. 5. The segment was part of its Citizens Media Series under the theme of Know Your Power: Know Your News.

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, presented a webinar on strategies for detecting misinformation for the School Library Journal on Aug. 5 that prompted more questions than Peter could answer during the segment.  SLJ asked him to address some of those in  a Q & A for its website, which he does in Peter Adams Fields Seven Questions About Misinformation and “Fake News.”

Gary Vaynerchuk speaks with NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller on the VaynerMedia show “VaynerX Presents: Marketing for the Now.”

Miller brings a unique and welcome voice to the segment, speaking on how news literacy skills can help everyone stay reliably informed. “Check your emotions,” Miller says. “If it’s making you angry or fearful or sad, that’s often when we drop our critical thinking skills.” Watch Miller’s full interview.

This Northern Public Radio segment Social Media Has Seen A Rise In Misinformation During COVID-19. How Can You Learn To Spot It? with NLP’s Peter Adams makes important points about the impacts of misinformation. Anyone can experience the negative effects even if they do not share or believe the false content Peter says in the July 20 piece.

“People around you falling for misinformation vote in your communities, they vote in statewide and national elections, they can have an effect on you whether you get fooled or not. So, everyone should care.”

The EdSurge Podcast’s July 7 episode Fighting Misinformation in the Age of COVID-19 featured Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education.  Adams stressed the real harm that health misinformation can do. He also shared simple steps anyone can take to stop the spread of falsehoods and hoaxes.

In an op-ed published by the Poynter Institute on July 6, Alan Miller wrote about the distressing loss of hundreds of newspapers across the nation and the impact those losses have on local communities. His piece Give local journalism a fighting chance by creating a demand for it, makes the case that we need to educate the next generation about news literacy to create an appreciation and a demand for quality journalism:

“Local newspaper reporters who doggedly attend school board, planning commission and city council meetings and who scan police blotters and pore over budgets and contracts are essential cogs in our communities. They serve as the eyes and ears of the public and play a critical role as watchdogs for waste, fraud and abuse and holding officials accountable.

“I know this firsthand: I began what became a nearly three-decade journalism career playing this role in Colonie, New York, and later in Bergen County, New Jersey.

“Strong local news outlets also help to strengthen civic life, encouraging people to become involved in their communities and serving as virtual town squares. In fact, as the COVID-19 crisis continues, a new Pew Research survey found Americans believe local news outlets are more credible sources of information about the pandemic than the news media in general.

“Yet, these vital institutions are being lost in one community after another as financial losses force local newspapers to close their doors or thin their ranks.”

You can read the entire piece on Poynter’s website.

NLP’s 2020 Educator of the Year Patricia Hunt is featured in the June 25 article, Wakefield High School Teacher Honored for News Literacy Efforts, on ARLNow. The news website covering Arlington, Va., quotes Hunt, a local educator, and NLP CEO and founder Alan C. Miller. It also links to the video of the award presentation,

The nonprofit Connect Safely’s June 16 webcast, hosted by journalist Larry Magid and author Kerry Gallagher, features NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller. The discussion centers on why media literacy is more important than ever, as well as misinformation on social media in general and particularly regarding COVID19. The live segment was recorded on Facebook.

NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller discusses our  confusing digital information age on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ podcast After the Fact. During the June 12 segment, The Infodemic, Miller tells listeners: “We’re living in the most complex information landscape in human history.” He then shares ideas on how we can navigate an overwhelming stream of information, most of it false or misleading, and become fact-checkers ourselves.

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, bridges a 13-hour time difference to take questions from children in Australia on the podcast Real Kids Real Questions. Children host the program, which addresses topics kids in the listening audience suggest. During the June 7 episode Why ‘fake news’ is bad news, Peter answers questions about what ‘fake news’ really means, how to identify credible reporting and trustworthy sources, and why politicians use the misleading term.

NLP’s Senior Vice President of Education Peter Adams and Jane Lytvynenko, senior reporter covering disinformation and security for BuzzFeed News discuss misinformation related to racial injustice protests on the WAMU program 1A. In the June 4 segment, How To Identify Misinformation About The Protests, they address conspiracy theories, disinformation and the role of social media. “There are a lot of well-intentioned folks out there who amplify misinformation,” Adams tells listeners

The latter part of the segment featured Ben Collins, NBC News reporter, and Kevin Roose, New York Times tech columnist. 1A is a syndicated NPR show devoted to that day’s most pressing issues and takes its name from the First Amendment.

In a June 1 USA Today article, Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, discusses the hoaxes, fabrications, manipulated content and other protest misinformation proliferating on social media about widespread demonstrations against racial injustice. The protests were sparked by the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police on May 25. MSN News also published the piece, George Floyd protests: How to avoid disinformation and misinformation on Facebook and Twitter.

In a May 21 segment for Newsy, QAnon Conspiracy Movement Gains Followers In Uncertain Times, NLP’s Darragh Worland discusses the rise of the far-right QAnon claims. The movement is based around the theory that President Donald Trump is bringing about a “great awakening” and will expose prominent political figures — the Deep State — for child abuse and political cover-ups. “Our democracy cannot really function the way it is supposed to in a world in which conspiracy theories are on equal footing in the marketplace of ideas with your credible information and reporting,” Worland says.

Peter Adams, senior vice president of education at NLP, took part in the May 14 webinar Critical Thinking in the Age of Fake News hosted by the School Library Journal (SLJ) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). He was joined by panelists Renee DiResta, research manager at Stanford University Internet Observatory, and Jennifer LaGarde, an educator and the co-author of Fact vs. Fiction: Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News. SLJ also posted the article The Importance of Critical Thinking in the Age of Fake News, based on the segment, to its website on May 19.

Critical Thinking in the Age of Fake News

Damaso Reyes, a former NLP staff member now working as a consultant from Barcelona, Spain, discusses the current misinformation landscape in the May 19 segment of Here and There with Dave Marsh on KFSR, Santa Fe’s public radio station. It was Reyes’ fourth appearance on the program discussing news literacy issues.

The viral conspiracy theory video Plandemic led to a wider discussion of how to identify credible news stories during a May 15 segment of Metrofocus, a program on WNET/New York Public Media. In an interview with reporter Jenna Flanagan, NLP’s John Silva explains how false stories gain traction and offered advice on how parents can model responsible news consumption habits. “If I was going to say something specifically to parents — and this is something I try to practice with my son — it’s that we need to practice these habits ourselves of fact-checking and verifying things … and modeling that for our kids,” he tells viewers.

The Netherlands-based Coachability Foundation invited Darragh Worland, NLP’s senior vice president of creative services, to present a webinar on “The Role of News Literacy at the Entrepreneurial Journey” May 8. This event was part of Coachability Foundation’s mission to empower female entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and abroad.

South Carolina Public Radio’s May 7 program, An Rx for BS: A Look at Media Literacy in Crisis Mode, focuses on the hazards of encountering  COVID-19 pandemic misinformation and disinformation —much of it dangerous. The program includes tips from the News Literacy Project for identifying potential red flags when scrolling social media, or anywhere a person might consume information.