Paul Saltzman, the investigative news editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, has a simple answer when asked whether the public has a solid understanding of what “news judgment” means.

“No,” said Saltzman, who has volunteered with the News Literacy Project since 2011 and is the host of the “What Is News?” lesson in NLP’s Checkology^® virtual classroom. “People tend to understand how their own worlds work, but not so much how other people’s worlds do.”

Saltzman, who joined the Sun-Times in 1999 and has held a variety of positions in the newsroom, used an example from his reporting days to illustrate how we can be unaware of the fact that what is second nature to us can mystify others. He was interviewing a neurosurgeon who explained for over an hour, in detail, a relatively new type of brain surgery.

But the surgeon left out the first step: how he opens a patient’s skull to reach the brain.

“So I asked,” Saltzman said. “‘I know this has to be the most elementary thing to you, but how do you get through the skull to do that?’ And he said, ‘With a drill — actually, one that’s kind of similar, though far more delicate and specialized, to the drills you might use in woodworking.’”

A moment of clarity

That experience helped Saltzman realize something about his own profession and the importance of teaching young people how journalism actually works.

“What we do is hardly brain surgery,” he said. “But I’ve found that most people who don’t do this work for a living have as little clue about how we do it as I did about doing brain surgery.

“And why would they — unless we do something to help them see, preferably at an age when their views on things haven’t begun to harden yet, that it matters?” he said. “And it matters even if they’re never going to be journalists themselves.”

His advice for students as they wade through the massive amounts of information they encounter every day? “First, pay attention. Read and watch a lot of news — because even if journalists aren’t trying to spin you, one might view a particular aspect of a story as the most important or most interesting and another might see things very differently.”

Next, he said, “Look at sourcing. I would advise anyone to look at news stories a little like I do — trying to take them apart and figure out where and how the reporter got the information that’s being presented so you can get a better idea of whether that’s trustworthy information.”

The ‘Big Four’

A lot has happened in the world of information since Saltzman began volunteering for NLP eight years ago. Social media has exploded as a conduit of both fact and fiction. There have never been more voices and more sources of information (and misinformation).

So what, in 2019, is actual news? What needs to be reported to the public, and what should be ignored? That is at the center of “What Is News?,” in which Saltzman asks students to imagine that they are journalists and have to decide, out of everything that is happening on a given day, “what counts as ‘news’ that day.” The lesson guides students through an exercise in which they try to identify which of two events is more newsworthy.

Saltzman concludes the lesson by going over what he refers to as the “Big Four” factors of news judgment:

• How timely is it?
• How important is it for the public?
• How interesting is it?
• Is it unusual enough to warrant attention?

“If something happens every day, then it stops being news,” Saltzman says in the lesson. “If dog bites man, that’s not news. If man bites dog — now that’s news.”

This decision-making process — determining what, exactly, is “news” on any given day — is, to Saltzman, one of the biggest misunderstandings the public has about journalists: that the topics, events or people that are reported on are chosen because of a reporter’s or an outlet’s interests.

“That journalists have an agenda and selectively choose the facts that fit their point of view — that’s not how straight news reporting works,” he said. “But I know there are some people who think that’s how we do things.” Even with opinion columns, he added, “I’m more likely to be persuaded if the writers have the facts to back up what they’re saying.”

Finally, Saltzman said, there’s a skill that most journalists have that can help students become more informed, discerning and responsible consumers of information.

“Be skeptical, but not cynical,” he said. “It’s foolish to take what anyone reports — or what any politician says — just on faith, without the facts or evidence to back up what they say. But I think it has to be a hard life to be such a cynic that you don’t believe anything, even when you’re shown the evidence to prove it.”

The growing contagion of online misinformation should serve as a national wake-up call: We need a new ethos of personal responsibility about the news and other information that we trust — and that we share.

Each of us needs to be inoculated against the viruses being spread in this pandemic and become part of the solution, instead of mindlessly aggravating the problem. The stakes are nothing less than the health of our democracy and the future of the country’s civic life.

It isn’t simply a clever turn of phrase when we talk about content going viral: Just as the measles virus is spreading rapidly both across the U.S. and around the world, with reported cases up 300% from this time last year, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, rumors and outright falsehoods proliferate on social media platforms, multiplying with each like, share and retweet.

In fact, those platforms are, in part, responsible for the resurgence of measles — a disease that, while potentially deadly, is highly preventable, thanks to a safe and effective vaccine. (It was even declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.) In recent years, though, the “anti-vaxxer” movement has used social media to spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines, and millions of people have made health care decisions for their children based on the conspiracy theories and debunked pseudo-science promoted in these posts.

This is one especially unfortunate example of the internet as an echo chamber: We are increasingly inclined to accept as credible the news and social media posts that align with our beliefs and to dismiss content that contradicts our beliefs as biased, or even “fake.” This tendency to see the news through such prisms makes us more vulnerable to content that plays to our biases, exploits our vulnerabilities and further widens our divisions.

Continue reading on Medium.

Cristy Menor, a sophomore at the University of California, Riverside, is majoring in sociology and minoring in education, but you could say that she’s doing an unofficial minor in news literacy, too. This first-generation college student prides herself on her fact-checking know-how and has adeptly helped her family and friends become more responsible consumers of information.

She encountered NLP’s Checkology^® virtual classroom during the last semester of her senior year at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, California — a private school that focuses on students who would be the first in their families to attend college. English teacher Stacy Arevalo, whose Senior Research Institute class teaches academic research and writing skills and develops critical thinking, had just started using the platform as part of the curriculum.

“It was perfect for what we were looking for, and it was actually much more engaging than we even expected,” Arevalo said. “And the students loved it. It was this really great way to close out their senior year in my class, about wrapping up their learning and sending them off into the world with that knowledge.”

A ripple effect at home

One reason the students were so engaged, Arevalo said, was because they could take what they were learning back to their families, many of whom were immigrants. Menor was 11 when she and her mother came to the U.S. from the Philippines; her father followed two years later.

“It was a really neat bridge to their families and friends, many of whom don’t have a college education,” Arevalo said. “And here they are getting ready to go to college and being able to share these real skills with family members who don’t necessarily have access to that same kind of learning.”

It didn’t take many Checkology lessons for Menor to begin talking with her parents, other family members and friends about what they were seeing on social media. Provided the tools and guidance to tell fact from fiction on the internet, she set out to make sure those around her also appreciate the value of not being fooled by misinformation.

For example, she took screenshots of questionable social media content “pretty much every day during the whole unit,” Arevalo said. She scrolled through Instagram feeds with her peers and pointed out posts that seemed like harmless pictures of women drinking smoothies but were actually targeted ads promoting the drinks for weight loss. And she encouraged her family and friends to check out anything they were unsure about at FactCheck.org or Snopes.com.

“They ask me how to do certain things and take in social media and news and stuff, with the impression that I’m going to check it out and talk to them about it,” Menor said. “It just gives us this room and this place, this open space for us — different generations, different mindsets — to be open because we can use news literacy units to have that conversation.”

From student to teacher

She still talks with her former English teacher about college lectures and current events. If her mother shares a questionably sourced article, Menor is quick to text Arevalo about it with a message such as “Oh, my gosh, my mom shared this post and she didn’t even realize where it’s from and now all my aunties are commenting on it on Facebook and I had to tell them.”

In a way, Menor is acting as a teacher to help family members who have spent the majority of their lives far from the United States better understand the world they now live in — both through the lens of the U.S. history that she learned in school and through current events.

“I’m learning NOT ONLY for myself, but para sa aking pamilya rin (for my family as well),” she told NLP in an email. “They didn’t receive the same opportunities that I am now receiving. They’re trying their best to actively engage with the news, understand the news, and they truly want to learn.”

And Cristy Menor is more than happy to help, using the skills she learned through Checkology.

Rumormongers and perpetrators of hoaxes online work hard to deceive people, but they are no match for the journalism students at The Morgan School, a public high school in Clinton, Connecticut.

Their teacher, Leslie Chausse, uses the News Literacy Project’s Checkology^® virtual classroom to develop their critical-thinking skills and hone their journalism chops.

“There is so much information to sort through online. It’s hard,” said Chausse, whose 25 years of teaching experience includes 13 at The Morgan School. “I like that Checkology helps them to do that. It gives them a greater awareness of what they are hearing and reading, and they question it more.”

Every day, she said, “they take what they are learning and apply it.”

Verification tools

Recently, in connection with the Checkology lesson “Arguments & Evidence,” her students examined real social media posts to determine their credibility. They used digital verification tools, such as reverse image searches, before deciding whether the claims made in the posts were supported by strong evidence, some evidence, no evidence or not enough evidence to decide. They then explained how they made their decisions.

The first post they examined featured a photo of a “Forest in Poland [with] 400 pine trees all growing at a 90-degree angle facing north, and nobody knows why.” The students were asked if there was sufficient evidence to support the post’s assertion that there is no way to explain why the trees grow that way — and were immediately skeptical.

“There is only one picture, not multiple ones, and the trees in the background look straight,” said senior Isabella Mongillo.

A classmate suggested that the trees (whose bases were pictured growing in a sideways U curve before eventually straightening up) might have been manipulated with photo editing software. Using Google’s reverse image search, several students found the photo but no additional images or supporting text. A search on Snopes.com turned up no information to verify or debunk the post.

Not enough evidence

After some discussion, students decided that there was not enough evidence to judge the post as credible. As students followed along on laptops, Chausse clicked to the next screen (displayed on a large whiteboard), which revealed that while the photo was indeed real, the students were correct in determining that the post offered no evidence to support its claim that no one knows why the trees grow that way.

As the students moved from one post to the next, they regarded images and text with skepticism, looking for clues to credibility within each photo — including where and when it was taken — and searching for verification of text from multiple sources.

“What’s the point of this?” Chausse asked as her students closed their laptops and grabbed their backpacks at the end of class. “Check your sources. Make sure you are careful about what you are looking at online.”

Habits for life

She said her students put the skills they have learned in Checkology to use as they report on school news for The Pawprint, the school’s online newspaper, and manage the school’s social media platforms.

“It’s definitely opened my eyes a little more,” John Inglis, a senior who writes for The Pawprint, said of Checkology. “It makes me want to make sure information is right. I’ve learned how to do that better and do my own research.”

Chausse said the lesson on social media platforms’ use of algorithms to filter what we see online really resonated with her students. They also have gained an awareness of the larger impact of misinformation on society.

“That’s really important,” she said. “They see what is out there and how it is shaping our country, and they understand the repercussions. They can see it in how people vote.”

‘Don’t be a sheep’

John has advice for anyone navigating today’s complex information landscape: “Don’t be a sheep. Don’t believe everything you read or see.”

Isabella also helps her mother to vet what she sees online. “I look at things with her, check it with her. I look for something reliable,” she said.

These classmates also aren’t shy about correcting anyone who shares misinformation. “If I see something that’s blatantly incorrect and false, I’ll give them the facts,” John said.

Their actions are evidence that these students aren’t simply outsmarting the purveyors of misinformation; they’re actively joining the fight for facts.

I am extremely pleased to share some exciting news: Apple announced today that it has selected the News Literacy Project to play a central role in a new initiative supporting leading nonprofit organizations that provide nonpartisan news literacy programs in the United States and in Italy.

Apple’s investment in our work represents the largest corporate contribution in our history. We are deeply grateful for the company’s commitment to fighting misinformation and sustaining quality journalism.

Through this initiative, the News Literacy Project will receive a significant contribution and ongoing support from Apple. This will enable us to scale up our programs and resources — specifically, the Checkology^® virtual classroom, our signature e-learning platform; The Sift, our free weekly newsletter for educators; and our Newsroom to Classroom program, which will connect journalists with educators who are registered to use Checkology Premium and will start later this year.

This will also help us build momentum to achieve the goal in our strategic plan — that by 2022, we will build a network of 20,000 practitioners who, using our programs and resources, teach news literacy skills to at least 3 million middle school and high school students each year and support the adoption of news literacy into the American education experience.​

We welcome Apple’s collaboration in our efforts to give facts a fighting chance.

 

Today, on International Women’s Day, we honor a pioneer in investigative journalism: Nellie Bly.

Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in western Pennsylvania in 1864, Bly began her newspaper career when she was only 20, covering women’s rights, child labor, dangerous conditions for factory workers and social justice reform for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. But when her articles angered some of the paper’s largest advertisers, the Dispatch assigned her to “women’s news” — and she left. She traveled to Mexico, where her reports on poverty and corruption so displeased the Mexican government that she had to leave the country.

Undeterred, she headed to New York City, where she landed a job at the New York World. For her first assignment, she feigned insanity and was sent to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island). With neither staff nor patients aware that she was a reporter, Bly took careful notes on what she witnessed, including the staff’s treatment of patients, the food and clothing provided and the practices of the institution’s administrators.

The instructions she got from her editor were these: “Write up things as you find them, good or bad; give praise or blame as you think best, and the truth all the time.”

That’s what Bly did. She described how a nurse refused her a nightgown during her first night as a patient. She noted how several patients were physically, not mentally, ill. Some, she found, were immigrants who were there only because they couldn’t speak English. She concluded that the environment drove even mentally healthy patients to the point of insanity because of the poor conditions and treatment.

Grand jury investigation

Bly’s articles led to significant change. She had reported the truth, and it spurred a grand jury investigation. In the book Ten Days in a Mad-House, a collection of her reports, she wrote: “Since my experiences in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum were published in the World … the City of New York has appropriated $1,000,000 more per annum than ever before for the care of the insane. So I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the poor unfortunates will be the better cared for because of my work.”

She earned a reputation as a muckraker, uncovering stories that people in power didn’t want exposed: corruption in the state government, the treatment of women held in police jails and the exploitation of young women by false “job-training programs,” to name a few. She also gained worldwide fame through her quest to travel around the world faster than the character Phineas Fogg did in Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days. (She did it in 72.)

Nellie Bly set a tremendous example for future generations of women in journalism who hold public officials and institutions accountable. The role of the press as democracy’s watchdog has never been more important, and reflecting on trailblazers such as Bly helps us understand why.

Learn more about Bly in “Democracy’s Watchdog,” a lesson in our Checkology® virtual classroom.

Judy Bryson, a library media teacher in the Rialto (California) Unified School District, believes that news literacy is critical to student success inside and outside the classroom.

“If students are going to advocate for themselves and become empowered citizens, they need to know where to find quality, trustworthy information,” she says.

When teaching news literacy, Bryson uses the Checkology® virtual classroom, the cutting-edge e-learning platform developed by the News Literacy Project.

Checkology includes 13 lessons (plus one translated into Spanish) that enable educators to equip students with the tools to evaluate and interpret what they read, watch and hear so they know what to trust, share and act on.

“Each time I viewed a new lesson, I found myself saying ‘Wow! This is just the point I was trying to make with my library lesson last year/week/period,’” Bryson says.

News literacy for all

News literacy, she says, is especially important for students who get little exposure to credible news and information — so she purchased Checkology licenses with a grant for underserved communities from the Harman Family Foundation.

“While families in Rialto may have access to the San Bernardino Sun, the Los Angeles Times and a variety of magazines at their libraries and at newsstands, few actually buy subscriptions,” she says.

“Priorities for the family budget are more pressing elsewhere. If students consume the news at all, it is often via social media or clickbaited headlines.”

How she uses Checkology

Bryson, an educator for 12 years, works with teachers to integrate library and research skills into a variety of curricula, including English, multimedia production, AVID and digital media. She says students often don’t know how to determine the credibility of sources and content.

Checkology remedies that. “I routinely help students with research projects by teaching them how to evaluate sources,” she says. “The ‘InfoZones’ lesson dovetails nicely with my lessons on identifying the purpose of the author.”

She also appreciates Checkology’s online scoring features and gradebook, which let her see how well students are doing.

The lesson “Practicing Quality Journalism” reinforces instruction on source reliability and authority.

“I loved how it illustrated the process that newspapers go through as opposed to an individual posting news on their personal blog,” she says, noting that she has used it to help journalism students complete their coursework.

“I don’t think the students — and many of the teachers — realize the rigor that news agencies apply to their work in order to assure a quality product.”

Student experiences

As they work through the platform’s lessons, students earn rewards and badges as incentives, she says. And Checkology’s relevant, real-world examples and high-quality presentation of videos, memes and graphics keep them engaged.

Once they complete their Checkology lessons, Bryson interviews her students, who confront their own vulnerability to misinformation, hoaxes and manipulated content.

“I was surprised that even the most tech-savvy among them were incredibly trusting of the media they consumed,” she says. “They knew that unreliable and ‘fake’ material was out there in cyberspace, but it only fooled other people, not them.”

Checkology, she says, showed them that they were wrong.

New to Checkology? Here are some of Bryson’s tips for success:

• Work closely with your information technology team to be sure the platform works flawlessly before you dive in.
• Preview everything ahead of time so you can select the best lessons for your objectives and adjust your other lesson plans to complement the Checkology materials.
• Keep a file of login information. Students will forget their usernames and passwords.
• Teach students to use their dashboards and give them time for do-overs. They will improve as they gain experience with the format.
• Develop discussion questions for the videos and graphics in advance. This is where you can really align Checkology with library standards and objectives. Realize that, with discussion, lessons may not fit in one class period; the platform does offer a space for individual feedback.

NLP has created a free, comprehensive guide to developing news literacy education programs that can be downloaded free from our website.

Give Facts a Fighting Chance: A Global Playbook for Teaching News Literacy is designed to help organizations worldwide begin or expand news literacy programs to help counter the relentless spread of misinformation and disinformation. The guide was created with funding from the Facebook Journalism Project.

“We believe that news literacy education is the most effective approach to stemming the global pandemic of misinformation,” said Alan C. Miller, founder and CEO of the News Literacy Project. “The Global Playbook distills what the News Literacy Project has learned in a decade in news literacy education into a practical resource for developing programs that will succeed.”

“Making news literacy education accessible around the world is critical to combating the spread of misinformation,” said Julia Bain of Facebook’s News Partnerships division. “The Global Playbook is a valuable new asset to the news literacy ecosystem and will help support an informed community.”

The Global Playbook provides a road map for developing a news literacy education curriculum, including advice on the logistics of establishing a program, ideas for building engaging and culturally relevant lessons, and the importance of assessing results.

It offers a brief history of misinformation, disinformation and “fake news,” using real-world examples, and discusses the standards of quality journalism and the vital role of the press in a free society. It also includes a collection of best practices in news literacy education, along with a listing of geographically relevant news literacy resources.

The poem “Invocation” by Elizabeth Alexander — engraved on a granite slab in the sculpture garden of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama — includes this line: “There is such a thing as the truth.”

Even as we celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of African Americans during Black History Month, the country is still grappling with the truth surrounding the bitter legacy of slavery and the lingering reality of racism.

The NLP team confronted that reality last month when we converged on Montgomery from our homes in eight states and the District of Columbia. The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice — projects of the Equal Justice Initiative — are a powerful reckoning of the central role of slavery, lynchings, racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, and the mass incarceration and police shootings of African Americans.

For me, the primary revelation was the scale, duration and nature of the lynchings of more than 4,000 Black men, women and children that the Equal Justice Initiative documented between 1877 and 1950. Many of the allegations against the victims — largely unsupported by any inquiry and unproven by any court — were trivial “offenses,” such as not addressing a White person with sufficient respect or “standing around” in a White neighborhood. Wives were lynched for protesting the murders of their husbands. Women and children were killed when husbands and fathers could not be found. The lynchings and burnings often became public spectacles with hundreds or even thousands of spectators, including children, looking on in a carnival-like atmosphere, with postcards depicting the killings sold to commemorate the event. And they continued until 1950 — 85 years after the end of the Civil War.

Incredibly, only 8 percent of high school seniors in the U.S. know that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War, according to a 2018 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. As we reflected on our experience at the museum and the memorial, one staff member who had taught social studies for several years shared the challenge of conveying the truth about U.S. history to his high school students, particularly given the textbooks he had to use and the requirements of state standards. “In a lot of ways, it is a very ugly and bloody history,” he said. “But we whitewash it. And I use that term very deliberately. We sanitize it. I hated teaching U.S. history. We could never do it in a way that was authentic to my students” on Chicago’s South Side.

At the News Literacy Project, we are firmly committed to empowering people to find the facts — and in our time in Montgomery, we found tangible connections both to our mission and to the ways that we could apply the lessons we were learning. One staff member commented on the pervasiveness of misinformation, myths and propaganda about Blacks during the era of slavery and the decades that followed. Another noted the role of the news media, which was both being shaped by and helping to shape the norms and values of the time, in propagating false narratives and even inciting people to violence. We discussed the power of language, such as the dehumanizing term “slave” versus the more descriptive “enslaved person,” and how word choice can shape a point of view.

And we recognized the similarities to the time we live in now: Elaborate false narratives and provocative language bombard us from all directions from online platforms, social media trolls and an information ecosystem that too often rewards dehumanizing behavior — including racial and religious violence and hatred.

Together, we examined some excruciatingly painful realities about our nation’s history. We emerged with a renewed commitment to give today’s students the ability to discern fact from fiction in the world around them. There is, after all, such a thing as the truth.

I have some deeply gratifying news to share: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded NLP $5 million in support to expand our news literacy education programs in the United States. This generous support is part of a five-year, $300 million initiative that Knight Foundation announced today.  

The imperative for this bold investment in strengthening journalism is clear — and is revalidated in a new study, Crisis in Democracy: Renewing Trust in America. This report, produced by the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy through a partnership of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and Knight Foundation, focuses on the intersection of the distrust in American democratic institutions and in journalism and illustrates how distrust of one fuels distrust of the other. 

These findings in particular stand out to me: that “almost 6 out of 10 (58 percent) adult Americans said the increase in information available today makes it harder for them to be well-informed” and that “just 41 percent of Americans were confident in their ability to navigate the news environment to remain knowledgeable on current events and determine what is factually true.” 

Indeed, today we have greater access to credible information than at any other time in human history. But the inability to sort fact from faction breeds distrust in quality journalism and other democratic institutions, including our government.  

In short, the health of our democracy hangs in the balance. That’s why news literacy is a vital, urgently needed skill that must be taught in our schools. 

As NLP’s founder, I’m particularly grateful for such a significant investment by Knight, which has already played a crucial role in NLP’s creation and development. In 2008, it provided the funding that allowed me to launch this organization. In 2016, it helped us expand the use of our Checkology® virtual classroom. Its continued support for NLP’s growth is tangible validation of the utmost importance of our mission, as well as recognition of our proven, scalable approach to news literacy education.  

I look to the coming years with hope that our collective impact will continue to make a difference in how young people engage with, share and act on information. With this funding, we are taking a giant leap toward achieving an ambitious goal: that by 2022, we will build a community of 20,000 practitioners who, through our programs and resources, teach news literacy skills each year to 3 million middle school and high school students (10 percent of the middle school and high school population) and support the adoption of news literacy into the American education experience. 

As part of that effort, Knight’s support will help broaden the reach of our NewsLitCamps® — NLP’s signature professional development workshops for middle school and high school educators — to 26 cities, beginning in April with events in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Miami. We host these in partnership with news organizations, giving educators real-life, real-time insights from journalists in their communities. 

This grant, the largest in NLP’s 11-year history, represents more than 20 percent of our operating expenses through 2022. We know that it would not have been possible without our committed supporters who — long before “misinformation” and “disinformation” became part of our lexicon — recognized the critical importance of a news-literate population.  

Together, we are giving facts a fighting chance.

No, we’re not talking about the nominees for a Razzie — a parody award “celebrating” the worst in film. In the world of misinformation, a “bad actor” is a type of social media account that spreads misinformation and often causes confrontation. Examples of these accounts include trolls, bots and sockpuppets, and all of them can make it difficult to identify legitimate sources of political discourse.

One recent example comes from the tense interaction at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 18 involving students from Kentucky’s Covington Catholic High School, a group of Black Hebrew Israelites and a Native American elder with a drum. Though many Twitter accounts had videos of the incident, this short clip and comment by @2020fight (the account has since been deleted) ignited a viral controversy:

This tweet shaped much of the discussion that soon followed, including the initial news reports about the confrontation. (For an excellent rundown, see the Jan. 28 issue of The Sift, our weekly newsletter for educators.)

But as more details and context emerged, reporters — and others — took a closer look at the @2020fight Twitter account. (See, for example, this Twitter thread from Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab.) The account, created in December 2016, contained a highly partisan (and likely manipulated and, to many, offensive) political image in its header, described the user as a “Teacher and Advocate” from California and included a link to the site Teachers Pay Teachers, an online marketplace for teacher-created educational materials. But the profile photo wasn’t of a teacher from California; it was of a blogger from Brazil — and three days after the viral tweet was posted, Twitter suspended the account.

It’s still not known whether the account was actually a person, a sockpuppet or an automated account in a “bot” network (or, as Nimmo suggests, a combination). In any case, here are things you can look for to determine whether an account may be a “bad actor,” actively spreading misinformation or sowing discord.

What is a “troll”? This describes a person who deliberately posts offensive, inflammatory, highly partisan content in order to provoke people. Trolls will often write posts and join discussions for the sole purpose of causing conflict. In an article for Psychology Today, Jesse Fox, an associate professor at Ohio State University’s School of Communication, suggests that trolls cultivate their online personalities for a variety of reasons, including the perception of relative privacy or anonymity — and hence a lack of consequences — online.

To determine whether you’re dealing with a troll, look at the history of the account. Does it regularly post content that is inflammatory, offensive or highly partisan? Are the images designed to anger or offend? Do posts on the account use disparaging language directed at specific people? These are all warning signs on accounts by trolls, and by other bad actors as well.

What is a “sockpuppet”? This type of impostor account involves the creation of a false online identity, often to influence opinion about a person or organization with the intention of making it seem like the account is not affiliated in any way with that person or organization.

If the content of the posts are overly flattering about or defensive of a person, organization or cause, you might be looking at a sockpuppet, especially if there is a lot of negative attention being directed at that person, organization or cause. (An example would be an author who creates fake accounts to leave positive reviews of his book on Amazon.)

What is a “bot”? Bots are “automated user accounts that interact with Twitter using an application programming interface (API).” Think of it as a computer program that is designed to post content automatically according to a set of guidelines, without human intervention.

Generally, if you’re trying to determine whether an account is human-powered or automated, any account that posts more than 50 times a day should be met with skepticism. If you hover your cursor over the “joined” date on Twitter (see image below), you can see the exact time and date the account was created. Using a little math with the number of tweets posted, you can get a general sense of how many tweets a day/week/month the account posts.

Let’s look more closely at @2020fight’s Twitter account, saved through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. In a little over two years — from Dec. 3, 2016 (when it was created), to Jan. 20, 2019 (when the account holder announced “a little Twitter break”) — it averaged 84 posts and 139 likes a day. (That said, the account’s history reveals that its activity included both retweets with original comments and replies to others’ tweets, an indication that a human may actually have posted some of the content.) This contrasts with, as an example, the @USFreedomArmy account, which has posted over 450,000 tweets since December 2012 — an average of more than 200 tweets per day — but with few likes, replies or retweets.)

How do I check out an account to see if it is a bad actor? If what you’re reading causes a strong emotional reaction (especially a negative one), take some time to look deeper. The Digital Forensics Research Lab has an excellent online resource, “#BotSpot: Twelve Ways to Spot a Bot,” on Medium. And while it’s often impossible to state with complete certainty that an account is a bot, tools such as Botometer and Botcheck.me can be helpful. Also, since bad actors often have false information in the account profile, do a reverse image search on the profile photo and see if it appears elsewhere.

How do I report a bad actor account? The good news is that social media platforms are making it easier to report abusive behavior and accounts. Here are some key links.

• Report abusive behavior on Twitter.
• Report on Facebook.
• Report on Instagram.
• Report on Snapchat.

Recognizing the differences between legitimate and misleading (or even false) political and social discourse is an essential component of being a critical consumer of news and other information — and a constructive participant in the national conversation. Engaging bad actors online only serves to derail this vital civic activity.

As we celebrate Black History Month, we at the News Literacy Project have been reflecting on the important role that Black journalists have played as watchdogs of democracy, shining a light on wrongs and injustices throughout the course of our history.

One of the first was Ida B. Wells, featured in the “Democracy’s Watchdog” lesson in our Checkology^® virtual classroom.

Born into slavery in Mississippi during the Civil War, Wells used her position as the editor and co-owner of a Black newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee, to document lynchings across the South. Her commitment to this cause began in 1892, when a friend who owned a grocery that took business from a nearby White-owned store was lynched, along with two of his employees.

Through diligent investigation, Wells reported that Black men were being killed by mobs for minor offenses, such as failing to pay debts or being drunk in public; some were slain for simply failing to be deferential to Whites. She interviewed family members of victims and spoke to eyewitnesses. She learned that while the mostly White press was reporting (based on the statements of White public officials) that the lynchings were punishments for serious crimes, such as rapes of White women by Black men, the truth was far different.

After a mob destroyed her newspaper office, she left Memphis, eventually settling in Chicago, and described the horrors of lynchings on speaking tours across the United States and the United Kingdom. As any good investigative journalist does — whether a century ago or today — Wells gathered evidence of wrongdoing, put it into context, then shared it with the public. Her courageous work — which included an 1892 booklet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and an 1895 book, The Red Record, that documented lynchings through reported statistics — led to a much greater awareness of the scope of lynching and its horrors. “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them,” she said.

That commitment continues through the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, based at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. It was established in 2016 to train journalists of color in investigative reporting techniques and “to educate news organizations and journalists on how the inclusion of diverse voices can raise the caliber, impact and visibility of investigative journalism as a means of promoting transparency and good government.”

Learn more about Wells in our “Democracy’s Watchdog” lesson.

Last Sunday’s Super Bowl LIII may have disappointed fans who anticipated a high-scoring game. But those of us who value the role of a free press in our democracy were glad we were watching when an advertisement sponsored by The Washington Post aired late in the game.

It immediately got our attention. Actor Tom Hanks’ recognizable voice provided the narration for powerful images of enduring moments in American history: Soldiers storming a beach on D-Day. A civil rights protest. The moon landing. A flag-draped coffin in the Capitol rotunda.

Wesley Lowery, the host of our Checkology® virtual classroom lesson “Democracy’s Watchdog,” is shown in footage of journalists in harm’s way.

Photos of imprisoned and slain journalists — including Jamal Kashoggi, the Saudi global opinion contributor for The Post murdered in Turkey — appeared as the narration captured what is at stake when reporters pursue the truth on behalf of the public: “There is someone to gather the facts, to bring you the story, no matter the cost.”

At the News Literacy Project, we help students learn to recognize the standards of quality journalism, critically assess information, and understand and appreciate the role of a free press. Lessons in our Checkology virtual classroom specifically address these topics: “InfoZones” teaches students how to identify different types of information based on their primary purpose; “Democracy’s Watchdog” explains the role of the press in holding government accountable; and “Practicing Quality Journalism” lets students test their knowledge of the standards of responsible journalism as they take on the role of a reporter in a breaking news event.

The final words of the Post’s ad certainly resonate with us: “Because knowing empowers us; knowing helps us decide; knowing keeps us free.”

John Cannon, a middle school teacher in Damariscotta, Maine, has a unique — and enviable — student engagement issue. When he teaches news literacy using NLP’s Checkology®  virtual classroom, his students become so absorbed in the material that they often keep working past the day’s assignment.

“Students are immediately drawn in by the engaging format,” said Cannon, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade reading at Great Salt Bay Community School.

And that discovery has transformed how he teaches informational text — nonfiction excerpts intended to inform. Typically, it is difficult to maintain students’ interest, stamina and engagement with this material, but after seeing how students eagerly engage with information related to current events in Checkology, he now uses examples from the day’s news.

Cannon, an educator with 15 years of experience, said he first recognized the need for news literacy education in the classroom in 2010, when he moved to middle school from elementary school. In the middle school grades, students transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” — analyzing and evaluating text, rather than simply understanding it.

This is where nonfiction material stymies students. “It’s as if they’ve trusted informational texts all the way, so they struggle to develop this wider lens, one that includes point of view, secondary (connotative) meanings of words, and even their own political bias,” Cannon explained in an email exchange.

Developing that wider lens is key to teaching critical thinking while building students’ confidence in their ability to read the world around them. “Checkology ticks off both those boxes,” he said.

A Checkology veteran

Cannon has taught Checkology to more than 100 students in six classes over the past two years, starting with the original platform. He finds even greater value from the reimagined virtual classroom, released for the 2018-19 school year, which offers additional functions and features that appeal to both educator and student.

“I really appreciate the opportunity to customize lessons depending on my classes. I have a broad range of abilities and backgrounds, with some students needing more background and others needing to be pushed into more challenges,” he said.

He also likes the feature that allows busy teachers to quickly and easily comment on students’ work while also providing room for substantive feedback.

And his students have embraced the new reward system. “I’ve come to appreciate how motivating the badge and point system is for students. It keeps them focused and attentive and creates some lighthearted competition to buoy their interest,” he said.

Cannon uses other classwork to reinforce the skills gained from Checkology. “We look for examples of some of the many types of misinformation — specifically ones that have been blended together creatively,” he said. “It’s an authentic way to test out what they’ve learned!” 

This is important, he believes, as information overload can confuse and frustrate readers and further erode people’s confidence in their own ability to determine fact from fiction.

“People are ready to say, ‘Forget it. It’s all biased, and I’m not even going to try and find a balanced source,’” Cannon said. “By supplying deeper background and a wealth of cases and examples, Checkology helps restore their belief in journalism, to see it as a vital tool to help prepare them to participate in our democracy.”

NLP is thrilled to offer heartiest congratulations to Liz Ramos, a high school teacher and a member of our board of directors, on being named Outstanding Secondary Level Social Studies Teacher of the Year by the California Council for the Social Studies (CCSS).

The Constitutional Rights Foundation of Los Angeles nominated Liz for the award, which recognizes educators whose classroom teachings and professional practices reflect the goals and purposes of an exemplary social studies education.

Liz told NLP that she was honored to receive the award, adding: “I strive to create a classroom and lessons that engage students, open the world up to them, and help them to become informed and engaged citizens. This is such an amazing time to be teaching with technology and resources that allow teachers to take the students beyond the classroom walls.”

She has taught history and U.S. government at Alta Loma High School in Rancho Cucamonga, California, since 2005. She actively integrates technology into her curriculum, emphasizing media and digital literacy, to help her students to seek information and to demonstrate what they have learned.

Liz began using NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom within weeks of its release in May 2016, first with students in summer school and then with her college prep and AP government classes in the fall. The platform, she says, has helped give all of her students “the tools to evaluate credible takes on a story, examine and understand the various purposes of news and media, and to be aware of bias and deceit by providing a framework to question the news and social media postings and be critical thinkers for reference in life moving forward.”

She was a member of NLP’s strategic plan steering committee and joined the NLP board in 2017. She has attended our NewsLitCamp® professional development events in Los Angeles and Chicago and led a workshop that featured Checkology (“Empowering Students to Navigate Today’s Challenging Media Landscape”) at the National Council for the Social Studies’ annual conference in 2017.

Liz and the other award winners will be honored on March 15 at an event during the CCSS annual conference in San Jose.

 

 

In a previous post I described how debunking misinformation is a meaningful civic action. When we discuss misinformation, we often focus on the types that elicit strong emotional responses and are trying to influence political, social or cultural views. There is another common type of misinformation that we should be paying closer attention to: It’s called “engagement bait,” and, as the name implies, we engage with it often.

Engagement bait is a type of social media post that is designed to get you to interact with (seemingly) innocuous content through likes, follows, shares and comments. These posts are often created by accounts that have two specific goals in mind: First, build a large following for the account; then, monetize that following.

Here’s one example:

In this image, photo editing software was used to add the weapons. A reverse image search brings up several variations of the picture, along with a link to a Corgi owners discussion forum where the person who took the original photo talks about how it went viral.

As an account like this one accumulates followers, increases engagement and becomes more popular, the owner can use a service such as PaidPerTweet or SponsoredTweets to monetize its following through advertising. Eventually the owner can sell the account — and all of the followers it built up.

At this point you might be asking, “So what? Why should we care about fluff items about cute animals?” After all, these manipulated images of animals or nature scenes seem harmless enough. Social media platforms routinely serve us ads anyway, so we probably don’t notice.

But beware: Some engagement bait posts can leave you vulnerable to identity theft.

Many of us have been tagged by friends to answer questions about ourselves: What was the first concert you went to? What color was your first car? “Tag baiting” is another type of engagement bait, and it counts on you and your friends tagging each other, either in the comments of a post or in a post you share on your timeline, so that the post spreads from friend to friend.

What you may not realize while sharing fun facts about yourself is that many of these seemingly innocent questions are remarkably similar to security questions for online banking and other secure accounts. If you get enough people to respond and share, you have a gold mine of personal information.

In December 2017, Facebook announced that it was taking steps to address five specific types of engagement bait:

• Vote baiting: These often take advantage of Facebook’s reactions. Users will see two options (such as images) and are asked to “like for option 1, love for option 2.” The more people “vote,” the more popular the post appears, making it appear in more timelines. On Twitter this would be “like for option 1, retweet for option 2.”
• React baiting: This is similar to vote baiting, but usually only involves one example in the post.
• Share baiting: A post appears in your feed, asking you to “share” or “retweet” if you like it or agree with it. The more the post is shared or retweeted, the more popular it appears.
• Tag baiting: As noted above, a post asks you to tag a friend in the comments or share the post to your friend’s page. That makes the post appear in your friend’s news feed, where it encourages your friend to tag their friends. The more people get tagged, the more popular the post appears. (Seeing a pattern?)
• Comment baiting: A post asks you to write specific words or phrases in the comments section. As more people comment, the post appears to be more popular.

These types of posts try to leverage Facebook’s news feed algorithms to boost both more typical engagement bait posts (adorable animals, “amazing” nature photos, etc.) and posts for companies, products or services — often for unethical and sometimes illegal purposes. The same is true for Twitter and Instagram, though the engagement obviously varies by platform.

(Since that announcement, Facebook has expanded the demotion of “engagement bait” posts to include those written in 22 languages other than English. The company also is demoting comments that contain engagement bait, meaning that those comments are less likely to appear in users’ timelines.)

Sometimes, the engagement bait is being used to promote a legitimate business or a cause — a form of viral social media marketing. Here’s an example from the DC Extended Universe, promoting the movie Aquaman:

This post is designed to encourage people to follow the DCEU account and generate popularity through retweets — meaning the company doesn’t have to pay for it to be a promoted post on Twitter. Marketing efforts like this are common, but they’re still engagement bait.

Compare the DCEU promotion with this, however:

Several fake Lululemon accounts on Instagram posted an image advertising a fake brand ambassador program. This used a combination of engagement bait tactics, and it was widely shared by thousands of users. (In fact, Lululemon does have an ambassador program, but it is managed through individual stores — not online.) While the account that posted the original hoax no longer exists, the image it created continued to spread. (And the date can be manipulated, so this falsehood could continue into this year and beyond.)

Other social media platforms are also attempting to mitigate engagement bait. Last month, Twitter suspended the @oldpicsarchive account, which routinely posted images that were manipulated, were posted in false context or were complete fabrications. Such posts are debunked daily by accounts — such as @HoaxEye and @PicPedant— that follow engagement bait accounts and use digital forensics skills to debunk false images, hoaxes and other misinformation.

Understanding the difference among the various types of engagement bait is just as important as knowing how to identify news, opinion, propaganda, advertising, entertainment and raw information. It applies the same analysis skills to determine what is true and what is false. The Aquaman post is real, and that can be verified. The Lululemon post is not real, and that can also be verified. Many other forms of engagement bait use manipulated or fabricated images and other forms of misinformation to generate likes, shares and follows; these can also be verified using digital forensics and fact-checking skills.

With most forms of engagement bait, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is — so don’t like, share, follow, retweet or comment on it!

Messages and images that appear online, in print and on television strongly influence how people think about issues such as migration, according to Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education.

“People see different things in the way stories are reported, or in photos that are used to represent a situation or person,” Adams told Adam Strom of UCLA’s Re-imagining Migration project, noting that the way a group of migrants is identified in the media — as “an army” or as “a pilgrimage,” for example — can affect a reader’s or viewer’s perception. “If a piece of information causes you to have a strong emotional reaction, you need to be careful — because when our emotions are high, they can override our rational minds and cause us to miss key details.”

When David Teeghman, a teacher at Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School in Chicago, first heard about the Checkology® virtual classroom, it was a no-brainer: “I was like, ‘YES, this is a resource that my students need to have access to.’”

Navigating the information landscape these days is difficult enough for adults — and even more challenging for his students, many of whom had never seen The New York Times or The Washington Post and didn’t know the difference between an unreliable source and a credible one.

“These skills were missing in my students,” Teeghman said. “They would be susceptible to conspiracy theories, they couldn’t differentiate a real from a fake piece of content, they couldn’t tell when something had been manipulated or put in the wrong context — or had just been fabricated entirely.”

In the three years since he introduced Checkology in his classroom, Teeghman has noticed consistent improvement in his students’ ability to trust what he calls their “spidey sense” — the feeling that something isn’t right — and find the facts.

“The biggest challenge as a teenager about getting information is knowing if it’s real or not,” said Nayaisha Edmond, a student in Teeghman’s digital journalism class. “I improve day by day as I get on Checkology.”

Teeghman, too, has only praise for the platform: “I love how decentralized it is, I love how individualized it is, and I love that students can work at their own pace.” He is also impressed by the diversity of representation in the lessons. His students, he said, “can see themselves in the videos.”

But what’s most important to this educator is that his students take their newly acquired news literacy skills out into the real world, and that after they leave his classroom, they continue to apply what they have learned. Much to his delight, they do.

Once his students have finished his class, he said, he allows them to “friend” him on Facebook. One day, he noticed that a former student “unfortunately” posted something false on his feed —and he was gratified to see that other former students — in an online conversation he described as “very respectful” yet ”spirited” — “jumped in to correct that before I even had a chance to say anything!”

Watch this video from our visit to his classroom.

“Facts have to be the final measure of truth.”  

That’s what fact-checker Jim Fingal (portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe) says in the play The Lifespan of a Fact. At the News Literacy Project, we believe that the lifespan of a fact is eternal. 

The play, based on a 2012 book by Fingal and writer John D’Agata (played by Bobby Cannavale) about Fingal’s fact check of an essay by D’Agata, shone a light on the tension between accuracy and creative license. And on Tuesday, students from two New York schools that use NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom — the Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria and the Bronx Collaborative High School — attended the play and participated in a talkback session with Radcliffe, Cannavale, Cherry Jones (who plays Fingal’s boss, a magazine editor), and the play’s director, Leigh Silverman. NLP founder and CEO Alan Miller moderated the discussion.  

The 30-minute Q&A covered a number of topics, such as the importance of the arts and the ability to enjoy a movie “based on a true story” without looking up every fact upon leaving the theater. The actors also had a strong message for the students, describing how their roles in the play had strengthened their respect for journalism and for real-life fact-checkers. In fact, in preparation for this part, Radcliffe shadowed a fact-checker at The New Yorker.  

“It gave me incredible faith,” Radcliffe said, noting that he was “inspired” by the “people out there who are doing this job and doing it amazingly rigorously.”  

The play, in a limited run at Studio 54 in New York City, centers on Fingal’s fact check of an essay by D’Agata before it is published in a magazine. It devolves into a philosophical argument over “true” versus “true-ish”: Fingal and D’Agata disagree, for example, over whether specific numbers — how many strip clubs there are in Las Vegas, for example — must always be accurate (the fact-checker’s opinion) or can be changed to serve a literary purpose (the essayist’s opinion). The audience applauded when Fingal described facts as “the final measure of truth.” 

All three actors responded to the students’ questions with answers that led to a similar conclusion: A play might not be based on facts, but the news you consume every day needs to be. Every time.  

“It’s just the world we’re living in now, isn’t it, where every day people in power play fast and loose with the facts,” said Jones, adding that it’s only because of “superb journalism” that their misstatements are known. 

The night ended with a group photo — and NLP bumper stickers (“My facts just ran over your fiction”) for the actors and the director as a reminder to continue to fight for facts. The students thanked Radcliffe, Cannavale, Jones and Silverman for the opportunity. Amazingly, no one asked Radcliffe anything about Harry Potter.  

And that’s a fact.

ProPublica Illinois (@ProPublicaIL) regularly uses Twitter to answer questions about journalism. Recently a reader asked: “How do you go about finding those new ideas? Is it by brainstorming? Or following on tips?”

Here’s the response from ProPublica journalist Jodi Cohen:

“Reporters are always on the lookout for ways to inform the public about the world we live in, including wrongdoing. We go to all kinds of public meetings — for school boards, city councils and park districts — and not only report the daily news but look for the bigger stories by spotting trends, questionable spending and more. We ask a LOT of questions.”

So who’s going to these meetings and asking the questions in your community? As part of a project to track local news coverage and encourage students to contact and interact with journalists, consider curating a list of local journalists. Most journalists routinely use Twitter for their work. If you have a Twitter account you use for your classes, here’s how to create a Twitter list:

1. Click on your profile icon. (On a computer, the profile icon is in the upper right corner of the screen between the search box and “Tweet”; on mobile devices, it’s in the upper left corner.)
2. Click on “Lists.”
3. Click “Create new list.”
4. Select a name for your list and give it a short description. List names cannot exceed 25 characters or begin with a number. Decide if you want the list to be private (only you can see it) or public (anyone can subscribe to it).
5. Click “Save list.”

Next, add the Twitter accounts of local journalists to your list:

1. Once you’ve identified an account that you want to add to your list, click the overflow icon on the journalist’s profile page (on a computer, the three vertical dots next to the Follow/Following button; on mobile devices it may be the same three vertical dots and others the gear).
2. Select “Add or remove from lists.” You don’t need follow an account to add it to your list.
3. A pop-up will appear with the lists you have created. If you’d like to add the journalist to a list, click the checkbox next to the list name. To remove an account from a list, simply uncheck the box.
4. To see if the account was included, go to “Lists” on your profile page. Click the list name, then click “Members.” You should see the account that you added.
5. Sometimes people will put “no lists” in their Twitter profile. Please respect that request.

As an example, here’s my Twitter list of education reporters. Once you have created your list and added journalists, just click on the list to see a feed of tweets from those accounts. Over time, you will undoubtedly see patterns emerge in the topics and issues the journalists are covering.

As part of this effort, look for a calendar of public meetings in your community. For example, the Chicago City Clerk’s office maintains a calendar of council and committee meetings. These calendars typically include the date, time and location for the meeting, along with general public information and agendas. If there is a meeting your students are interested in, they can contact journalists on your list to see who might be covering it. Many journalists also live-tweet the meetings so people can know what’s happening in real time, especially if the meeting is of some importance.

Finally, this list can be useful when students want to engage with journalists directly, either by asking questions or offering their perspectives about news coverage. This is one of our indicators of civic engagement and can be an excellent avenue for student voice. And it provides you with information about your community from those whose job it is to determine what’s going on: local journalists and news organizations.

For Nicole Finnesand, integrating current events into her lessons at a middle school in the southeast corner of South Dakota was daunting — until she encountered the News Literacy Project and its Checkology virtual classroom.

She teaches in Colton, a tiny town (population 676, according to 2017 Census estimates) about 25 miles northwest of Sioux Falls. As she put it during a recent phone conversation, “Sometimes, here in the Midwest, we feel very insular.”

You might think that such a small population would be more likely to share political beliefs, but Finnesand said that the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade language arts classes reflect the fractures in the country as a whole.

They are, she said, “very divided on social issues. That was very intimidating for me as an educator to talk about someone like Kim Jong Un or Donald Trump or any political anything in my classroom, knowing that the answer to it would be very polarized.”

A search for resources

Finnesand first heard the term “news literacy” after the 2012 election, but it wasn’t until 2016 — with the country more divided than ever — that she felt compelled to research resources that might help her discuss current events with her students and show them how to think critically about what was happening in their community, their country and the world.

That’s when she discovered Checkology, and it didn’t take her long to become a dedicated user.

“I have really loved all of the resources I’ve gained and the knowledge my students are walking away with,” she said. Also important, she added, are “the skills that they’re able to apply to their own reading and consumption of media.”

As an example, she said that before they were exposed to Checkology, some of her students would produce articles from the satirical publication The Onion as truthful sources for persuasive writing exercises.

“That was shocking,” she said, “but they had no idea what that whole genre of satire is. And certainly with the political climate of our country, there were students that were just shouting ‘fake news’ at things without knowing what that meant, or knowing what they’re saying, or what is fake news. They really couldn’t tell me.”

She knew that her students were capable — but that they didn’t know how to determine what was credible news or how to find it.

Enter Checkology — and a classroom transformed.

Civil discourse

Suddenly, students began coming to class not just with opinions, but with facts and legitimate sources to back them up. They may have strongly different views on some topics, Finnesand said, but civil discourse now feels possible.

“I think the Checkology platform gave us a tool that was engaging without telling the students, ‘Here’s the right answer, here’s the way to view it,’” she said. “It gave them talking points that we could all agree on or agree to disagree on. …

“We get to use our class as a space to discuss ‘Well, what are the two sides? And how do we know what’s real and what’s not real?’”

Finnesand has watched her students gain an appreciation for — and understanding of — quality journalism. One “lightbulb moment,” as she put it, came when they learned, through the Checkology lesson “Democracy’s Watchdog,” that journalists act as detectives and hold those with power in check. They have also enjoyed tying current issues to Checkology; “The First Amendment” gave them a starting point to discuss the recent efforts by the White House press office to lift the press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta.

It’s a challenge for anyone, adults included, to consume news responsibly and discuss it civilly. But Finnesand says she has seen a real change in her students since introducing Checkology, and she believes that they can be agents of change.

“I’m learning with my students what kinds of things we can read about and agree to disagree and work on,” she said, adding: “Hopefully our country isn’t always so divided and we can still have conversations about issues without alienating each other.”

Misinformation spreads rapidly on social media following natural disasters, mass shootings, terrorist attacks and other dramatic news events. In addition to seeing doctored photos and patently false “breaking news,” we’re also likely to be bombarded with conspiracy theories — another subset of misinformation. Since many of these involve alleged actions by the government, we need to make sure that our students have the news literacy skills they need to prevent them from believing these falsehoods and becoming distrustful of the government.

In his book The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, published in 2013, Jesse Walker defined five types of conspiracy theories:

• The “Enemy Outside” refers to theories based on figures outside a community alleged to be scheming against it.
• The “Enemy Within” finds the conspirators lurking inside the nation, indistinguishable from ordinary citizens.
• The “Enemy Above” involves powerful people manipulating events for their own gain.
• The “Enemy Below” features the lower classes working to overturn the social order.
• The “Benevolent Conspiracies” are angelic forces that work behind the scenes to improve the world and help people.

In a 2018 study (PDF download) of people who believe in conspiracy theories, Mattia Samory and Tanushree Mitra of Virginia Tech’s computer science department examined 10 years of posts (and four crisis events) in the Reddit community r/conspiracy and defined three types of participants:

• “Veterans” are long-term active members of r/conspiracy.
• “Converts” were active in other discussions on Reddit and joined r/conspiracy in response to a specific crisis.
• “Joiners” became Reddit users and joined r/conspiracy specifically in response to a crisis or other event.

How do conspiracy theories manifest on social media? Let’s take a hurricane as an example. Amid the misinformation and hoaxes that typically appear before, during and after such storms (such as the inevitable “shark on the flooded highway” image), posts claiming that the government can alter the weather will start appearing. There will be references to chemtrails (the condensation trails from aircraft engines that conspiracy theorists say are laden with weather-changing chemical or biological agents) and to HAARP, an actual research program, based at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, that studies the properties and behavior of the ionosphere. These posts will often link to sites or discussion groups that have compelling and detailed descriptions of how HAARP and other government programs can control the weather.

Without the skills to critically evaluate the content and sources for these posts, sites and other discussion groups, students can easily be persuaded that what’s being said is factual. They may even contribute to the viral nature of the ideas by sharing them — in short, becoming a “joiner.”

Samory and Mitra found that “joiners” demonstrated a very high level of engagement in the online discussions, posting longer and more detailed content that was comparable to that of the community’s “veterans.” “Converts” in these discussions tended to come and go, with lower levels of engagement overall. Perhaps most troubling is that the longer the “joiners” engaged in these communities, the more likely they were to become “veterans.”

This is where the importance of news literacy comes in. People who believe conspiracy theories are not necessarily the stereotypical “tinfoil hat” types. In a 2017 study, Stephanie* Craft, Seth Ashley* and Adam Maksl found that anyone can end up believing a conspiracy theory, since most of them are structured with a compelling story that provokes strong emotional reactions and has a connection to an existing bias or belief.

For their study, Craft, Ashley and Maksl surveyed 397 people to determine what they knew about the news media and the extent to which they believed several conspiracy narratives. Perhaps not surprisingly, they found a correlation between respondents’ knowledge about how the news media works and belief in conspiracy theories: “The greater one’s knowledge about the news media — from the kinds of news covered, to the commercial context in which news is produced, to the effects on public opinion news can have — the less likely one will fall prey to conspiracy theories,” the researchers wrote.

At the News Literacy Project, we emphasize the importance of news literacy as an antidote to misinformation and a catalyst for becoming a critical consumer of news and information. Discussing conspiracy theories with students can be tricky, and doing so is not typically part of the curriculum. But if students fall prey to this type of misinformation, their ability to be critical and open-minded about all types of information, including news, is compromised. And if their belief in conspiracy theories leads them to become fearful and cynical about the government, they are less likely to become active, informed and engaged participants in our country’s civic life.

*An earlier version of this post misspelled the first name of Stephanie Craft (not Stefanie) and the last name of Sean Ashley (not Astley).

Nov. 5-9 is Media Literacy Week — our favorite week of the year, when champions of news and media literacy raise awareness of the critical need and available tools to discern and create credible information as students, consumers and citizens.

Here are some things you can do each day during Media Literacy Week to support these efforts:

Monday: Double-check your facts (before you vote). Take The Easiest Quiz of All Time, then watch our video to see how others did. Warning: It’s not that easy!

Tuesday: Check your ballot! It’s Election Day, and news literacy education empowers the well-informed voters who keep our democracy strong.

Wednesday: Check in. Visit our online “booth” at the virtual fair hosted by the National Association for Media Literacy Education. On Wednesday between 3 and 5 p.m. ET, our own Jordan Maze will answer questions about our programs and about news literacy in general.

Thursday: Image check. People instinctively trust images more than words — but many images are manipulated or taken out of context. Brush up on your reverse image searching skills so you can teach someone else how to find out if that compelling photo is real or fake.

Friday: Check and correct (kindly). If you see that someone has shared misinformation online, let them know in the spirit of giving facts a fighting chance.

Everyone has to work harder than ever these days to avoid misinformation and manipulation. Keep fighting for facts!

Americans head to their polling places in less than two weeks — and in each election cycle, it’s becoming more and more difficult to make sure that we actually know what we need to know before casting our ballots. (Check out our “Double-Check Your Facts” PSA to see how people did on The Easiest Quiz of All Time.)

To be active, engaged participants in the civic life of our communities, we all must take proactive steps to better understand the issues we care most about — especially since Facebook, Twitter and other social media have become, for many of us, our primary sources of information. By relying on these platforms for news, we’re likely to become encased in a filter bubble — a phenomenon that, in essence, limits what we read, watch and hear.

We end up inside these bubbles when the algorithms used by these platforms attempt to select content that they feel we want to see and that aligns with what they perceive as our personal preferences. And when our online friends and connections share our opinions, we’re trapped even more: We become insulated from opposing viewpoints, making it increasingly difficult to understand all sides of the issues. (Another description for this is the “echo chamber” effect — meaning that our beliefs are repeated and amplified by our connections.)

How do we pop these filter bubbles? We can’t expect any of the platforms to do it for us. We have to be proactive by engaging with new sources of information. Here are a few that will help.

Blue Feed, Red Feed

This site, from The Wall Street Journal, was launched several months before the 2016 presidential election. The concept is simple: Click on one of eight pre-selected topics (such as health care or immigration) and scroll through a series of Facebook posts that have been shared from sources that a study by Facebook has identified as “very liberal” or “very conservative.” Each post in the feeds has at least 100 shares, and the sources for the posts have more than 100,000 followers.

The strength of this tool is that it allows users to see the latest arguments for their selected issues side by side. People from across the political spectrum can consider their own beliefs against opposing viewpoints to come to a clearer understanding of their position — or perhaps change it to a new view.

ISideWith.com

This site was started in 2012 by Taylor Peck, a political analyst and marketing expert, and Nick Boutelier, a web designer and developer, who wanted to find ways to increase voter engagement and knowledge. Users can choose from more than 30 countries and select from 22 languages (including several variations of English).

For U.S. voters, the site has a 2018 midterm voter guide that asks users to rate their beliefs on a wide range of issues — economic policy, foreign policy, education, health care and more — and then presents information about candidates whose views concur with the users’. There are also guides to candidates for Congress and state legislatures. In the Polls section, users can see how others have answered the questions about their beliefs on issues, with both sides represented on the same page.

This site has an almost overwhelming amount of information — but it’s this comprehensiveness that makes ISideWith an excellent resource.

Vote Smart

Originally known as Project Vote Smart, this nonpartisan organization was founded in 1992 by Richard Kimball, a former Arizona state senator who had run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate against John McCain in 1986. Users can enter their ZIP code to see who currently represents them (federal, state and local offices) and who is running for office; when they click on a name, they can learn more about the official’s or candidate’s voting record, positions, speeches and funding. Similar to ISideWith, Vote Smart created Vote Easy, which allows users to explore candidates running for federal office (in 2018, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House) and their positions on key issues.

Other resources

The challenge with sites such as Vote Smart and ISideWith is that they tend to focus on enabling voters to find candidates whose political beliefs reflect their own. This actually serves to reinforce the filter bubble. If we look only for candidates with positions that agree with ours, we’re not really learning about opposing viewpoints.

ProCon.org focuses on the issues, not individual candidates. Users choose from an extensive list to see arguments for and against specific topics. Examples include:

• Should student loan debt be easier to discharge in bankruptcy?
• Should the drinking age be lowered from 21 to a younger age?
• Should marijuana be a medical option?
• Should bottled water be banned?

The site provides citations for all sources listed in the results. The arguments are listed side by side for easy comparison.

BalancedPolitics.org also lists arguments for specific positions side by side and provides background and links to additional resources. Finally, Debate.org is an online community (free to join) where members can vote and contribute their own opinions to current issues.

Civic engagement is more than voting. We must find ways to increase our knowledge and understanding of the issues that affect us and our communities. To do so, we first must be aware that we are inundated with information through our social media feeds and that we must critically evaluate everything that we encounter. Next, we need to seek out content that shows us opposing positions and ideas. What we find can either reinforce what we already believe or allow our positions to evolve.

When we burst our filter bubbles and are ready for our positions to be challenged, we’re taking an uncomfortable but important step. It’s one we have to take, though, if we want to become active and engaged participants in civic life — and informed voters.

Election Day is just two weeks away — and in each election cycle, it gets more and more difficult for us to make informed decisions before casting our ballots. As political rhetoric tips toward misinformation frenzy, it’s increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction and truth from outright falsehoods.

Russian troll farms, bots and other types of political chicanery are certainly part of the problem — but the perception that misinformation is spread only by people who are intentionally trying to muddy the waters is far from accurate. It’s the unintentional sharing of misinformation that really causes misinformation to spread. Certainly, most of us don’t go out of our way to share bad information with our family members and friends. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t — even a casual “like” or retweet can give misinformation a broader audience.

So we at the News Literacy Project have teamed up with Edelman, a global communications marketing firm, to create a public service campaign that we’re calling The Easiest Quiz of All Time. Hosted by comedian and filmmaker Mark Malkoff, this humorous street quiz tests passers-by about frequently misremembered facts. Contestants learn, for example, that Darth Vader did not actually say “Luke, I am your father.” They also learn that overconfidence and a failure to double-check what you think you know can lead to incorrect answers — and, potentially, uninformed decisions.

As we were making this video, I was reminded once again that the skills to be a well-informed and active participant in civic life should not be taken for granted. If you see something that sounds like it might not be true, take a minute to find out before you pass it on. The spread of misinformation is not inevitable, and stopping it comes down to each of us taking a little time to double-check the facts.

We’re urging you to share this video between now and Election Day with your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers and your networks, using the hashtag #doublecheck.

And most importantly, remember to vote — after double-checking your facts!

We are diversifying our news literacy efforts in all sorts of new ways, and here’s one that’s truly exciting: One of the most popular lessons in our Checkology® virtual classroom is now available in Spanish!

“Practicing Quality Journalism”/“Practicando el periodismo de calidad” is a game-like simulation in which students assume the role of rookie reporters to cover a breaking news event. The lesson is taught by Enrique Acevedo — news anchor of Noticiero Univision: Edición Nocturna (Univision News: Late Edition), special correspondent for the Fusion Media Group and an experienced journalist who has covered breaking news around the world for print, broadcast and digital media. In this lesson, which he delivers in both English and Spanish, Acevedo guides students as they work to meet the standards of quality journalism while reporting on an accident that has caused a tanker truck to leak a mysterious green slime.

“I’m thrilled to be part of NLP’s effort to reach Spanish-language audiences,” Acevedo said. “I can’t think of a better contribution to the future of journalism and the free press than our partnership with NLP. As journalists, we need to make sure everyone has access to these important tools.”

“Practicing Quality Journalism”/“Practicando el periodismo de calidad” is available with either Basic or Premium levels of access to the virtual classroom. Gracias, Enrique — and thanks also to the Facebook Journalism Project for making this, our first lesson in Spanish, possible!

To sign up for Checkology or to learn more, click here.

 

 

As civics education is increasingly part of the national conversation, and as school districts and state legislatures increasingly call for more of it, we need to have a good understanding of what civic engagement looks like for young people in the 21st century. How many civic actions from previous generations remain unchanged? How many have been affected, in both good ways and bad, by the enormous technological changes of the last two decades? And what new forms of civic engagement do we need recognize, refine and support in the classroom?

NLP’s approach to civic engagement consistently builds on news literacy as a foundation. After all, credible information is the very basis for civic literacy and engagement; it is what drives meaningful civic actions. If we don’t have that foundation, misinformation can cause people to take actions that are civically disempowering — not in their interests, or in the best interests of the republic.

Here are 10 important indicators of civic engagement that we’ll be discussing over the coming weeks (these assume that students already have the key skills needed to navigate today’s information landscape):

10 Indicators of Civic Engagement

• Pay attention to and understand how misinformation spreads on social media and debunk misinformation or false comments in a constructive, responsible manner.
• Pay attention to, and understand, issues being debated locally, statewide or nationally.
• Participate in a discussion about politics or current events — in school, with my friends or family, or online.
• Cast a ballot in an election (when I’m old enough) as a well-informed voter.
• Pay attention to, and understand, issues relating to individual freedom of expression and protected speech in the United States and abroad.
• Contact a reporter or news organization by email, social media or phone.
• Pay attention to, and understand, ongoing discussions about journalism and the state of the news media, including press freedom in the United States and internationally.
• Document something in my community and share it with others.
• Question or engage in conversations with my elected officials by email, social media or phone.
• Volunteer or advocate for a cause, idea, mission-driven organization or political campaign — one that aligns with my personal beliefs, that I’ve researched and that I have a deep understanding of.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting more detailed explanations and examples of how to connect specific news literacy skills with these civic actions. Today, let’s start with the first indicator: Pay attention to and understand how misinformation spreads on social media and debunk misinformation or false comments in a constructive, responsible manner.

As students become more immersed in the news and other information that surrounds them, the more misinformation, hoaxes, viral rumors and propaganda they will come across. Critically evaluating what they read, watch and hear and identifying the various types of misinformation they encounter are critical news literacy skills. Once they can do this, they can take an active, constructive role in debunking misinformation.

On Sept. 20, this tweet showed up in my feed:

To be sure, it’s a powerful image and message — one that animal lovers would readily agree with and quickly retweet. My critical eye thought that it was a little too perfect. There isn’t enough information in the tweet to provide credible evidence for what it says. When I scrolled through the replies, I quickly discovered that a few people had already called out the image.

I did a reverse image search and found two key articles debunking both the image and the explanation. It turns out that the photo is of a different bullfighter. In addition, what the bullfighter is doing is actually part of the act. As explained in the blog The Last Arena and confirmed by the fact-checking site Snopes.com:

“Sitting on the ‘strip’ around the ring after the sword has been placed in the bull is a known desplante, or act of defiance, within the part-scripted, part-improvised spectacle that is the corrida de toros.”

The bullfighter mentioned in the original tweet did eventually become an animal rights activist, but only after he was left permanently disabled after being gored by a bull.

This tweet reinforces the importance of reading through the comments or replies before retweeting. Others responded to it by sharing the same links I referenced above, tagging it #fakenews, calling out the original tweet for “harming the cause” or simply describing it as “utter tosh.” Yet some replied favorably, accepting the tweet as being true without checking further.

Some of the messages debunking the tweet were more effective than others — and the key to this civic action is teaching students the most effective ways to do this. In two published meta-analyses of studies about correcting misinformation from a variety of topics, researchers described strategies that are more effective at swaying beliefs and countering false information – along with those which are ineffective.

In their 2017 study, “Debunking: A Meta-Analysis of the Psychological Efficacy of Messages Countering Misinformation,” authors Man-pui Sally Chan, Christopher R. Jones, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Dolores Albarracín made three key recommendations.

• Reduce the generation of arguments in line with the misinformation.
• Create conditions that facilitate scrutiny and counterarguing of misinformation.
• Correct misinformation with new detailed information, but keep expectations low.

If the debunking message includes arguments that are in line with the misinformation, it’s “difficult to eliminate false beliefs,” they wrote. The emphasis should be on the counter-argument or on the facts being used to debunk the misinformation — not on the original belief or false claim. Simply labeling the misinformation as being “wrong” or “false” also makes accepting the debunking message less likely.

Students should create a counter-message that is detailed and supported by facts — but don’t expect it to always work. The stronger someone believes misinformation initially, the harder it is to change their view.

A similar study, “How to unring the bell: A meta-analytic approach to correction of misinformation” by Nathan Walter and Sheila T. Murphy, highlights other factors to emphasize when debunking misinformation:

“Appeals to coherence tended to be best at correcting misinformation, compared to fact-checking and source credibility. In other words, providing alternative explanations that were internally coherent was more successful than providing ratings of the accuracy of specific statements or highlighting the credentials of a source.”

Relating to the recommendation of keeping expectations low, Walter and Murphy found that it was more difficult correcting misinformation relating to politics and science than misinformation in other areas, such as health, crime and marketing.

If you want your debunking message to be read loud and clear:

• Don’t just label something as “wrong,” “false” or “fake.”
• Don’t focus solely on fact-checking the content or source of misinformation.
• Make your message clear and detailed, and support it with facts.
• Emphasize an alternative explanation that brings clarity to the subject.
• Don’t expect everyone to readily accept your message.

People who pass on misinformation shouldn’t feel as if they are being personally attacked. In a way, a good debunking message is one in which those who shared a falsehood feel as if they came to the right conclusion by themselves — with a little nudge from you.

 

I’m always pleased to announce new partners in news literacy, but this one is especially gratifying because it offers support in a distinctive way. The Samuel Hubbard Shoe Company has shown generosity matched by creativity in pledging to give $20 to the News Literacy Project for every pair of shoes bought online from its new Freedom Shoe line for women.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled that the donations will help us expand our news literacy education efforts by sponsoring our weekly newsletter, The Sift, for the entire school year. But here is, well, the kicker: The First Amendment is literally built into the offer.

To be exact, every shoe that is part of this line will have the First Amendment engraved on its sole. That means that when people buy a Freedom Shoe, they are bearing (and wearing) a foundational element of our Constitution.

Samuel Hubbard will donate to us through March 1, 2019, or until donations reach $100,000, whichever comes first. It’s also promoting us in a company brochure about the First Amendment that will be shipped with every pair — which means even more people will learn about us and champion news literacy in their communities.

We at the News Literacy Project are pushing to get into as many schools as possible to help students understand the powerful role the press plays in our country and the protections guaranteed under the First Amendment. This partnership with Samuel Hubbard promises to reach the public in a whole new (and fun) way, giving people instant access to a crucial part of news literacy and of our democracy.

A recent study found that only 3 percent of Americans know all five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment (though 36 percent can name at least one). I make that point to underscore how this agreement will provide support in multiple ways: If you wear these shoes, you are supporting our cause financially as well as spreading word of the First Amendment. And there is every reason to believe that you’ll be providing great support for your feet, too!

Samuel Hubbard Shoe Company founder and CEO Bruce Katz says this about designing the Freedom Shoe line: “The First Amendment is a simple and elegant statement of where our freedom begins — and it’s essential that today we remember what it stands for.”

Thank you, Samuel Hubbard!

On Sept. 5, the editors of The New York Times’ opinion page took what they called “the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay.” The action raises an important issue in journalism and an opportunity to teach students about evaluating unnamed sources in the news.

By “unnamed sources,” I am referring to the people who provide information published in news reports, editorials and other opinion pieces but whose names are not given. (It’s important to remember that the source’s identity is unknown to us — the readers, viewers and listeners — but is known by the journalist and, usually, at least one editor at the news organization.)

Being a critical consumer of news includes understanding and evaluating different types of sources — such as official sources, eyewitness sources, raw video and documents — to determine whether a news article is credible. Evaluating the words of individuals who are not named requires a closer look at both the journalist and the news organization.

Most news articles routinely attribute key facts to a source who is identified by name and, often, by title — information telling us why the source is in a position to know about and comment on the topic. When the source is unnamed, news consumers should consider two key elements: why the source desires anonymity, and what is behind the source’s decision to share this information.

Here is how The Associated Press, a global news agency that produces more than 2,000 news stories per day, defines the terms used in granting anonymity (parenthetical information in the definitions is not from AP). Other news organizations may have their own definitions of these terms. Both the reporter and the source must agree to these ground rules before an interview.

• On the record: The information can be used with no caveats, quoting the source by name.
• Off the record: The information cannot be used for publication. (But the reporter can use this knowledge to get the information verified elsewhere.)
• On background: The information can be published but only under conditions negotiated with the source. Generally, the sources do not want their names published but will agree to a description of their position. (Other news outlets may refer to this as “not for attribution”; some may even distinguish between “not for attribution” and “on background.”)
• On deep background: The information can be used but without attribution. The source does not want to be identified in any way, even on condition of anonymity.

Why do journalists use unnamed sources, especially since it might endanger the trust the public has in their work? After all, the public should know whether these sources are in a position to be fully informed on the matter or are offering a skewed version that serves their purposes, not ours.

The news organization’s obligation

For starters: Good news organizations do not publish information from unnamed sources without consideration and thorough vetting. As reporter Jason Grotto of ProPublica Illinois wrote, his organization’s ethics guidelines allow sources to remain unnamed “only when they insist upon it and when they provide vital information,” “when there is no other way to obtain that information” and when the journalist knows that the source is “knowledgeable and reliable.”

Typically, journalists share the names of these sources with their editors, who assess whether those criteria are met.

As the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics code notes, “Consider sources’ motives before promising anonymity. Reserve anonymity for sources who may face danger, retribution or other harm, and have information that cannot be obtained elsewhere.”

Motives, of course, vary. The source may be acting as a whistleblower, exposing corruption or other illegal conduct. The source may feel compelled to share information with the public that is being withheld for some reason. Or — and good journalists know this — the source might have personal interests at heart. That does not necessarily disqualify the accuracy of the information, but it is why one standard of quality journalism is verification of facts by multiple sources.

News organizations that use unnamed sources owe it to their readers, viewers and listeners to clarify, as much as possible, why the source was granted anonymity, and why the source’s motives did not invalidate the value of the information.

The news consumer’s obligation

The challenge for news consumers is that the use of unnamed sources provides no outside way to verify what the journalist has written. We must decide whether to trust the journalist and the news organization. Fortunately, there are some actions we can take that help build that trust.

When evaluating a news article that uses unnamed sources, take a step back and engage in lateral reading* about the journalist who wrote the article and the news organization that published the report. Take a look at other articles by that journalist: How often does he use unnamed sources? (Is he lazy, or is he privy to officials who have great — but classified — information?) Does she write about this particular subject regularly, indicating that she has in-depth knowledge? Does the journalist also write opinion pieces? (If so, this could indicate a bias that must be evaluated.)

Consider, too, whether the journalist has provided sufficient context to determine whether the source is reliable and credible. In “When To Trust A Story That Uses Unnamed Sources,” Perry Bacon Jr. of FiveThirtyEight gives five details that readers should look for when considering a story that uses unnamed sources. His follow-up post, “Which Anonymous Sources Are Worth Paying Attention To?,” explains how to evaluate the description applied to an unnamed source — such as “a Pentagon official,” “a person familiar with” or “a law enforcement official.” The more details the journalist provides about a source, the more comfortable we can be trusting what that source has to say.

More fundamentally, has the article explained why the source was granted anonymity? Explaining why a source isn’t named — for example, attributing behind-the-scenes information about congressional action to “a committee aide who was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting” — is something we can evaluate. Check to see if the news organization has a published policy on using unnamed sources (such as these from The Washington Post and NPR).

We shouldn’t dismiss the use of anonymous sources out of hand. Particularly when reporting about the government, journalists often must rely on sources who have a justifiable concern about being named; at the same time, they must recognize that using anonymous sources may make their work appear less credible. In 2013, Margaret Sullivan, then the public editor of The New York Times, quoted a national security editor who said of government sources, “It’s almost impossible to get people who know anything to talk,” especially on the record. “So we’re caught in this dilemma.”

As for that op-ed in The New York Times, the author is described as “a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.” Whether the opinion page editors made a good decision in publishing the piece remains up for debate. And that’s what we, as critical consumers of news, should be able to do: Evaluate the available information and make our own determination about the credibility of what was published.

Further reading:

• Chapter 59: Sources of information (The News Manual)
• “Which Anonymous Sources Are Worth Paying Attention To?” (Perry Bacon Jr., FiveThirtyEight)
• “When To Trust A Story That Uses Unnamed Sources” (Perry Bacon Jr., FiveThirtyEight)
• “How do you use an anonymous source? The mysteries of journalism everyone should know” (Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post)
• “Using anonymous sources with care” (H.L. Hall, Journalism Education Association)
• “What Does ‘Off the Record’ Really Mean?” (Matt Flegenheimer, The New York Times)

**The lateral reading concept and the term itself developed from research conducted by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), led by Sam Wineburg, founder and executive director of SHEG.

Fact-checking is an essential skill that we need to teach students — and to reinforce as a habit for daily consumption of news and other information. Do a search on just about any topic, and there is a high likelihood that a Wikipedia article will come up in the initial results.

You may find this next statement surprising, but hear me out: When it comes to verifiable, objective facts, Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for fact-checking, and one we should encourage students to use.

Let’s start by talking about what Wikipedia is and whether it should be considered reliable.

According to its own “about” page, “Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning ‘quick’) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s articles provide links designed to guide the user to related pages with additional information.”

In effect, Wikipedia is designed to be a jumping-off point to additional, more detailed sources. This is a particular strength in that articles without proper referencing can be rejected. Sources that are not acceptable include:

• Blogs.
• Social media.
• The subject’s own website.
• Press releases.
• Tabloid journalism.

There is a learning curve for those contributing to Wikipedia. They must learn to write according to Wikipedia’s standards; they also must learn the technical aspects of editing articles. According to Wikipedia, “All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sources, especially when the topic is controversial or is on living persons. Editors’ personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong.” Contributors may be asked to justify their edits. Some edits may be changed by another user.

Wikipedia’s standards, you’ll see if you review them, are quite high and follow many of those set forth for academic writing or journalism.

A common criticism of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit an article at any time. This is not entirely accurate. While most articles can be edited by anyone, even anonymously, there are different levels of protection for articles to prevent acts of vandalism and partisan “edit wars.” For some of these levels, only a confirmed user (registered users with accounts created a specified number of days ago and with a number of accepted edits to articles) can edit an article; under the most restrictive protection, only “official” Wikipedia editors can make changes. These levels of protection are generally determined by either moderators or Wikipedia administrators.

The articles on Wikipedia are continually monitored by site administrators, moderators, confirmed users and bots. (Bot aren’t always bad: According to Wikipedia, a bot is an “automated tool that carries out repetitive and mundane tasks to maintain the 45,699,154 pages of the English Wikipedia. Bots are able to make edits very rapidly” for routine edits.) Some articles are monitored more closely than others, but generally, if someone vandalizes an article by editing it to include false or malicious information, corrections are made in a relatively short period of time.

Article vandalism is one of the most common problems on the site. A study published in 2015 showed that controversial topics (specifically in science, such as evolution and global warming) had more edits and word changes than articles on non-controversial topics. But the study also showed that many of those edits were corrections to the vandalism. I would argue, as did the authors, that this means we should evaluate Wikipedia as critically as we do any other source, rather than disregard it entirely.

That criticism that anyone can edit Wikipedia at any time? In my view, that’s a strength, because the overwhelming number of people who edit Wikipedia do so to make the site better and more useful as a source of information. That is why I joined as a confirmed user and contribute when I have time. As of this writing, there are 34,331,716 registered “Wikipedians,” with over 121,000 of those being active editors.

A last note about the site’s reliability: If you search on Google for “reliability of Wikipedia,” the first search result is a Wikipedia article titled  “Reliability of Wikipedia.” Skipping that for now, let’s look at some other sources. In 2016, a group of German researchers examined both the English and German versions of Wikipedia using drug information as a test subject area. They found that while Wikipedia articles were rated at 83.8 percent for completeness, the information published in the articles was 99.7 percent accurate. In 2001, Live Science compared Wikipedia with the more scholarly Encyclopedia Britannica and found little difference between the two for accuracy of selected articles. (Remember, I’m focusing on using Wikipedia for fact-checking, not in-depth research.)

Here are some ideas for what specifically to teach students about using Wikipedia.

An excellent starting point to introduce Wikipedia’s value is to teach students the requirements of editing an article on the site. Have students examine Wikipedia’s Five Pillars, which summarize the “fundamental principles of Wikipedia.” Discuss the criteria for an article to be considered a “good article” or a “featured article”; I expect that many students will be surprised by the strictness of the criteria. Explore the talk pages (connected to articles and where users debate edits, suggestions and content) of prominent articles to see what edits are being discussed. Discuss the requirements to be a Wikipedia moderator or administrator.

If you want to go a step further, consider having your students join a WikiProject — a group of people working together to improve articles relating to a specific topic. In a WikiProject, there is usually a list of topics and articles that have varying levels of priority. Some are articles that need to be researched and created. Others are stubs (short articles) that need to be expanded. There are articles that need to be edited to be in line with Wikipedia’s standards of sourcing and neutral point of view.

If we’re going to empower our students to be independent fact-checkers and critical consumers of information in all its forms, we need to recognize that Wikipedia is a deep, reliable source of factual information. As a starting point for fact-checking, Wikipedia is a powerful tool; in their day-to-day efforts to separate fact from fiction, students can — and should — use it confidently.

In a previous post, I discussed holding controversial conversations about current events in the classroom. As an extension of that topic, I’m sharing some ideas and resources about a challenge common in public debate, commentary and social media: the use of logical fallacies.

Just what are logical fallacies? The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL, one of my favorite resources) describes them as “common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim.” Examples include:

• Ad hominem: An attack on the person making an argument, rather than on the argument itself.
• False dilemma: An argument suggesting that only two options exist, when in fact there are more. Also called the “either/or,” “false choice” or “black and white” fallacy.
• False equivalence: Opposing arguments falsely made to appear as if they are equal.
• Slippery slope: An argument suggesting that a course of action, starting from a simple premise, will lead to disastrous results.
• Argumentum ad populum: An argument believed to be sound and true because it is popular. Usually referred to as “the bandwagon.”

In today’s social media world of character limits, memes and overflowing feeds, it’s increasingly difficult to convey a persuasive argument that is supported by evidence — and it’s really easy to share a short blast of opinion with a logical fallacy at its center. Those sorts of posts are notable specifically for their lack of credible evidence to support a claim or an argument, with fallacious reasoning used to fill the gaps. Here’s an example:

We must stop kids from playing video games. You buy them a game system and it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be fat and lazy, never leaving your basement. Parents all over this country agree that video games have no value whatsoever. We must either ban video games entirely for kids under the age of 16 or prepare for a generation of high school dropouts. The makers of these gaming systems are clearly greedy, manipulative predators out to keep our children addicted to their screens.

As young people engage in conversations about political, social or cultural issues, they need to be able to recognize logical fallacies — not just when others use them, but when they’re framing their own arguments. The ability to closely evaluate claims and arguments is a key element of critical thinking.

In “Arguments & Evidence” — a new lesson in our Checkology® virtual classroom — we discuss five of the most common types of logical fallacies. In developing that lesson, I researched resources for evaluating arguments and spotting logical fallacies. These are among the ones that I found most informative; they provide definitions, examples and context:

• “Monty Python and the Quest for a Perfect Fallacy”: This comprehensive lesson plan was developed by the Annenberg Classroom, a project of the Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. It includes definitions, examples and reproducible materials for students.
• “Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies”: This site was developed by The School of Thought International, a nonprofit that develops education resources on “critical thinking, creative thinking, and philosophy.” It has flashcards and posters — available both for purchase and as free PDF downloads — that integrate logical fallacies as part of critical-thinking exercises.
• An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: This free online book by Ali Almossawi, an engineer at Apple who writes about both critical thinking and computer science, contains wonderful illustrations and explanations for logical fallacies.
• Rational Wiki: “Logical fallacy”: Rational Wiki is owned and operated by the RationalMedia Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission “is to promote and defend science, critical thinking and public interest dialog in a free and open forum.” This comprehensive article offers great examples of logical fallacies focusing on science, statistics and studies.
• “18 Common Logical Fallacies and Persuasion Techniques”: In this Psychology Today article, Christopher Dwyer, a post-doctoral researcher in psychology at the National University of Ireland, describes “18 forms of persuasion techniques, illogical argumentation and fallacious reasoning” commonly encountered in social media.
• “Spot the Flaw in a Politician’s Argument With This Guide to Logical Fallacies”: This guide from Lifehacker focuses on fallacies used by politicians.

If you have a go-to resource for teaching logical fallacies, or another suggestion for incorporating such lessons into the classroom, please share it with me (Twitter: @MrSilva; email: [email protected])!

As the urgency grows for a more news-literate nation, so does demand grow for the News Literacy Project. And today we are more prepared than ever to meet that demand: I’m thrilled to announce the launch of version 2.0 of our Checkology virtual classroom, an expansion made possible thanks to a $1 million grant from the Facebook Journalism Project.

When we introduced the Checkology platform in May 2016, we knew that it would be a powerful way to achieve the goal I set 10 years ago when I founded the News Literacy Project — to give students the skills to become informed and active participants in the civic life of their communities. And powerful it has been: Checkology has proved to be a sophisticated tool to teach students how to assess the flood of information that hits us every day … to separate fact from fiction … to know what to trust, share and act on.

Version 2.0 of Checkology hones the tools that we know are working. It includes new lessons on teacher-requested topics, along with the voices of even more journalists. This update also improves the ways that educators can customize the curriculum to meet their own objectives and their classrooms’ needs.

I’d like to highlight some of our new resources:

• In a lesson on press freedoms around the world, NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson explains the ways through which governments can restrict or weaken the press. The lesson also includes videos of journalists recounting their experiences reporting in several countries with varying degrees of press freedom.
• Kimberley Strassel, a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, hosts a lesson on arguments and evidence, walking students through the virtual experience of an event and its aftermath — raw footage, viral rumors and contradictory claims — that students must then evaluate.
• The Check Tool expands to become the Check Center. Through four key areas, this resource helps students learn to incorporate new ways to think critically about what they encounter online.

Checkology continues to shine a light on crucial aspects of the Information Age and democracy through its lessons about the First Amendment, the role of algorithms in personalizing what we see, and categories of information. In short, it reflects every aspect of what it means to be news-literate today, offering students absorbing ways to learn in real-world settings.

Our partnership with the Facebook Journalism Project is also enabling us to create what we’re calling a “global playbook” for news literacy. The News Literacy Project will offer guidelines and guidance to 10 organizations that are building news literacy efforts in 10 countries. We’ll be telling you more about that soon.

I invite you to check out these lessons — “InfoZones” (categorizing information), “Democracy’s Watchdog” (investigative journalism) and “Practicing Quality Journalism” (covering a breaking news event) — then tell us what you think by emailing us at [email protected]. (And if you’re an educator, please register for an account!)

The 2018 midterm elections are only three months away — and as political candidates ask people for their support, they will often feature the endorsements they receive from editorial boards, political organizations, unions and even celebrities. These endorsements can be a useful resource as voters decide how to cast their ballots, and they are often an indication of a candidate’s popularity among specific sectors of the electorate.

Yet students may not realize that these endorsements are, in their own way, a form of persuasion. They must be carefully evaluated, and the motives for making them examined. Here is an overview of different types of endorsements typically seen during a campaign, along with links to resources.

Endorsements by a newspaper’s editorial board

A newspaper’s editorial board is usually composed of journalists, each with expertise in specific topics, who together determine the publication’s “voice” on a variety of issues. Editorials — including political endorsements — reflect the opinion of the newspaper as agreed upon by a majority of the editorial board. Editorials are part of a publication’s opinion section, and the editorial board is typically kept separate from the news-gathering process.

Each outlet has its own process for making endorsements; some never do so, and some do so only for specific races. Candidates or their representatives may appear in person before the editorial board to answer questions. Occasionally, an endorsement decision may take the form of a closed-door debate between candidates. In many cases, candidates submit answers to lengthy questionnaires prepared by the board. After vetting the candidates, the board meets to deliberate and decide whether (and whom) to endorse; their decision is then published as an editorial.

• “Political Newspaper Endorsements: History and Outcome” (Micah Cohen, FiveThirtyEight/The New York Times).
• “A Brief History of Newspaper Endorsements” (Ethan Trex, Mental Floss).
• “Newspaper Endorsements: Do They Matter?” (Sharon Shahid, Newseum).

Endorsements by a political party

A political party’s endorsement of a candidate is typically an indicator that the candidate agrees with most or all the key statements in the party’s platform. The platform is an official document that outlines the party’s ideals or its political goals. It offers guidance to party members on how they should advocate for — and vote on — political and social issues.

The national party platforms are debated and finalized every four years, in advance of the presidential nominating conventions:

• 2016 platform of the Democratic Party.
• 2016 platform of the Republican Party.

In addition, state and local party organizations may also publish platforms, focusing on issues that are most important to voters in a specific state or locality:

• 2018 platform of the Texas Democratic Party.
• 2018 platform of the Texas Republican Party.
• “How the Texas Democratic and Republican Party Platforms Compare” (Naema Ahmed, Cassi Pollock and Alex Samuels, The Texas Tribune).

Endorsements by a political organization/political action committee

These endorsements are generally focused on a single political or social issue. They can come from advocacy or special interest groups, industry lobbying organizations, community groups, nongovernmental organizations or other similar groups. The key to understanding an endorsement from one of these organizations is to focus on the specific issues that are central to its mission.

• Political Action Committees (PACs) (Federal Election Commission).
• “What is a PAC?” (Open Secrets).

Endorsements by a union

Like political organizations, labor unions have political priorities and goals that are aligned with the needs of their members. The process varies depending on whether the union is national, state or local; it often involves a questionnaire or interview with a committee or panel formed by the union. This group will make recommendations that may be voted on by the union’s delegates or its full membership.

• “A beginner’s guide to understanding labor politics” (Philip Bump, The Washington Post).

Endorsements by celebrities

In rhetoric, this type of endorsement is known as the “bandwagon effect”or “appeal to popularity”; it wants you to vote for a candidate simply because a celebrity says you should.

For example, candidates hope that endorsements from popular sports figures will sway fans of the team or sport associated with the endorser. In the 2016 presidential campaign, former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka and former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight supported Donald Trump, while two of the most popular players in the National Basketball Association — Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors and LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers — backed Hillary Clinton.

In 2008, Sen. Barack Obama was publicly supported for the Democratic presidential nomination (and then for the presidency) by one of the wealthiest and most influential celebrities in America, Oprah Winfrey. The “Oprah effect” was a well-known phenomenon: Books chosen for Oprah’s Book Club became bestsellers, products she gave away in her show’s “Favorite Things” episodes became hot commodities and charities featured on her show saw a significant bump in donations. Winfrey even minted other celebrities; a number of well-known individuals — including cooking-show host Rachael Ray, financial advisor Suze Orman and interior designer Nate Berkus — owe much of their success to having appeared regularly on her show.

Yet a Pew Research Center survey from 2007 — when Obama was battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination — found that over two-thirds of voters (69%) said that Winfrey’s endorsement would have no effect on their vote. This was similar to the lack of enthusiasm about endorsements by a local newspaper (69%), an individual’s faith leader (67%) and other celebrities, such as Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (64%) and pro golfer Tiger Woods (79%).

• “Did Celebrity Endorsements Contribute to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Upset?” (Kenzie Bryant, Vanity Fair).
• “When Celebrities Endorse Politicians: Analyzing the Behavior of Celebrity Followers in the 2016 Presidential Election” (Yu Wang and Jiebo Luo, arXiv.org).

Applying this in the classroom

There are several ways that students can examine endorsements. This could be part of an exercise where students compare candidates in a specific race or simply an evaluation of endorsements in general.

• Create a chart showing the endorsements received by each candidate and ask students to examine them closely. Have them weigh the value of each endorsement and explain the potential risks or rewards for each one.
• Identify organizations in your city or state. Have students research to determine how those organizations decide when and who to endorse.
• Research the history of endorsements from national or state organizations. How often do candidates who receive those endorsements get elected? Create a chart to show rankings of the endorsements that most often result in election.

Evaluating and weighing endorsements is one important skill needed to be an informed voter. Like any claim, an endorsement should be critically evaluated. If you have resources or activities for evaluating endorsements that you have developed or used in your classes before, please send them to me— I’d like to be able to share civics-related resources and help enrich civics curriculum.

Follow me on Twitter: @MrSilva

For his contributions to journalism in the public interest and to news literacy, Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post has earned the News Literacy Project’s John S. Carroll Journalist Fellow Award for 2018.

A national correspondent covering law enforcement and justice, Lowery led the Post’s “Fatal Force” project, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016. The Post’s creation of a comprehensive database of fatal shootings by police and its related news articles led, among other changes, to the FBI’s vow to improve its tracking of such incidents.

Lowery’s first interaction with NLP came in 2015, when he was interviewed by founder and CEO Alan C. Miller about being arrested in Ferguson, Missouri, as he was reporting on the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a police officer. His eloquent description of his arrest became the basis for a thought-provoking lesson in Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age, an 11-part unit that NLP produced in collaboration with Facing History and Ourselves.

“I really became a believer in this organization,” Lowery said when he received the award at an NLP staff dinner on July 18. “The work you are doing is really important.”

Lowery’s other contributions to NLP include leading a discussion on race and policing at a NewsLitCamp® with the Post at the Newseum on April 21 and serving as the host of NLP’s revamped lesson on investigative reporting, “Democracy’s Watchdog,” for Checkology® 2.0, to be released in mid-August.

“Wes is a driven and deeply passionate journalist motivated by the highest ideals of the profession and a determination to enlighten the public on subjects that receive too little attention, particularly in the realm of race and justice,” Martin Baron, the Post’s executive editor, said when Lowery was presented with the award.

The John S. Carroll Journalist Fellow Award is given annually to an NLP journalist volunteer who has contributed significantly to NLP’s mission. Carroll, one of the most revered newspaper editors of his generation, led the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. He also was one of NLP’s earliest supporters, served for four years as board chair and was a board member at the time of his death in 2015.

Honorees receive an engraved glass plaque with an etched photo of Carroll, along with a $500 check. NLP board members and staff select the recipients.

In presenting the award to Lowery, Miller said, “Wes reflects the values that John Carroll epitomized through his passionate commitment to a free and fearless press that holds the powerful accountable — and through his deeply reported, impactful, narrative investigative reporting.”

An essential part of civic education is teaching students to be informed about — and to discuss — current events. It’s not enough for them to simply recite what’s happening; they need to be able to have a respectful, meaningful conversation with someone who may not share the same point of view. This concept is one of the “six proven practices” of civic learning as outlined in a 2017 report, The Republic is (Still) at Risk – and Civics is Part of the Solution, by Peter Levine and Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg of Tufts University.

The objective is not to engage in a debate, in the sense that one argument wins over another (though debates do have a lot of educational value). I’m talking about discourse: a conversation with an exchange of ideas and views about controversial topics — and one where those engaging in the conversation disagree without disparagement.

The priority for both sides is to share quality arguments, not to persuade. Discourse is a skill that improves with practice. Students often have opinions about many of the topics in the news, but they need the tools to focus their opinions in a respectful, productive manner.

Start with a discussion about how to have a discussion. Before you can have these controversial conversations, students often need to be shown how to do so in that respectful, productive way.

To start, everyone must agree to a set of ground rules. Consider using a protocol such as Circle of Viewpoints or the Socratic Seminar for these discussions. Some sample rules can include:

• Listen actively and attentively.
• Critique ideas, not the person who expressed them.
• Do not interrupt another speaker.
• Ask clarifying questions; don’t assume.
• Work toward a common understanding, not toward winning the argument.

Give students the opportunity to express their reservations about these discussions, and work them into establishing class norms. Make sure everyone understands and agrees to those norms.

The procedure for a whole class discussion is different than for small groups, so you will need to determine how large these conversations are going to be. In some cases, small groups may facilitate more engagement among students. The “pinwheel discussion” format can easily be adapted to current events. Another to consider is the “Conver-Stations” discussion strategy. Explore a variety of options to find one that fits with your students.

Spend time front-loading the discussion. Students will come to this with different viewpoints and opinions, but they all must have the same background information. Some resources for this include ProCon.org, Student Opinion from The New York Times and idebate from the International Debate Education Association. The day of your discussion, you might consider starting class with a gallery walk to refresh students’ minds about the topic. (The gallery walk can also be integrated into a great small group discussion format.)

(For now, I’m going to leave the topic of teacher viewpoint aside. There are a lot of different ideas about that; in the context of this post, I’m going to suggest that you focus on acting as the moderator. You’ll be in the best position to know if and when to express your viewpoints with your students.)

Discussing political issues and controversial current events is not something to approach lightly. Teachers must spend time and energy creating a classroom culture where ideas can be shared freely and students feel comfortable speaking about their experiences. Once you begin having these discussions, you’ll find your students actively seeking new information on a range of issues.

Resources

• “10 tips for talking about news, politics and current events in schools” (Dani Bostick, TED-Ed Blog)
• Teaching with the News (The Choices Program)
• “The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies” (Jennifer Gonzalez, Cult of Pedagogy)
• “From Provocative to Productive: Teaching Controversial Topics” (NewseumED)
• “A Civil Conversation” (Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago)
• “Talking Across Divides: 10 Ways to Encourage Civil Classroom Conversation On Difficult Issues” (Katherine Schulten, The New York Times)
• “Difficult Dialogues” (Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching)

Follow me on Twitter (@MrSilva).

“Checkology® taught me to seek news rather than receiving it, so I went out and investigated it myself,” Sophia Fiallo told a July 12 awards ceremony at which she and Paige Rodriguez, classmates at The Young Women Leadership School of Astoria, were presented with the News Literacy Project’s Gwen Ifill Student Journalist of the Year Award.

Fiallo was referring to a photograph that appeared to show Emma Gonzalez, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, tearing up the Constitution. In fact, Gonzalez had been photographed ripping up a shooting target. When Fiallo saw that a friend had shared the doctored image online, she says her Checkology training kicked in: “It didn’t come from a reliable news source.”

Fiallo and Rodriguez were presented with their awards — an engraved glass plaque with an etched photo of Ifill, along with a $250 gift card — by Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO, at a luncheon at CNN’s New York offices hosted by Alisyn Camerota, co-anchor of CNN’s New Day and a member of NLP’s national advisory council.

The rising 10th-graders, who with their classmates attended the April 16 Pulitzer Prize announcements at Columbia University, have made the news literacy skills they were taught in journalism class a part of their lives. Both share a passion for the lessons they learned from Checkology — and both clearly understand that those lessons also apply beyond the classroom.

Rodriguez said she routinely uses what Checkology has taught her — including, for example, when she saw some news online about an actress on the Netflix series On My Block. Because she hadn’t heard of the site where the news was posted, she used her experience with Checkology to take the piece through a series of credibility tests before sharing it with friends.

Using the platform, Rodriguez said, was “eye-opening”: “Checkology has changed the way that I trust my sources.” In fact, the lessons are now so ingrained that she doesn’t even need them in front of her to know what to ask. Everyone, she said, can benefit from Checkology — “even the older generations.”

Fiallo said that before her news literacy training, she was “vulnerable to the spread of fake news” — but “thanks to Checkology, I’ve learned how to tell fact from fiction.” And, she added, “I’m now interested in pursuing a career in journalism.”

This is the second year that NLP has recognized students with the award, which commemorates the trailblazing journalist — and longtime NLP supporter and board member — who died in 2016. It is presented to female students of color who represent the values Ifill brought to journalism as the first woman and first African-American to serve as moderator of Washington Week and as a member (with Judy Woodruff) of the first female co-anchor team of a network news broadcast on PBS NewsHour. Honorees are selected by a committee of NLP staff and board members.

More than 70 educators from Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools kicked off their summer with an NLP NewsLitCamp® at National Public Radio’s Washington, D.C. headquarters. A signature NLP professional development program, NewsLitCamps are held in conjunction with a news organization. With guidance from NLP staff, educators and journalists come together to examine the importance of news literacy and the standards of quality journalism.

“It was really useful to talk to professional journalists and editors to get their opinions/expertise on aspects of news judgment and bias! It helps me make my journalism classes more credible and more based in what journalists are actually doing and talking about,” wrote Megan Cooley-Klein, an English and journalism teacher at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, who attended the NPR session.

NLP has held six NewsLitCamps since April 2017 — two in the Chicago area, two in Washington and one each in New York City and Miami. Each day-long program features an overview of today’s information landscape and news literacy strategies by an NLP staff member, along with breakout sessions led by journalists on topics such as news judgment, bias, beat coverage and the standards of photojournalism, and closes with teacher-selected workshops on topics that they identify during the day.

In addition to a NewsLitCamp next month in Arlington, Virginia, NLP already has sessions planned for Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Lexington, Kentucky, this year. For more information, contact Damaso Reyes, NLP’s director of partnerships

Knowing whom or what you’re voting for (or against) is a lot more complicated than young people realize.

On the surface, voting is a remarkably simple act: Go to your polling place, get a ballot, put a mark by the name of the candidate of your choice and place the ballot in a box or a scanner. (In some states, it’s even easier: All registered voters can cast their ballot by mail.)

To be an informed voter, however, takes quite a bit of work. This is especially true when you take a look at all the offices and ballot issues that appear below the ones we’re all familiar with. In focusing on electing presidents, senators, governors and mayors, we often don’t pay attention to these down-ballot offices.

What does it mean to be an informed voter? The American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ American Democracy Project defines it as being “knowledgeable about the issues and positions of candidates when voting. It also means you are able to make decisions without influence from outside factors intended to persuade those who may not fully understand a candidate’s platform or ideas.”

I think it’s safe to say that many of us have cast uninformed votes.

Lesser-known offices

My ballot in the March 2018 Illinois primary — with 35 races and four ballot questions — was a daunting challenge in casting an informed vote. For instance, I found myself looking at a couple of job titles — Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner and Commissioner, Board of Review, 2nd District — and pondering what made the candidates for those positions qualified to hold them.

A number of judgeships and county-level offices also gave me pause (why were these positions on the ballot to begin with?). And while the ballot questions were simple enough to answer (the choice was “yes” or “no”), they added to the burden of trying to cast informed votes.

These down-ballot contests and questions offer students a unique opportunity to engage in purposeful deliberation about the impact of these offices on their communities. If “all politics is local,” as former U.S. Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill once famously quipped, it doesn’t get more local than some of these races.

Here’s an interesting starting point for discussion: Should all the offices currently on the ballot be elected positions? Examples of ones that are (or are not) elected, depending on the state, are judges, county coroners and sheriffs, as well as assorted commissioners and state party committeemen and committeewomen. To start this process, students (and many current voters) need to understand exactly what each position does and how that affects them and their communities.

Consider the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago and is the second most populous county in the United States. It’s responsible for ensuring the quality of the county’s water supply (which comes from Lake Michigan), protecting homes and businesses from flood damage and managing water as a vital resource. The MWRD is governed by an elected body of nine commissioners — the people who appear down-ballot and represent the residents of Cook County. Using these commissioners as an example, I thought of a series of questions for students to consider (which I also considered before casting my votes):

1. Why are these commissioners elected?
2. What are the qualifications I would want in someone who was responsible for making sure I have clean drinking water?
3. Should I take a candidate’s political affiliation into consideration?
4. Do these candidates’ viewpoints and positions on water issues differ? If so, how?

An interesting exercise for students is to have them search local news sources for stories about the positions. For my MWRD example, I would have students search Chicago-area news organizations for stories that mention the agency or some of the serving commissioners. Instead of relying solely on campaign materials, what can students learn from news coverage? Can these stories provide criteria for evaluating candidates?

Ethical questions

This also raises several broader questions about voting in general: Is it ethical to cast a vote for a candidate you know nothing about other than his or her name and political party? Is not voting at all worse than casting an uninformed vote? If a race has only one candidate, should you still cast a vote?

Talking about these down-ballot races in the classroom will open your students’ eyes to just how many elected officials there are at each level of government: federal, state, county and municipal. Your discussions can help focus your students on the lesser-known offices that have a profound effect on their communities. Inevitably (and hopefully), students will continue talking about this with their family members at home.

Most boards of elections provide sample ballots well in advance of election day. Some also publish detailed voter guides, as do some local good-government organizations and some news outlets. (Special interest groups may publish these as well to promote candidates whose views they agree with.) Providing these sample ballots or voter guides to your students can be an important first step in researching and discussion down-ballot races and questions.

I’ll close this post with another question for deliberation. When I go vote, I routinely refer to it as doing my “civic duty.” Voting is regularly described as a right, a responsibility and a duty. We rank voting as being very high in importance, but in the United States it is not compulsory. So is voting a duty that we are obligated to perform, or is it a right that we can exercise as we desire?

In my next post, I’ll share some ideas and resources for becoming a better-informed voter and explain different types of endorsements — for example, from newspaper editorial boards, from celebrities and from labor unions — all aiming to persuade you to vote a specific way.

When you watch news programs on CNN, Fox News or MSNBC, do you notice how often they switch between straight news reporting and commentary? Can you tell which person on screen is a journalist and which is a pundit? The ability to distinguish news from opinion is a foundational news literacy skill, and it’s an essential one for students engaged in a cause or advocacy. And if that isn’t enough, students must also learn to know the difference between opinion and propaganda.

What is news?

What we call “quality journalism” aspires to ethical standards. These are codified, with some variations, by professional journalism associations, journalism schools and individual news organizations. These standards include:

• Truthfulness/accuracy: Verifying all details that can be checked; using multiple original sources (individuals and documentation) wherever possible.
• Independence: Putting the interests of the public above self-interest or special interests.
• Balance: Giving a voice to multiple perspectives.
• Fairness/avoidance of bias: Presenting facts and details in appropriate context, using neutral language.
• Accountability: Acknowledging errors and correcting them promptly.

There are others, of course, and there is significant detail that can be added to these. The key to approaching the question “What is news?” with your students is this: A quality news article can be objectively identified using such standards. “Practicing Quality Journalism,”* a lesson in the Checkology® virtual classroom, introduces the standards of quality journalism in an engaging simulation.

Opinion vs. propaganda

Here’s where things can get a little tricky. The key is to determine the purpose of what you’re reading, watching or hearing.

“Opinion” (often described by news outlets as “commentary” or “editorials/op-eds”) presents a specific perspective on a topic or issue. While it may use emotional appeals to persuade readers, viewers or listeners to consider the position it’s arguing for (or against), the message includes verifiable facts and evidence. That evidence may be open to some interpretation, but it is still clear and supported by reasoning. In addition, other perspectives and positions may be presented for balance and contrast. The best opinion pieces use facts and coherent arguments to explain why we should agree with the position.

“Propaganda” has a wide variety of definitions. The most important elements of propaganda are that it speaks to our fears and insecurities, it distorts and manipulates facts and information, it often includes falsehoods and it’s one-sided. Propaganda most commonly uses logical fallacies in its efforts to persuade — especially attacks on opponents and strong emotional appeals.

Propaganda also uses misinformation and disinformation. While students often think of these as synonymous, there is an important distinction: Does the person who is sharing the information believe that it’s true, or does he or she know that it’s false but is sharing it anyway? The former is misinformation, the latter is disinformation. Propaganda uses both.

The ability to distinguish among news, opinion and propaganda becomes particularly important when students become engaged in a social or political cause. As they learn more about an issue, they will inevitably be confronted with all three categories. Recognizing the differences empowers students to seek out reliable, factual sources and to ignore misinformation and disinformation.

With this knowledge, students can move from passively consuming information to actively creating it. They can write about the world around them (or produce videos or podcasts) and try to persuade others to support their causes and issues. When students are reliably informed, they become empowered to express their own beliefs and add their voices to discussions of issues and policy.

Resources

• Logical Fallacies (Purdue Online Writing Lab)
• Argument, Persuasion, or Propaganda? (PDF download) (ReadWriteThink.org)
• What Is Propaganda? (Mind Over Media)
• “How to Write an Editorial” (The New York Times)

*This sentence was revised in August 2019. It originally referenced the Checkology lesson “Getting the Story” (Module 4, Lesson 1), which was replaced by “Practicing Quality Journalism” in an update of the platform for the 2018-19 school year. 

Tucker Eskew, a strategy and marketing executive, has joined the board of the News Literacy Project.

“If we’re to have a healthy democracy, our society needs to build platforms for truth and context in a sea of information and misinformation,” he said. “I’m proud to join the News Literacy Project as you build those supports where they’re most effective and lasting, especially in our schools.”

A founding partner at Vianovo, a strategic advisory firm with offices in Washington, Dallas, Austin and Mexico City, Tucker began his career in politics working on President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984 and spent eight years as press secretary for South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell. He began working in technology marketing and web communications in the mid-1990s, co-founding an electronic commerce business and starting a South Carolina-based public relations and business consulting firm.

Tucker was a senior communications advisor on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000 and joined the Bush White House in 2001, serving as director of media affairs and director of global communications. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he went to London as President Bush’s wartime communications representative to No. 10 Downing Street. He held a leadership role in the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and in 2008 was counselor to the GOP vice presidential nominee.

“Tucker brings NLP a wealth of strategic communications experience and expertise just as we begin to expand our outreach and raise our profile,” said NLP board chair Greg McCaffery. “His experience on other nonprofit boards as well as his extensive range of contacts will also serve us well.”