NLP News

If 2020 has made anything clear, it’s that the future of our democracy depends on our collective ability to sort fact from fiction — and teaching students news literacy skills is crucial to this. To build our local footprint through community organizing efforts in the fight against misinformation, we have launched a News Literacy Ambassador…

By Greg McCaffery and Alan C. Miller Our world has been shaken and transformed since we shared our first annual report with you. In fact, it often feels like last fall was a decade ago. Read the report here. We’re proud to say that NLP has responded to the myriad challenges wrought by COVID-19 with…

Misinformation and conspiracy theories thrive when curiosity and controversy are widespread and conclusive information is scarce or unavailable. The deeply polarized 2020 presidential election not only produced these conditions, it sustained them as ballots in a number of swing states with narrow vote margins were adjudicated and carefully counted. To be sure, viral rumors swirled…

Note: This column is a periodic series of personal reflections on journalism, news literacy, education and related topics by  NLP’s founder and CEO Alan C. Miller. Columns will be posted here at 10 a.m. ET every other Thursday. It will not be published on Nov. 26 (Thanksgiving). It will resume on Dec. 3. Amid the chaos…

Mike Webb, NLP’s senior vice president of communications, discusses the role of disinformation in explaining Blacks’ support of Trump presidency in a Nov. 11 Los Angeles Times article. “As we discussed on our podcast interview with UNC’s Deen Freelon, during the 2016 campaign, agents from Russia’s Internet Research Agency attempted to disguise themselves as Black…

NewsLitCamp helps teachers & librarians develop expertise in news literacy, demystifying what distinguishes quality journalism from misinfo. About this Event Join the News Literacy Project (NLP), the San José Public Library and NBC Bay Area on Dec. 2 and 3 for a virtual, teacher-centered NewsLitCamp featuring breakout sessions with local journalists. This program is part of a…

“The voters have spoken, and now it’s up to our state election officials to fairly count all the votes. As key states methodically complete the process of tallying their ballots, it’s vital that we do not let misinformation fill the void while we await the final count. “We urge the news media, state officials and…

For a better understanding of how misinformation and disinformation have impacted this election, please join us for a live episode of our podcast Is that a fact? on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 5:30 p.m. ET. Host Darragh Worland will moderate a lively conversation featuring Enrique Acevedo of 60 in 6 (former anchor at Univision) and an NLP board…

Note: This is the third in a periodic series of personal reflections on journalism, news literacy, education and related topics by  NLP’s founder and CEO Alan C. Miller. Columns will be posted here at 10 a.m. ET every other Thursday.  As Election Day nears, Democrats are haunted by the media-driven sense of inevitability that Hillary…

The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss features content from The Sift® in her blog Answer Sheet weekly through the school year. This is the first installment of the 2020-21 academic year. Bogus crowd photos at ‘Million MAGA March’ and other news literacy lessons (Nov. 19, 2020) No, a state trooper in Arizona did not find 50,000…

Alan Miller addresses the threat from misinformation in the run-up to the presidential election on WPIX TV in New York City on Oct. 16. “Misinformation is not only a threat to our public life, but to our public health,” Miller says in the segment, Fact-checking the ‘tsunami’ of misinformation flooding the web before the election.…

Note: This is the second in a periodic series of personal reflections on journalism, news literacy, education and related topics by  NLP’s founder and CEO Alan C. Miller. Columns will be posted here at 10 a.m. ET every other Thursday.  As news reports go, The New York Times’ lead story on Sept. 27 was a…