NLP News

The film, which opened nationwide on Dec. 13, tells the story of Jewell, the security guard hero-turned-suspect in the July 27, 1996, bombing at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park that resulted in two deaths and injuries to more than 100 people. In one scene, Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) flirts with an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) who was one…

Join the News Literacy Project, the Rockford Register Star and Rockford Public Schools (RPS) on Tuesday, Feb. 11, for a highly engaging, teacher-centered NewsLitCamp featuring breakout sessions with local journalists. This program is one in a national series of NewsLitCamps led by the News Literacy Project in collaboration with a diverse group of news organizations around the country. Register today at this link (it’s…

Jessica Guynn, a senior technology writer at USA Today, includes advice from the News Literacy Project in her Dec. 12 article, “Facebook disinformation in the 2020 presidential election: What you can do to stop its spread”: When you’re checking your social media feeds, watch out for manipulated and fabricated images and videos, and give political…

You might be surprised to learn what has students buzzing in the hallways of The Bolles School, a private school in Jacksonville, Florida. It’s Jaime Sanborn’s Information Literacy course. Here’s what she has overheard them saying: “What is Ms. Sanborn teaching?” “She’s teaching us how to research. She’s teaching us how to think for ourselves.”…

Join the News Literacy Project, the Akron Beacon Journal and the Six District Educational Compact on Thursday, Jan. 30, for a highly engaging, teacher-centered NewsLitCamp featuring breakout sessions with local journalists. Register today at this link (it’s FREE!) to reserve your seat: http://bit.ly/newslitcampAkron. Space is limited. Sign up today to reserve your seat! NewsLitCamp is a day-long professional development experience based on an “edcamp” style…

Join the News Literacy Project for a NewsLitCamp® in New York City! Join the News Literacy Project, the New York City Department of Education and Bloomberg News on Monday, Jan. 27, for a highly engaging, teacher-centered NewsLitCamp featuring breakout sessions with experienced journalists. This program is one in a national series of NewsLitCamps led by the News Literacy Project in collaboration…

If you are looking for an app that functions like a game and teaches you to be more news-literate, NLP has just the thing: Informable, our new mobile app. It is designed to improve users’ ability to distinguish between several types of news and other information. Developed for both adults and students, Informable helps users…

While most people tend to think of internet trolls as obnoxious personas who provoke others into infuriating exchanges online, two disinformation experts at Clemson University argue that that “professional trolls” are far more likely to use positive ideological messages that affirm people’s existing beliefs to accomplish their goals of sowing division and distrust. “Effective disinformation is…

HundrED, an international nonprofit that promotes inspiring innovations in K-12 education, has selected the News Literacy Project’s Checkology® virtual classroom for a 2019 Spotlight on Digital Wellbeing award. The award recognizes our e-learning platform as one of 100 global innovations in 2019. HundrED’s website features the honorees, each with a page that includes an overview,…

Today is Giving Tuesday, a global day of generosity dedicated to charitable giving. Every day, the News Literacy Project is working to ensure that the next generation is able to navigate the complex world of information in a way that can unite us around verifiable facts. Educators depend on NLP for the tools to teach…

The News Literacy Project’s Checkology virtual classroom has received a 2019 Spotlight on Digital Wellbeing award from HundrED, an international nonprofit that promotes inspiring innovations in K-12 education. The award recognizes our e-learning platform as one of 100 global innovations in 2019. The honorees are featured on HundrED’s website, each with a page that includes…

Valerie Strauss, author of The Washington Post’s education blog, Answer Sheet, is featuring items from NLP’s weekly newsletter for educators through the end of the school year. These columns are linked below: “How QAnon Conspiracy Theory Became an Acceptable Option Marketplace Ideas more Lessons Fake News” (May 19, 2020) “Covid 19 Conspiracy Video Goes Viral…

An article by The Fulcrum, a nonpartisan digital news organization focused on strengthening American democracy, makes the case that students are not the only ones who need news literacy education. In the Nov. 25 piece, “Adults may need media literacy even more than students,” Eliza Newlin Carney touts NLP’s new brain training app Informable. The…

A new report from the Stanford History Education Group has found little change in high school students’ ability to evaluate information online since 2016, when SHEG researchers released the results of a similar study. This skill set — dubbed “civic online reasoning” by Stanford researchers — consists of the ability to recognize advertising, including branded…

It’s a sad day when students at two highly regarded universities are unaware of how journalism is properly practiced. This lack of understanding extends to the First Amendment’s protections for speech, assembly and the press and shows how our middle schools and high schools must do a better job of preparing young people to understand…

Join the News Literacy Project (NLP), South Carolina ETV and Public Radio, and Richland School District Two for a highly engaging (and free!) one-day NewsLitCamp, featuring breakout sessions with journalists. RSD2 educators can receive up to 7 renewal credits; other educators can apply for credit from their districts.  Register today at this link (it’s FREE!) to…

Under normal circumstances, Alana Frick teaches NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom as a stand-alone media literacy unit sometime between April and June. But circumstances have been anything but normal for the eighth-grade humanities teacher in Santiago, Chile. When public demonstrations engulfed the country in October, Frick and her colleagues at The International School Nido de Aguilas…

In a Nov. 21 Newsweek column,”Facebook Won’t Save Us From Fake News. We Need to Teach People to Resist Misinformation | Opinion,” by Helen Lee Bouygues, founder of the Reboot Foundation, says of NLP: “There are some positive signs here in the United States. Several organizations, including Stony Brook University and the News Literacy Project,…

“If you don’t know what the News Literacy Project is and does, it’s time you do.” That’s how Valerie Strauss, who writes The Washington Post’s education blog, Answer Sheet, starts today’s post about NLP’s scope, reach and initiatives. “Fighting the misinformation pandemic: Here’s help teaching students to distinguish real news from what’s fake” introduces readers…

Student journalists at The Daily Northwestern — the independent student-run news organization at Northwestern University — sparked intense national debate and criticism among professional journalists and others last week after they apologized in a Nov. 10 column for a series of actions taken by staff members while covering protests of a campus speech five days…

EdSurge, an online news outlet that focuses on education technology, reported on NLP’s Nov. 14 NewsLitCamp at the San Francisco Chronicle. “Inside a News Literacy Camp, Where the Newsroom Becomes the Classroom” notes that the unique professional development format and setting of a NewsLitCamp allows the educators and journalists in attendance to learn from each other.…

A new report from the Reboot Foundation, a Paris-based nonprofit supporting efforts that elevate critical thinking, notes the work of NLP and highlights our Checkology® virtual classroom as a news literacy resource. In Fighting Fake News: Lessons From The Information Wars, Helen Lee Bouygues, the foundation’s founder and president, examined existing literature, interviewed experts and conducted…

By Greg McCaffery and Alan C. Miller We are gratified to note that we achieved or exceeded most of our goals for the first year across our programs, communications and finances and for our impact metrics with educators and students. In areas where we fell short, we are working to improve this year. Read the…

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, discussed our work and offered tips for spotting misinformation on the Oct. 31 episode of the NPR podcast Life Kit, hosted by Miles Parks (starting at 10:50). Adams explains how to spot misinformation shared by others and explores how people can recognize when they aren’t reacting objectively…

In marked contrast to recent statements by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a series of tweets last Wednesday that his social media platform would ban all political advertising starting Nov. 22, explaining that “this isn’t about free expression” — as Zuckerberg has argued — and that…

Imagine hearing this startling “news” while relaxing at home on a Sunday evening: “… those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.” If you were listening to CBS Radio’s Mercury Theatre on the Air program 81 years ago today, that’s exactly what…

Fairness is one of the bedrock principles of quality journalism. The code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists calls on reporters to “diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.” But that practice has raised concerns for the more than 700 people who have…

Anchors and executives at CNN welcomed supporters of the News Literacy Project to the network’s new headquarters in New York City’s Hudson Yards on Oct. 22 for a discussion about quality journalism and the importance of news literacy at a time when facts are competing for attention with overwhelming (and growing) amounts of “fake.” Alisyn…

In a report Sunday about violence in northern Syria, ABC’s “World News Tonight“ included a video clip of a nighttime machine gun exhibition at a Kentucky shooting range. Anchor Tom Llamas mistakenly described it as “appearing to show Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians.”  While ABC made a serious error in including this footage, the lapse…

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Facebook plans to exempt satire and opinion content from its fact-checking program. This would mean that posts that contain demonstrably false claims, but which the platform deems to be either satire or opinion, would not be referred to its network of third-party fact-checkers. Thus, Facebook would not…

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, discusses his work and the value of partnering with the National Association of Media Literacy Education and others in the field.  

Like many teens asked to research a topic, Catherine Griffin’s students typically would open a search engine, type a word or phrase, and simply use the source at the top of their results. But once Griffin guides them through the Checkology®virtual classroom, they start digging deeper, citing scholarly articles and database results in their research.…

Political parties or government agencies in 70 countries are using “cyber troops” to engage in organized disinformation efforts online, according to a new report from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. This is a 150% increase in state- and party-sponsored social media manipulation campaigns since 2017. At that time researchers found such…

In an interview with UCLA Magazine (the alumni magazine of the University of California, Los Angeles), Matea Gold, editor of the political investigations team at The Washington Post, talks about her work with the News Literacy Project and our role in combating misinformation. Gold, a member of NLP’s National Leadership Council, is a longtime NLP…

On Sept. 14, The New York Times published an essay by two of its reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, that was based on their new book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation. The Times’ opinion section — which is responsible for the Sunday Review section, where the essay appeared — also posted a…

I’m delighted to tell you that our Checkology® virtual classroom has won a Silver Award in the News/Media Literacy category from the 2019 Global Youth & News Media Prize. The Global Youth & News Media Prize, established in 2018, honors organizations around the world that innovate as they strengthen engagement between news media and young…

On Sept. 24, the same day that journalist Enrique Acevedo became a U.S. citizen, the News Literacy Project presented him with its ­John S. Carroll Journalist of the Year Award. Acevedo, who was born in Mexico, is the co-anchor of Univision’s Noticiero Univision Edición Nocturna, the network’s late-night news program. He has been involved with NLP since…

EdSurge, an education news organization that focuses on education technology, featured Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, and Valeria Luquin, recipient of NLP’s 2019 Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Award, in its Sept. 24 podcast discussing news literacy and the challenge of teaching students to navigate a relentless flow of information online.

The American Society of News Editors received responses to its 41st annual survey from 429 news organizations. Both print/digital newsrooms and online-only outlets responded to the survey. The results (PDF download), released last Tuesday, found that people of color comprised 21.9% of salaried employees in 2018, compared with 21.8% the year before. Online-only news outlets…

The lives and legacies of journalists Gwen Ifill and Daniel Pearl continue to influence the next generation, as evidenced by this year’s recipient of the News Literacy Project’s Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Award: Valeria Luquin, a 10th-grade student at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School. “I’m extremely honored to have been nominated and to…