Don’t let ABC’s mistake fuel distrust of the media

NLP in the News


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 fueled cynical notions about how standards-based news organizations work.

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, puts the incident in context in a piece for Poynter Institute. “This is a good reminder of a fundamental concept in news literacy: Not all information — including misinformation — is created with the same motivations and processes. Most significant errors and breaches of standards at major news outlets are driven by a desire to break news,” he writes.

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National News Literacy Week 2025 makes headlines across the country

Some highlights: In USA TODAY, Neveah Rice, a college freshman studying journalism and the recipient of the News Literacy Project’s 2024 student Change-Maker award, wrote how learning news literacy can help teens break out of social media filter bubbles and identify bias in their information sources. Also in USA TODAY, News Literacy Project board member Melanie Lundquist urged donors to support efforts to…

NLP in the News

Insider Spotlight: Noreen Fitzgerald-Makar

Welcome to the Insider Spotlight section, where we feature real questions from our team and answers from educators who are making a difference teaching news literacy. This month, our featured educator is Noreen Fitzgerald-Makar from New York City, where she is an English and journalism teacher.

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Understanding bias in the news media

A News Literacy Project webinar for educators shared practical advice and tips to help students regain trust in credible news and to question faulty beliefs about media bias.

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