Kathleen Parker joins the News Literacy Project Board

Parker writes a twice-weekly column on politics and culture that is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group to more than 450 newspapers. The Post is one of 21 news organizations that participate in the News Literacy Project.

In 2010, Parker was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for what the judges described as her “perceptive, often witty columns on an array of political and moral issues, gracefully sharing the experiences and values that lead her to unpredictable conclusions.”

She also writes for Newsweek and USA Today and is a CNN contributor and a frequent guest on the Sunday morning news shows. Her book, Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care, was published in 2008.

In recent months, Parker has written on subjects that reflect the need for news literacy. In a column last month that extolled the virtues of moderation in politics, she lamented the tone of public discourse in which “dispassion and facts give way to heat and opinion.”

In an April 11 column focusing on a false allegation about South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley that circulated in both the blogosphere and some mainstream media outlets, Parker wrote, “Integrity of information is the one thing newspapers can promise readers that other, new media can’t deliver with the same consistency.

“It isn’t only a matter of pride or even of survival of newspapers, in which I obviously have a personal interest,” she wrote. “Ultimately, it is a matter of helping protect freedoms that will become diminished as a less-informed citizenry surrenders responsibility to titillation—and slouches inevitably toward idiocracy.”