NLP News

School Library Journal (SLJ) led its Sept. 29 news section with a write-up promoting NLP’s upcoming webinar series. Professional Development Course on News Literacy describes the free, four-part series as a way to “hone your skills in helping students make sense of news and other types of information. Essential concepts for students to be reliably…

NLP’s John Silva explains how misinformation exploits our emotions in the Sept. 29 article Fact or Fake? How to Help Kids & Adults Spot Misinformation Online on the website 30 Seconds. The media platform’s target audience is busy women, and particularly moms. “Misinformation manipulates our emotions into believing something is true,” Silva says. “If you…

Datanami, a news site that provides insight, analysis and information on big data, writes about the partnership between data firm SAS and NLP. The Sept. 29 article, Testing Data Literacy on Main Street,  focuses on data literacy quiz that NLP and SAS developed. The quiz allows the public to test their data literacy in news…

NLP’s CEO and founder Alan C. Miller provides advice on how to spot misinformation and avoid spreading it in his first “Upon Reflection” column, which was picked up and published by the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 28.

In this virtual edWebinar on Oct. 14, join subject matter expert Peter Adams of the News Literacy Project and former CIA officer and author Cindy Otis for a conversation about the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Register here for this free presentation at edWeb. Learn how to tell if a bot or a troll is…

Election misinformation is the topic of a Sept. 25 article in The Hill, Disinformation, QAnon efforts targeting Latino voters ramp up ahead of presidential election.  NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller weighs in on why NLP and the Open Mind Legacy Project joined forces on an election misinformation PSA campaign. “We know that in…

Miami-area educators, join the News Literacy Project for a virtual NewsLitCamp® event! About this Event Join the News Literacy Project (NLP), Univision News and Miami-Dade County Public Schools on Oct. 23 for a virtual teacher-centered NewsLitCamp featuring breakout sessions with Univision News journalists. This program is one in a national series of NewsLitCamps led by…

Join us on Oct. 8 for a Lunch and Learn with Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education. Register now on Zoom to attend. Peter will explore recent trends in viral misinformation and how to spot them. He will introduce resources for debunking falsehoods and strategies for talking with friends and family members who…

Since 2008, NLP has helped students across the U.S. and beyond learn to sort fact from fiction. Now, to meet the urgent need for news literacy among people of all ages, we are unveiling free tools and resources for the public. This includes a customized version of our signature e-learning platform, Checkology®. This expansion of…

The Sept. 13 edition of CNN”s Reliable Sources newsletter, by Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, included a paragraph about NLP’s election misinformation PSA campaign, with a link to a USA Today op-ed about it. “The News Literacy Project and The Open Mind Legacy Project are distributing PSAs “to combat malicious fabrication, bots and online trolls…

NLP’s founder and CEO Alan C. Miller and Alexander Heffner, host of The Open Mind on PBS and president of The Open Mind Legacy Project, discuss how the two organizations joined forces to develop a national PSA campaign in a commentary for USA Today Sept. 13. The piece We’re launching an election-season ad campaign to…

NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller tells the The New York Times about NLP’s expanded mission, which includes addressing misinformation and older adults. “Our hope is that older adults will be major consumers of these resources and become part of the information solution, instead of the misinformation problem,” Miller says in the Sept. 11…

NLP and The Open Mind Legacy Project (OMLP) released public service announcements today to educate voters on how to avoid being misinformed about the November elections. Comcast, The E.W. Scripps Company and public media stations will air the video and audio PSAs, which also will be featured in a paid and organic digital ad campaign…

Making sense of data: How to be savvy about data in the news is is the conclusion of a series, presented by our partner SAS, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. Data is one of the best ways to understand our world,…

Making sense of data: Spotlight on data in social media is the sixth in a series, presented by our partner SAS, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. Like infographics, social media and other forms of user-generated content pose unique challenges regarding data.…

Making sense of data: Special look at issues with infographics is the fifth in a series, presented by our partner SAS, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. Infographics are one of the most visual ways to tell stories with data. They are…

Making sense of data: Evaluating claims made from data is the fourth in a series, presented by our partner SAS, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. Every day people use data to better understand the world. This helps them make decisions and…

Making sense of data: Understanding complications with data collection is the third in a series, presented by our partner  SAS, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field.   As we have seen, statistics and visual representations of data can be misleading. But what…

Making sense of Data: Exploring statistics in the the media is the second in a series, presented by our partner SAS, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. “Numbers don’t lie” is a phrase we often hear to support the idea that…

Making sense of data: Diving into charts and graphs is the first in a series, presented by our partner SAS, exploring the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field.   Charts and graphs are useful tools for communicating complex information. They allow consumers to…

The series described below, presented by our partner  SAS, explores the role of data in understanding our world. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field.   Data can be a powerful tool. It helps us to understand the world with more precision and greater clarity.  Data is often the foundation for research,…

NLP’s Peter Adams explains how  Russian disinformation campaigns likely fuel U.S. racial divisions in a Sept. 2 segment on Newsy, False Information Escalates Anger At Protests Across The United States. “We know from the actions of the Internet Research Agency and Russian agents in 2016 that racial division in the U.S .was something they targeted…

Sign up to attend on Zoom at this link. Join us on the last Thursday of each month at 1:30 p.m. PT/ 4:30 p.m. ET to learn more about the News Literacy Project’s Checkology virtual classroom. Hear about recent platform updates, new resources, and commonly asked user questions. Each webinar will contain a live Q&A…

Fall News Literacy Series: Skills students must learn to be reliably informed The News Literacy Project is holding a series of four free webinars, addressing essential news literacy topics, every Tuesday in October (Oct. 6, 13, 20, and 27) at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT. We are allotting 60 minutes for each session, plus an optional 30–minute Q&A to ensure…

Peter Adams explains digital trickery, including deepfakes and cheapfakes, in the Mozilla Foundation’s Aug. 31 installment of Misinfo Monday: Deepfakes and Other Trickery in Imagery. “Deepfakes are algorithmically-manipulated digital assets,” Adams says. “Deepfakes can be video or audio or even, nowadays, just an image.” While deepfakes are computer-generated, they are not the same as the …

NLP’s Peter Adams discusses COVID-19 misinformation causes and contributing factors in an Aug. 31 segment for Northern Public Radio, What Contributes to COVID-19 Misinformation? Some causes include a lack of understanding about the science involved in addressing a pandemic, the public’s inability to recognize the difference between fact-based journalism and opinion, the proliferation of news…

In the article What Really Happened? The Value of a Diverse Media Diet for the nonprofit organization The Field Foundation of Illinois, NLP’s Peter Adams discusses how having a varied news media diet helps news consumers stay reliably informed. “One mistake I think a lot of people make is to say flat out don’t get…

The Washington Post’s education reporter Valerie Strauss revisits a lesson from The Sift about the QAnon conspiracy theory. Her Aug. 25 column A lesson on QAnon for teachers to use in class includes updated information about QAnon’s resurgence in recent days. The next day blogger The Big Education Ape Blogspot  picked up the column.  …

The rights of all Americans to freely assemble and to bring grievances to the government’s doorstep are intrinsic to American democracy and  enshrined in the First Amendment. It’s what we’ve done for generations, perhaps most memorably on Aug. 28, 1963, when 250,000 people descended on Washington, D.C., to participate in the March on Washington for Jobs…

The role of a free press in a democracy was the topic of discussion between NLP founder and CEO Alan Miller and former Library of Congress Publishing Office writer/editor Linda Barrett Osborne during a Poetry & Prose Live event Aug. 20. The virtual discussion, Guardians of Liberty: Freedom of the Press and the Nature of…

On Aug. 20 The School Library Journal included news of NLP expansion efforts: News Literacy Project Creating Educator Network and Offering Free Checkology.

Veteran tech reporter and NLP board member Walt Mossberg discusses whether social media platforms finally understand the dis/misinformation crisis, how guardianship of literacy could be enacted, and why users need to take more responsibility on the Aug. 20 episode of The Open Mind podcast It Didn’t (and Doesn’t) Have to Be This Way.  

In the piece Misinformation in MT Impacting November Election NLP’s Senior Vice President of Education Peter Adams discusses how misinformation can target elections, in this case in Montana, but in any state or nation. “Our religious faith, our patriotism, our care and concern for our community, our desire for justice – and weaponize those in…

John Silva, NLP’s senior director of education and training, talks about Navigating Misinformation in the Time of COVID-19 in Flipboard’s Aug. 19 educators blog. “What we don’t talk about enough is that while we are self-isolating and social distancing, we can’t maintain our social connections. So we are turning to social media to maintain those…

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. It took the women’s suffrage movement decades to achieve that goal, thanks to entrenched discrimination that severely restricted women’s lives. Opposition to women’s suffrage relied on false narratives that seem particularly…

Ebonee Rice, vice president of NLP’s educator network, offers advice in the Mozilla Foundation’s Aug. 17 installment of the Instagram series, Misinfo Monday, on avoiding misinformation. The segment How to Tell Fact from Crap in the Newsfeed includes important tips, such as remembering to “search your feelings” because misinformation likes to prey on emotions. The piece asks: “Have you…

Kris Locker, recipient of NLP’s 2020 Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Award is featured in an article for Florida Gulf Coast University’s news site on Aug. 14. In the piece Journalism grad with knack for news literacy earns national award Locker describes the satisfaction applying what she learned in a news literacy class and…

NLP is now offering its signature e-learning platform Checkology® free to help ease the transition to remote teaching and hybrid learning environments for educators and families. By removing barriers to access, NLP will support educators across the country with essential news literacy lessons at a time of urgent need. Misinformation about COVID-19, the upcoming presidential…

The podcast Inside the Chrysalis, which examines social and psychological concepts through the context of the real world, featured NLP’s Peter Adams  in its Aug. 7 episode. In the segment These Kids Don’t Play: Anxiety About Bias in the Media, host Michelle Quist talks with Peter and mental health professional Maliha Khan.

We are pleased to welcome two esteemed colleagues to NLP’s board of directors: Enrique Acevedo and Whit Ayres. Enrique and Whit bring diverse perspectives, significant professional expertise and a passion for our mission to NLP’s board. Their contributions will help us implement our strategic expansion and solidify our position as the nation’s leading provider of…