NLP News

How can consumers figure out fact from fiction in the current media landscape? What strategies should they use to know whether the news they are following is credible?

As an intelligence analyst at the CIA, Cindy Otis was trained to assess how our country’s foreign adversaries deploy divisive rumors, destructive conspiracy theories and other kinds of disinformation against us.

Alan is taking a break from column-writing for the summer. Watch this space for the column’s return on Sept. 9.

This is part of a series that introduces you to the people of NLP. This week we interview Miriam Romais.

We’re proud to announce that NLP and our Checkology® virtual classroom have been selected in the annual list of the Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL).

Earlier this month, Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, gave the keynote address for our annual 2021 News Literacy Change-Maker Awards. Adams issued a strong warning about the harm misinformation can cause, and we wanted to share his important remarks with you.

For more than a year, the theory that the COVID-19 global pandemic began with the leak of a previously unknown coronavirus from a laboratory at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019 was roundly, even vociferously, dismissed by many scientists and most in the news media.

Alan Miller, NLP’s CEO and founder, was interviewed by the Aspen Institute for its Disinfo Discussions digital series. In the conversation, Alan examined the role of news literacy and education as an effective countermeasure to the spread of mis- and disinformation.

Talk about good timing. In early 2020, Erin Wilder encouraged her fellow high school English teachers to hop in the car and head from Hoschton, Georgia, to Columbia, South Carolina, for a NewsLitCamp®. Wilder was certain a drive of a few hours would prove valuable to her colleagues — Warren Clemens, Joe Jenifer and Ramona…

In recognition of their outstanding achievements in supporting news literacy during an unprecedented and challenging school year, NLP has named the recipients of its 2021 educator, journalist and student of the year awards.

It didn’t take the tumultuous events of 2020 and the accompanying flood of misinformation to convince educator Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt that news literacy should be part of every school’s curriculum.

Alisyn Camerota has provided unflinching coverage, essential context and vital and verified information on major news stories to millions of people during her career as a leading broadcast journalist.

Like many teens, Ana Rodriguez, 15, turns to social media to find out what is going on in the world. But she is well aware that sorting fact from fiction in her newsfeed can be difficult.

Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini, 13, always had assumed that misinformation did not affect her. Then last year, when she was in seventh grade, she learned firsthand how it could fool her and just how fast and how far it can spread.

This year we had an abundance of strong submissions from so many amazing students that it was difficult to choose just one winner in each of the categories — high school and middle school.

John Carroll was the kind of editor who made you proud to be a journalist. He inspired those who worked for him. In my case, I felt honored to call him my editor, my chairman, my friend.

Today, the News Literacy Project (NLP) joined more than 3,000 diverse, locally-owned, nonprofit and community-based newsrooms calling on Congressional leaders to provide support for America’s community newsrooms in the infrastructure bill.

This Q and A is the first in an occasional series that introduces you to the people of the News Literacy Project.

The 2020-21 school year has been anything but routine for teachers and students all over the world. Unpredictability led to a mixture of remote, hybrid and in-person learning environments — with some classrooms experiencing all three. At the same time, demand grew for resources to teach students how to separate fact from fiction and identify…

Communities of color have historically been underserved by the news business, and the loss of journalism jobs and outlets nationwide has exacerbated this neglect. Then came the pandemic, with its disproportionate impact on Black and brown people throughout the United States, and the accompanying “infodemic” of misinformation.

If there’s one thing people want to know most about a vaccine, it’s this: Does it work? So naturally, as COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials were being completed and vaccines were being considered for emergency use authorization, the numbers that featured most heavily in the news were efficacy rates.

When the Sunday Spotlight on NBC’s Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist chose to explore the misinformation crisis and efforts to combat it, the show’s producers turned to NLP. The May 16 segment Misinformation education: How schools are teaching kids to find the truth featured NLP’s Senior Vice President of Education Peter Adams. Correspondent Joe Fryer…

Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine is contributing to a hesitancy to get vaccinated. In an effort to separate fact from fiction and provide a better understanding of the reasons for that reluctance, we’re going to spend this week focusing on the issue and providing trustworthy information about it.

Our brains are built to look for patterns, and we tend to see them everywhere. We look up at a cloud and see the shape of a cat. Or we recognize the outline of a face in a puddle. Patternicity is the term for this tendency to perceive meaningful patterns and connections among unrelated events.…

The tumultuous events of the past year have highlighted the First Amendment’s vital role as a pillar of American democracy. They have also underscored the need for vigilance in defending it.

More than 40 years ago, the United States first celebrated the heritage of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) with a commemorative week in May 1979. But this year, amid disturbing violence and abuse targeted at Asian-Americans, immigrants and other people of color, appreciating the culture and contributions of the AAPI community is more important than…

Journalism — “arguably the best vaccine against the virus of disinformation” — is obstructed in a majority of countries around the world, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and its new press freedom ranking.

This article is from a previous issue of our Get Smart About News newsletter for the general public, which explores timely examples of misinformation as well as press freedom and social media trends and issues. Subscribe to our newsletters. By Hannah Covington It can be tempting to view the public’s distrust of the news media as…

The upcoming Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday offers an opportune moment to reflect on my favorite film about journalism: Spotlight, which won the best picture Oscar in 2016.

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, will discuss media bias and show consumers how to evaluate news coverage in a virtual presentation for the St. Charles City-County Library Current Conversations series. People frequently perceive and allege bias in news coverage, but what does this really mean? What makes a piece of news biased,…

NLP’s Peter Adams, senior vice president of education, and Charles Whitaker, the dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School, took part in an in-depth conversation about how misinformation spreads and what newsrooms and social media companies should do about it. The segment News Educators Say Journalists Should ‘Slow Down’ on Social Media aired April 20 on…

An April 4 report from the long-running CBS News newsmagazine 60 Minutes on disparities in Florida’s vaccine rollout has touched off a wave of criticism questioning the piece’s accuracy and fairness.

What happens when you bring together a news literacy expert and an experienced reporter who covers all things media? Find out during our first Instagram Live event!

NPR journalist Hannah Bloch is used to asking questions, but during a virtual visit with 80 sixth-graders at Chaparral Middle School in Diamond Bar, California, she was the one peppered with them. The conversation with Bloch, lead digital editor on NPR’s international desk, was the highlight of a media literacy component that educator Sherry Robertson…

I first met Emily Ramshaw at a dinner in Austin, Texas, in November 2019. She had just left The Texas Tribune, where she was its highly respected editor-in-chief, to take a giant leap of faith. She was about to launch a nonprofit online news organization devoted to covering politics and policy through a gender lens,…

Miami Dade Public Schools, in partnership with the News Literacy Project, is hosting a news literacy essay writing contest to empower students to be civically informed and engaged.

This article is from a previous issue of our Get Smart About News newsletter for the general public, which explores timely examples of misinformation as well as press freedom and social media trends and issues. Subscribe to our newsletters. Women working as journalists increasingly face gender-based violence outside of their newsrooms, including a barrage of…

NewsLitCamp helps teachers and librarians develop expertise in news literacy, demystifying what distinguishes quality journalism from misinformation. Join the News Literacy Project (NLP), South Carolina ETV and Public Radio, The Post and Courier, and Richland School District Two on May 14 and 21 for NewsLitCamp, a virtual teacher-centered professional learning event over two afternoons featuring breakout sessions with Columbia journalists.…

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 are posted at 10 a.m. ET every other Thursday. The PBS NewsHour segment on the News Literacy Project had just aired. “How was it?” my colleague asked me. “Great for us,” I responded. “But…

Join the News Literacy Project and OATS Senior Planet for a free webinar to learn how to fact-check content and use existing tools to verify information before you share it. The discussion will take place on Wednesday, March 31 at 1pm ET / 10am PT. In this webinar, we’ll share tips to help you understand the motivations of bad actors who push misleading, inaccurate and false information, and we’ll help you build skills to identify it and stop its spread. We’ll also teach you the basics of fact-checking so that you can protect yourself from falling for misinformation.

By Suzannah Gonzales and Hannah Covington This article is from this week’s issue of our Get Smart About News newsletter for the general public, which explores timely examples of misinformation as well as press freedom and social media trends and issues. Subscribe to our newsletters. News coverage of the March 16 fatal shootings at Atlanta-area…