NLP News

As part of its local news initiative, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation asked NLP’s founder and CEO, Alan C. Miller, to consider how news literacy correlates with improved trust and understanding between the public and local news outlets. He immediately saw the connection and shared his thoughts, which were posted Jan. 9…

In his original column, Stephens lauded the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews, citing a 2005 paper that was published in the Journal of Biosocial Science, which until 1969 was named The Eugenics Review. The article was co-authored by Henry Harpending, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled an “extremist” with a “white nationalist” ideology. On Dec.…

Making New Year’s resolutions is easy; keeping them is not. This year, you can adopt a meaningful resolution that is easy to keep long after we ring in another new year. So join NLP in resolving to become more news-literate in 2020. Here’s how, in three simple steps. And Happy New Year!

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…

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.”…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The most essential question to ask of viral online content is also frequently one of the most difficult to answer: Where did this come from? While this question isn’t new — after all, purveyors of misinformation have always “adapted their workflows to the latest medium” — it has been elevated by an information ecosystem optimized for anonymity,…

Valeria Luquin, a high school sophomore who applies skills gleaned from the News Literacy Project’s Checkology® virtual classroom in her daily life, has been named NLP’s Gwen Ifill Student of the Year for 2019. “Valeria has taken everything she’s learned on Checkology to heart,” said Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO. “She not only has brought…

Enrique Acevedo, co-anchor of Univision’s Noticiero Univision Edición Nocturna, the network’s late-night news program, is the 2019 recipient of the News Literacy Project’s John S. Carroll Journalist of the Year Award. “Enrique made major contributions to NLP on important fronts in the past year with considerable skill and professionalism,” said Alan C. Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO.…

A new report from the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, confirms what we at the News Literacy Project have long known: There’s an urgent need for media literacy education that is scalable, culturally relevant and readily available. Released earlier this month, Exploring Media Literacy Education as a Tool for Mitigating Truth Decay was…

Millions of Americans will be paying close attention on Wednesday when former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III testifies before two congressional committees about his investigation into Russia’s election interference in 2016 and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald J. Trump. While Democrats and Republicans will no doubt disagree over Mueller’s testimony, it highlights…

While it’s an exaggeration to say that the whole world was watching when Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon on July 20 fifty years ago, this history-defining moment truly riveted people around the globe. NASA estimates that 650 million people — almost 20% of the global population…

Although the calendar and the thermometer tell us that it’s summer, it’s a new year at NLP. To better align with the teaching and learning schedules of the educators and students we serve, NLP kicks off its new year in July — not with corks popping or a ball dropping, but with a staff retreat.…

How are you celebrating the Fourth of July — with fireworks, a parade, a family cookout? May we suggest sharpening your news literacy skills? Our nation’s founders would be proud of you. While they didn’t have to contend with the 24-hour news cycle, internet trolls or disinformation-spewing bots, the Founding Fathers were concerned that misinformation…

Usually, the last day of school is an exercise in the mundane: emptying lockers, clearing out desks, shelving books in the library. But that wasn’t the case on June 20 for the fourth-graders in Jodi Mahoney’s technology classroom at Carl Von Linné School in Chicago. They wrapped up the school year with a virtual visit…

One year ago today, a gunman opened fire in the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. The attack took the lives of five people, four of them journalists, on the deadliest day for American journalism in modern history. Embed from Getty Images With that tragedy in mind, legislation introduced in Congress this week…

Diego Hernandez, who recently completed ninth grade at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Van Nuys, California, believes misinformation can harm your outlook on the world. But Checkology® virtual classroom, which he used in his journalism class, has changed how Diego approaches news and other information. “Now I’m thinking on both sides of the spectrum,”…

Christina Van Tassell, the chief financial officer at Dow Jones, and Molly Hill Patten, chief operating officer at Ideas42, a nonprofit that applies behavioral science to complex problems around the world, are the two newest members of the News Literacy Project’s board. “Molly and Christina bring impressive financial experience and acumen to the NLP board,…

For Univision reporter Maria Alesia Sosa, the recent news that press freedom in the United States was now considered “problematic” by an international media watchdog group wasn’t as daunting as it might be to other U.S. reporters. It’s not that she isn’t concerned about the trend — but she is from Venezuela, which is ranked…

Valeria Luquin, a ninth-grader at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Van Nuys, California, is one of the thousands of students who have benefited from the News Literacy Project’s Checkology® virtual classroom. She said it has helped her to become more aware of the news and other information she encounters every day. “I feel like…

The conclusions that political scientists Morgan Marietta and David C. Barker reach in their new book, One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy, are enough to make the reader despair. Based on data from national surveys conducted from 2013 to 2017, they determined that “dueling fact perceptions are rampant, and they are more…

You won’t always see Kelly Melendez Loaiza’s students using beakers and Bunsen burners to demonstrate their grasp of the scientific method. That’s because this science teacher brings the rigors of evidence-based inquiry out of the lab and onto the laptop. “Facts must be supported by reliable sources. They are not feelings or hunches,” Melendez Loaiza…

In the 11 years since I founded the News Literacy Project, I have learned time and again that it takes a lasting, comprehensive approach to overcome the scourge of misinformation. A recent incident involving the Poynter Institute starkly illustrates that point. On April 30, the respected journalism education nonprofit released a list, under the title…