Jan. 23-27 has been proclaimed News Literacy Week. What is news literacy? The News Literacy Project defines it as “the ability to determine the credibility of news and other information and to recognize the standards of fact-based journalism to know what to trust, share and act on.”
News literacy is crucial to a civilized society, and that may be more true now, in the internet age, than ever before. Suddenly everyone with a cell phone or an internet connection has access to free platforms where they can say whatever they want with zero accountability and call it “news.”
I liken it to what happened with the “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1938. At that time radio was fairly new, and becoming more and more popular. By 1934, 60% of U.S. households had a radio and Americans were relying more on radio for entertainment, news programming, weather, and so on. They trusted the medium. So when a script of Orson Welle’s “War of the Worlds” in which Martians attack the planet was broadcast without attribution, people mistakenly thought it was a breaking news story. They couldn’t tell the difference.
Not much has changed. Even the most news-conscious and digital-savvy media consumers have a hard time telling the difference between opinion pieces and news stories. It’s a little easier in print, where everything can be clearly labeled on the page. It’s more difficult online, on radio, or onscreen, where we may never see how an article or programming has been labeled — column, editorial, news, explainer, report, etc. Much of the shrieking about “bias” in the media comes from misidentifying news vs. opinion.
And if you hear something long enough and identify it as “news” or “fact,” you might be surprised to find you’ve been misinformed, for years. Just for fun, try this quiz and see: https://newslit.org/tips-tools/easiest-quiz-all-time/
Here’s my incomplete set of guidelines:
If it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not true. (Those comic book ads for making muscles, Sea Monkeys, and X-Ray Vision glasses have morphed into magical wrinkle removing potions, pills to make you skinny without changing your diet, and secret supplements guaranteed to reverse aging. The gimmick is the same.)
If someone is telling me to believe something and selling me a product at the same time (without identifying it as advertising), that’s a red flag I’m about to be bamboozled.
Memory is faulty. (Take that quiz, seriously.)
Don’t act (or react) without verification. Example: don’t comment on articles without actually reading the article and checking the sources.
Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true anymore than wanting something to be false makes it false. Nine times out of 10, the truth is somewhere in the murky middle.
Is there a solution to news “illiteracy”? Awareness is at least half the battle. And the old adage, “think before you speak” could be amended to “think before you comment, repost, or repeat.”
By NIKI TURNER | [email protected]
