Why is it important to learn about news literacy?

News literacy is the ability to use critical thinking skills to determine the trustworthiness of information across the news media, including print sources, television and the Internet. This kind of literacy empowers you to give informed consideration to issues and decisions, such as whether to support a cause, which new events or ideas merit attention, or who to vote for. Importantly, news literacy can also help you have conversations across political differences. In other words, developing news literacy is essential to becoming an engaged citizen.

While these skills have always been important, the advent of the Internet and the explosion of social media add complexity to consuming news, making news literacy even more vital. Some of these complexities include:

• Information overload. We are constantly bombarded with content, making decisions about accuracy difficult and time-consuming.
• The 24-hour news cycle. Modern news organizations with digital capabilities feel pressure to publish as quickly as possible, even when information has not been verified.
• Decreased funding for newsrooms. Traditional media sources, which have professional ethics and editorial systems in place to ensure accurate and high-quality reporting, are experiencing short-staffing and declining resources due to the changes in how news is being consumed.
• Widespread availability of technologies for production and publication of information. Now anyone with an internet connection and some basic skills can create content which looks authoritative and can spread it virally, increasing the dangers of misinformation.
• Filter bubbles and echo chambers. With the development of personalized searching and insular social media communities, it is easier to succumb to filter bubbles and echo chambers which restrict our news consumption to a limited number of information sources.

What exactly is "news"?

News can be simply defined as "a report of recent events." Though informally this includes sharing any new information (as in saying to a friend or posting on social media, "I have some good news!"), when we talk about news literacy, we are referring to news created by professional journalists. News plays an important role in our society. It aims to keep the public informed on significant issues, helps ensure accountability from governments and institutions, and strives to make accurate and fair information available to all. Media organizations staffed by professional journalists abide by ethics which help them stay in integrity with these goals. Some of these ethical principles include reporting truthfully, avoiding conflicts of interest, minimizing harm to sources or members of the public, and being transparent and accountable. See here for the Code of Ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists. To give one example of these principles in practice, many publications have whole departments dedicated to verifying the accuracy of factual information before publishing it, a process known as fact-checking.In cases where ethical media organizations discover they have accidentally published false information, they issue a correction explaining the error and providing the correct information (see these examples gathered by BuzzFeed News).

News ranges in complexity and format. A standard news story reporting on recent events seeks to answer the five W's - Who, What, When, Where and Why - with impartial, factual information obtained from direct evidence. For example, a TV reporter visiting the site of a hurricane will share details of the situation on the ground, such as the number of inches of rain and statements from eyewitnesses. News organizations also publish analyses, investigations, and other forms of coverage which add additional context and interpretation to help make sense of complex issues. Two examples of this type of coverage include a recent long-form investigative article on Apple products being made in China by The New York Times, and an analysis of the post-pandemic economic recovery from The Wall Street Journal. Increasingly, media organizations may also publish posts on social media, podcasts and short documentaries on platforms like YouTube. This can make news coverage from professional reporters or journalists more difficult to distinguish from content created by individuals or groups not affiliated with news organizations.

In addition to the types of journalism described above, major news organizations often publish opinion pieces and editorials, known collectively as op-eds. These types of articles allow writers, who may or may not be journalists, to share their opinions. For instance, this opinion piece from Fox News, written by political activist Charlie Kirk, offers a conservative critique of President Biden's foreign policy agenda. Note that this example includes a clear "opinion" tag at the top near the author's name. Reputable publications label opinion pieces and often keep them in a separate column (in a print source) or section (on a website), making them easy to distinguish. However, opinion pieces are also common on less reputable news sites, websites, and blogs (examples linked), which may not take the same care to identify what is straight news and what is opinion. Op-eds allow the authors to make arguments which cannot be fact-checked (i.e. "this is the best policy" or "anyone who disagrees is un-American"). It is important to be able to distinguish between opinions built on an interpretation of facts, which you may agree or disagree with, and verified facts themselves.

Write down 3 things you learned from taking this badge, 2 things you plan to apply when you consume the news in the near future, and 1 question you still have about news literacy.

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