The News Literacy Project (nonprofit)

The success of 24-hour news and political punditry belongs largely to its own ability to change shape –often in order to appease consumers and inflate audience numbers.  Unfortunately, the means by which many big news corporations gain notoriety is through diluted, and often sensationalized, coverage of news issues.  Whether such coverage is actually “journalism” is a semantic debate which I will not discuss (today).

The News Literacy Project is an organization based out of Bethesda, Md., and it seeks to teach students in middle and high schools how to critically analyze news, from tv, radio, print and (dun dun dunnnn) the Internet.  Organizations like the News Literacy Project set out to give the power back to the viewers and make them invulnerable to manipulation from “newspersons” with ulterior motives or agendas.

USA Today reporter Tom Frank first heard about the News Literacy Project two years ago through the project’s president, and former Los Angeles Times reporter, Alan Miller.  Frank is now the liaison between the project and USA Today, where he recruits colleagues to teach at local schools.  Frank spoke to two classes at Walt Whitman High School last month, sharing many of the same concepts he teaches to journalism majors at the University of Maryland.

“I hand out documents to have students understand how reporters can get stories and what makes certain sources –official government documents– more reliable and more insightful than standard sources, such as interviews,” said Frank.  He explained that a person’s natural ability to discern fact from fiction is inhibited by the information overload provided by the internet.  “Teaching news literacy is like teaching critical reading courses in literature,” said Frank, adding, ” it’s perhaps more important, given the role an informed public plays in democracy.”  Frank is a proponent of making such courses mandatory to high school curricula.

The News Literacy Project bases its lessons on four “pillars” viewers should consider while assessing the news. These pillars ask: Why does news matter?  Why is the First Amendment protection of free speech so vital to American democracy?  How can students know what to believe?  What challenges and opportunities do the internet and digital media create?