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Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

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Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#51

Post by sumtechguy »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #15
0xy wrote: post #6

They should probably include NPR's bias, too. NPR deleted a tweet (with no retraction) that heavily implied a person who was violently attacked in his vehicle and then sped away to avoid the violence was a "right-wing extremist" involved in a "vehicle-ramming incident" [1] -- with zero reference to the violent attack initiated on the vehicle. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbEIlsUUcAACYht.jpg Additionally, the prote…

These specific incident aside your overall point is good: news is not always right, one news not always agree with the other, each person must do own looking, reading, evaluation of evidence. This is what we need in "news literacy" not a course just saying "trust mainstream media".

I wish I could say 'oh read them all and you will figure it out'. That is unfortunately not very true. All of the brands have an agenda. Most are straight copy and paste of each other or slight re-writes. Some even are little more than a game of 'telephone'. Errors of omission or addition are rampant.

Funny enough it was NPR that clued me into this mess 20+ years ago. I was listening to them on a long drive. The same story came up over and over. Each NPR station pretended like they had wrote it themselves. Conan has a few fun skits that shows off this effect. If they are willing to lie about something so cheesy I have no choice but to think the 'big lies' would be easy. Our news is corrupt to its core, controlled by few large conglomerates and read by pretty faces and smooth voices.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#52

Post by kebman »

Part of the primary school curriculum here in Norway is how to be critical of source material, no matter where it comes from. We call it “source criticism.” Summed up, it's about how trustworthy a source is, what method was used to obtain the data or opinions in the material (if any), whether the observations or claims in it are first hand or second hand, and whether its conclusions are reasonably objective or subjective. From there on, you can start to make up an opinion as to whether a source is “good” or “bad,” or neutral or biased. Good teachers will try to keep politics out of it, but there are definitively examples of teachers who for whatever reason keeps a political slant. In theory they could lose their job if they're caught indoctrinating their pupils, but in reality it's almost never an issue. On the other hand, in today's hyper-politicized world, I trust that most of the pupils quickly catch on if they try.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#53

Post by throwaway0a5e »

oefrha wrote: post #14

IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all. It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather th…

> It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather than viral content. Which is of course great for NPR.

I had some minimal education on scrutinizing sources in high school and that's pretty much what it was. I think we spend maybe 10min talking about yellow journalism.

Topics such as evaluating which parties have what direct conflicts of interests or ancillary motivations and how that may affect their reporting were simply not covered. It would have been trivially easy to dig up a few non-controversial historical examples of people peddling very wrong narratives for the benefit of those who fund them.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#54

Post by 404mm »

oefrha wrote: post #14

IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all. It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather th…

Yes! This is my pet peeve! There are so many studies and sources that, if taken out of context and pointed correctly, can be used to support your claim.

Now combine with the good old “you don’t know what you don’t know” and you have a great tool to mislead the masses.

Add a bit of cognitive bias on top (combined with being profiled by “popular search engines” that give you the results you already believe in) and you’re hooked.

Underlining story: there is so much need for critical thinking in our schools!!!

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#55

Post by wolverine876 »

lettergram wrote: post #31

Growing up in Illinois and going to public schools, I have to say this is just making the situation worse. My wife (who went to the same school district) and I both recall situations where politics were in the classroom. I recall in grade school with vivid detail my teacher saying “anyone who voted for bush is an idiot” and kids in the class becoming upset and the teacher doubling down. My entire time at school (thro…

> I recall in grade school with vivid detail my teacher saying “anyone who voted for bush is an idiot”

I never encountered anything like it or met anyone who did. My teachers always taught us to think critically; they didn't care what the topic was or what our conclusions were; it was about learning to think. Is there any research, such as a survey, of student experiences of political speech by teachers?

I'm sure we can find a few examples of anything, but we also all know well that there's a political group that is trying to denigrate and politicize every institution, from the media to schools to the FBI to the courts to scientists, etc. by saying they are biased toward liberals. Repeating its claims doesn't help; if we are going to think critically about it, and we should, we need some credible evidence.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#56

Post by throwawayswede »

oefrha wrote: post #14

IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all. It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather th…

Indeed. Jacques Ellul discusses this at length in his book "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" [1]. Whenever I reread this book I feel it's more and more relevant than before.

> "But modern propaganda has long disdained the ridiculous lies of past and outmoded forms of propaganda. It operates instead with many different kinds of truth— half-truth, limited truth, truth out of context. Even Goebbels always insisted that Wehrmacht communiqués be as accurate as possible."

1: https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#57

Post by mygoodaccount »

Side note - I wonder how they'll treat Wikipedia in these classes. When I was in high school (<2016), they were still telling us not to use Wikipedia because "anybody can edit it" and the librarian once saw the Amerigo Vespucci page had been edited to say he was the "King of Grapes".

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#58

Post by ameminator »

eplanit wrote: post #2

Given the primary example used on the kids, the 2016 election, this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy". Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop? Remember, for weeks it was cast as Russian propaganda. What about the origins of covid.. will they discuss how at first the lab leak theory was discarded as "misinformation"? I could not trust a public scho…

This week, a story broke how Hunter Biden had yet another laptop stolen from him, this time with videos of him doing "crazy sex acts". [0]

Yet again, as in 2020, I was unable to share the link below in a private Facebook Messenger group. What else will be censored next, at the behest of the government?

I severely mistrust when the government tells you what and who to believe, and that includes our schools. Teach critical thinking, logic and fallacies, and leave it there - the students can make up their own minds.

[0] https://nypost.com/2021/08/11/video-reportedly-shows-nude-hu...

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#59

Post by zapataband1 »

eplanit wrote: post #2

Given the primary example used on the kids, the 2016 election, this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy". Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop? Remember, for weeks it was cast as Russian propaganda. What about the origins of covid.. will they discuss how at first the lab leak theory was discarded as "misinformation"? I could not trust a public scho…

Please join the school board if you are so concerned. Schools have been teaching critical thinking when it comes to research topics for probably decades/hundreds of years. Remember primary sources? Remember conflicting sources and having to dig into why they were conflicting? Public school ain't perfect but I'd rather have kids know that there -is- bias, than do what you are suggesting which is....? nothign.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#60

Post by srswtf123 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #32

> Students say they often didn't see why, for example, a company writing about climate change receiving funding from the fossil fuel industry could skew the story. Many assume that if a social media influencer has tons of followers, it means they're trustworthy. I see a similar outcome among adults, but these are adults who I know were raised to be skeptical (in the sense of science or critical thought), to think ind…

I’ve wondered this too. So far, all I can discern is that smartphones behave like a tasp, from Larry Niven’s scifi writings.

A tasp is a device that stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain. This rapidly leads to addiction and enslavement of the person(s) the tasp is used on.

We’re very easily controlled, and so many of us don’t even realize it.

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