71–80 of 490 posts
I highly recommend it - teenagers, students, adults - it's for everyone!
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…
It seems like we read different articles. My takeaway is that they’re trying to teach students how to identify bad sources/reporting or outright fake news, not litigate specific news reports. Using 2016 as an example doesn’t invalidate that goal or imply bias.
It actually does:
> Republicans' trust has not recovered since then, while Democrats' has risen sharply. In fact, Democrats' trust over the past four years has been among the highest Gallup has measured for any party in the past two decades. This year, the result is a record 63-percentage-point gap in trust among the political party groups.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrus...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI&feature=youtu.be
Description: dozens/hundreds of newscasters reading the exact same script.
I'm surprised to see such negative reactions to this effort. Information and media literacy is sorely lacking in the present day USA and we could be doing much more to educate future generations on topics like this to help them make sense of an increasingly complex world of information.
I think the idea is great, but I just don't trust the people who will be implementing the idea. They could simply use it to create more bias.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If we are going to teach them to think critically, they not only need to think about the biases of sources, but to make decisions about trust. 'Everyone is equally and absolutely untrustworthy' is no more critical or skeptical than 'everyone is equally and absolutely trustworthy'. We can trust different news sources to different degrees, and in different situations. The National Enquirer is not the same as the New York Times.
> 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 ...
Should an important story only be available to listeners in one locality? If you drive between localities, you're going to hear some redundancy.
How is it a "lie" to broadcast a segment produced elsewhere? I think listeners are much better off getting the best segments in the country, and not being restricted to the limited resources of the local station. It would be very redundant (and obviously unaffordable) if every station ran a global news operation.
How did they "pretend"; did they say 'we produced this segment here in town X'? I've heard plenty of NPR and never had that impression at all (in fact, IIRC they say 'from our sister station in ...').
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…
For example, suppose I claim that using brand X soap can give you cancer because they use fat harvested from animals that grazed at a toxic waste dump and that fat contains the toxic chemicals that the animals ingested. Suppose it turns out that brand X soap can in fact give you cancer, but it is because some chemical used to make the soap's wrapping paper is carcinogenic and leaches into the soap. The soap itself is vegan soap with no animal products used in its manufacture. Same for the paper.
My claim is then misinformation even though my claim that the soap can give you cancer is true, because my reasons for the claim were wrong and I had no even remotely plausible evidence to believe those reasons.
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…
I mean one way to teach this class would be to simply cover current events in an over the top, biased way and then discuss the tricks used and concerns. (Maybe students get credit for credibly challenging anything mentioned in the class)
As an independent voter, I try to pinch my nose and read both parties' propaganda machines, but I just can't stomach it. All I want is facts. edit: We can thank Ronald Reagan for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
That’s at least what was claimed. I don’t really know how you overcome that.