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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

#81

Post by vincent-toups »

fatjokes wrote: post #11

I feel like they should just teach more statistics. Learn about bias, sampling and significance. > Students reportedly got a lot better at spotting questionable sources. Like that's definitely a step in the right direction, i.e., don't just blindly trust what you see on Insta or FB, but I worry it'll just teach kids to blindly trust mainstream media like the NYTimes, which are not without their own biases.

The epistemological relevance of statistics at the level of daily news is almost non-existent. Heck, professional scientists routinely fail (for various reasons) to apply statistics correctly to very controlled circumstances. News reporting is quite far from the controlled experimental context in which statistics would be applicable.

Seems like a weird suggestion.

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

#82

Post by joncrane »

ODILON_SATER wrote: post #69

This is a terrible idea. A lot of people are failing to realize that this is a bad precedent. Even though the article spends most of the time talking about an example orthogonal to politics, it is clear that politics will be the main topic of this course. I have zero faith in the system to show the numerous examples of bad articles by the NYT, WP, NPR... anybody remembers the Covington kid? The issue goes beyond self…

For those like me who had to jog their memory about the Covington kid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_...

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

#83

Post by oefrha »

zapataband1 wrote: post #68
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…

Did you people even read the article or do all of you need to take this course? it says right in the article what they're teaching kids and no it's not 'these news sources are the right ones' it's how to analyze the news like the headline says.

First, read the guidelines. Don’t do “did you even read the article” here.

Secondly, I did read the article. All it talks about is spotting questionable sources, comparing reports to shake out fake news, etc. As I said, the most effective propaganda tool is omission. You’re not going to compare sources on something you never even read about. After fact-checking a hundred times you’ll decide that NPR does report facts, but do those facts paint the whole picture? Also, comparing sources in this day and age is not helped by biases baked into search engines.

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

#84

Post by throwaway0a5e »

markus_zhang wrote: post #28
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…

They should teach independent thoughts. Sadly this is so inconvenient for most of the adults.

It's nice to dream about but it will never happen. The incentives are all wrong for public education to teach critical thought.

The politically appointed or "hired by reference" committees and/or teams of bureaucrat that are responsible for setting curriculum at the state level would never do that because then they'd have to answer to politicians on both sides of the isle for making their job harder. People operating at these levels of bureaucracy don't need to be told what the boss wants, they read the room and know in which direction they should be erring. Your career doesn't take you through those sorts of positions that far if you're not the kind of person who does that.

Furthermore, the career arc of someone who believes that society's problems will be solved or mitigated by helping the masses think critically is unlikely to take them anywhere near the high levels of public education policy.

And even if it did happen the schools wouldn't teach it and they'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming over a decades long period (because the unions and the municipalities have enough power to play that stalling game for that long) because corralling teenagers is harder when they can call you on your bullshit forcing you to address tough topics that have no good answer other than "I'm in charge, deal with it".

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

#86

Post by kingkawn »

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…

The importance of coming to a common consensus on key issues and ideas as a society means that we gotta try, and public institutions is where it should happen foremost. Writing them all off with broad generalizations and cherry-picked moments from the last few years to justify it is just a long way of saying that everyone should give up without trying.

No. We gotta try.

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

#88

Post by mc32 »

temp8964 wrote: post #20
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…

Will they discuss Roland Fryer’s finding against the misinformation regarding to police shootings? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evi... Who is using selective reporting to create a false narrative for what purpose?

There has to be some coordination, if suddenly all the protests and antifa demonstrations stopped seemingly overnight in news reporting.

I would be surprised if interactions with police quite suddenly turned less confrontational. People still do things to attract police intervention and police still respond and have to leverage lethal force, but we don't hear that much about it in the media. so, what gives?

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

#89

Post by jeffbee »

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…

Well let's examine all the reasons you might suspect the silly Biden laptop story to have been planted by the GRU.

1: Rudy Giuliani is involved

2: Rudy Giuliani specifically traveled to Ukraine in 2019 to dig up dirt on Biden, a mission that he publicly announced.

3: Rudy Giuliani is the GRU's "useful idiot" according to a report prepared for the White House by US intelligence services.

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

#90

Post by wolverine876 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #49
wolverine876 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you tell kids to “Go on YouTube and do your own research ..." That's not what is being taught, according to the article.

Of course it is. The entire premise of "media literacy" is that what the mainstream media is telling you might not be true, so you should do your own research. Which of course is accurate, but at the same time a lot of people would be better off just blindly trusting the media.

The article says otherwise. Could you provide have evidence of your claims?

> The entire premise of "media literacy" is that what the mainstream media is telling you might not be true

For example, the class studied a video that spread on Facebook, not in the mainstream media, for misinformation.

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