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

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131–140 of 490 posts

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

#131
post #98

I've taken a news literacy class at Stony Brook about 10 years ago, when it was then a relatively new program. I think it's an incredibly valuable thing. It was taught in more the general sense of how to apply critical thinking to judge news stories. To the people saying that this just instills propaganda about specific news sources: consider learning a little bit more about the class. It teaches about how to tell jo…

I think this is a well informed take on the issue, unlike so many of the other negative comments here that inadvertently prove the need for media literacy classes.

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

#132

To all the commenters critical of this idea, what do you suggest as an alternative? I don't think letting kids belive that Facebook/Reddit/TikTok memes are valid news sources is a great course of action either.

Not sending your child to be told to sit down and be quiet by the government in an indoor box for 8 hours a day for 13 years at all.

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

#133
I think the full text of the bill is only a handfull of paragraphs modifying an existing law: https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&Sessi...

I try to summarize below by skipping some extra words:

"media literacy" means the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and communicate using ... print, visual, audio, interactive, and digital texts.

every public high school shall include ... a unit of instruction on media literacy [to] include:

... Evaluating ... the general landscape and economics of the platforms, [and] issues regarding the trustworthiness of the source of information.

... Deconstructing media representations according to the authors, target audience, techniques, agenda setting, tereotypes, and authenticity to distinguish fact from opinion.

... Conveying a coherent message ... to a specific target audience.

... Assessing how media affects the consumption of information and how it triggers emotions and behavior.

... Suggesting a plan of action ... to engage others in a respectful, thoughtful, and inclusive dialogue over a specific issue ...

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

#134
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…

I read the article and I disagree that the 2016 election is a specific example of what students in class actually learn about (which is what I interpreted when you said “used on the kids”). The 2016 example is actually part of a study to claim there is evidence that students have poor ability to discern from good quality and bad quality news sources, such as a video of dubious origin on Facebook. The actual examples…

Oh come on...

> https://web.archive.org/web/20171106063502/https://www.thegu...

> Trump dump: president throws entire box of fish food into precious koi carp pond

> While his host, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, spoons small amounts of feed, the US leader gives the fish a large feast

> Having apparently lost patience with tempting the fish to the edge with modest offerings of food, Trump simply upended his wooden container and dumped its entire contents into the water.

> White House reporters captured the moment on their smartphones and tweeted evidence of the president’s questionable grasp of fish keeping.

> Abe is seen grinning, as is a woman in a kimono standing to one side. Next to her, Rex Tillerson – perhaps grateful for a moment of comic relief after he was named in the Paradise Papers – could not suppress a laugh, according to witnesses.

> Some speculated that a poor palace employee would be dispatched to the scene of Trump’s faux pas to the clean up the mess as soon as the two leaders disappeared inside.

> Trump is not alone in misjudging the fishes’ appetite, however. According to the Aquascape website, overfeeding is the most common mistake made by keepers of koi carp.

> “This can make your fish sick, and excessive amounts of waste that strains the limits of what can be biologically reduced, results in a decline of water quality,” the site says.

The whole article is written as "trump stupid, kill fish"

Of course the reality is... trump did it all by protocol, doing what the host did, first feeding by the spoon, then throwing in the rest... but they even managed to crop the video, showing only what trump did, and cutting Abe out of the frame.

This is not some random guy on facebook, or some cheap rag.. it's a (once) respectable newspaper. If I cannot trust them with reporting about something, that was recorded by many, many cameras, and with video available everywhere, how can I trust them with reporting about something, I have no direct insight to?

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

#135
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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:…

How does this prove that using a literal example of misinformation from 2016 invalidates the goal of teaching news literacy?

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

#137
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…

I read the article and I disagree that the 2016 election is a specific example of what students in class actually learn about (which is what I interpreted when you said “used on the kids”). The 2016 example is actually part of a study to claim there is evidence that students have poor ability to discern from good quality and bad quality news sources, such as a video of dubious origin on Facebook. The actual examples…

Read what he's concerned about. It's not too difficult to suss out what he wants here. The fact that the mere mention of 2016 sent him into a complaining rant about laptops and lab leaks should tell you what you need to know.

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

#138
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…

What basis is there for these claims? > 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. That doesn't mean it isn't taught. The article can't cover everything t…

Sorry but I don’t have time to write a case study on NYT biases. Also, you seem to be thinking purely in terms of U.S. politics, Democrats vs Republicans, left vs right. I’m talking more broadly. You’re not going to get a balanced view on a lot of international topics by consuming and comparing an ensemble of U.S. mainstream media (you can even throw British media in there) for instance, however bitterly they fight about U.S. politics.

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

#139
post #89
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.

Wait what? Number 3 doesn't ring a bell. Which report specifically? Was that the exact phrase?

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run into a variety of people that made savings, travel and career choices based on that idea, and it wasn't good for them. Of course they were from the midwest and so likely all of their influences would have been reinforcing the words of the President , but I also don't understand how that would be convincing, given how viruses work. Given how this virus works and spreads.

We were also told "two weeks to stop the spread!" by the CDC and most major news sources. "two weeks" from mid-March would be April "stop the spread" could reasonably interpreted as "we won, all is well" Therefore, it's easy to see why people - including Trump - would be convinced this would all be done in April 2020.

It was "slow the spread" or "flatten the curve", not "stop the spread". The goal was to prevent the hospitals from being overrun while we built extra capacity, after which that extra capacity would allow us to go back to normal.

Instead, the extra capacity barely got used and was dismantled a month or two later.

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