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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

#331

Post by [deleted] »

fallingknife wrote: post #245
wolverine876 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the landscape has become a lot more partisan/ideological in the last 10 years, particularly at universities, so I understand why people are skeptical/concerned. What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. They do delegitimize one institution after another: Journalism, education, government, etc. - these are the big ones. > so much unabashedly propagandist co…

I don't need propagandists to delegitimize those institutions. My personal experiences dealing with them will do just fine.

[deleted]

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

#332

Post by leereeves »

wolverine876 wrote: post #309
leereeves wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the idea that an accent is "a bit" or "heavy" depends on believing that some particular way of speaking is the standard, with zero accent. It's very close to declaring some accent the "right" way to speak. Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the natural human tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differentl…

There isn't a 'right' way to speak, but there are accurate facts against we can measure bias. > Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the simplistic tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless. I'd add that the most important step is understanding one's own, and unders…

> there are accurate facts against we can measure bias

In the context of reporting, bias isn't about reporting accurate facts. That's honesty or accuracy. A source could be very biased but 100% accurate (by cherry picking facts that fit an agenda) or neutral but inaccurate (by reporting everything they hear without any evaluation or judgement).

Bias is about choosing what facts are worth reporting, and which words (with similar denotations but different connotations) to use to describe those facts.

> the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.

Agreed.

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

#333

Post by JamesBarney »

wolverine876 wrote: post #200
throwaway894345 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It teaches about how to tell journalism apart from other kinds of information, like entertainment and opinion; the hallmarks of good reporting, like transparency; discerning assertion from verification, and evidence from inference; the idea of seeking out multiple sources and how to reconcile them, etc. It's more a toolbox of how to inform oneself, regardless of any specific source. Provided it can stick to that, I…

> But the landscape has become a lot more partisan/ideological in the last 10 years, particularly at universities, so I understand why people are skeptical/concerned. What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. They do delegitimize one institution after another: Journalism, education, government, etc. - these are the big ones. > so much unabashedly propagandist co…

Journalism is changing. And to pretend like it's not is adding fuel to the fire.

Younger journalists are less likely to see their job as being a neutral arbiter of truth and more likely to see themselves as part of the culture war.

I'm a liberal but just as the ACLU is not the same organization it was 20 years ago, neither is The Gray Lady.

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

#334

Post by IIAOPSW »

literallyaduck wrote: post #285

News sources which print, voice, or provide air time to outright lies and fabrications are still considered news right? Consider CNN calling out the times: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/05/10/ny.times.reporter... After fraud is discovered, the public forgets and then the "news" continues.

>News sources which print, voice, or provide air time to outright lies and fabrications are still considered news right?

If it is always followed by a retraction and only happens a small fraction of the time then yes.

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

#335

Post by diffeomorphism »

leereeves wrote: post #322
diffeomorphism wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. You don't need anyone with zero accent. You just observe that a distribution has some kind of average or median, done. Also, you are drawing the wrong conclusion. "Everyone has..." is simplistic. Some have more, some less is nuanced.

You're treating that theoretical average or median, even if no one speaks that way, as the standard accent against which all others are compared. That's one way in which people sometimes choose a "right" or "zero" accent. Another is by social standing ("the queen's English" was literally that). Either way, that's declaring one accent the right way of speaking, and describing people who speak differently as having a "…

It declares it standard, not "right". If you learn a foreign language having a standard to aim for is good and large deviations are difficult. Stop trying to turn this into right or wrong.

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

#336

Post by pm90 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #181
bonyt wrote: 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…

> It teaches about how to tell journalism apart from other kinds of information, like entertainment and opinion; the hallmarks of good reporting, like transparency; discerning assertion from verification, and evidence from inference; the idea of seeking out multiple sources and how to reconcile them, etc. It's more a toolbox of how to inform oneself, regardless of any specific source. Provided it can stick to that, I…

To not trust in the objectivity of most US universities is a huge mistake.

While the staff may have political inclinations, the majority of US universities are operated professionally.

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

#337

Post by guerrilla »

karaterobot wrote: post #250

This thread makes me think I'm crazy, because I remember "news literacy" being taught in high school in the early 90s: we looked at newspaper and magazine articles, and evaluated the slipperiness of their wording, noted whether and what kind of sources they relied on, etc. I distinctly remember realizing for the first time that you could tell a lie with a graph. I also remember seeing an "article" that was actually a…

It was always taught from place to place but I think what's new here is that it's being mandated for a whole state.

You might be getting a biased sampling of responses here in that people who haven't had it and don't know what it is might be the most vocal (or something else like that.)

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

#338

Post by ethbr0 »

alexilliamson wrote: post #299
lordloki wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except evidence has shown the the left has moved further left than the right has moved right. Both have moved but the left has moved further left in the US.

Except evidence says the opposite. I would start here. The right is driving polarization. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/solutions-to-political-...

If we're talking about US politics, there's also the tendency of the right to cluster to a common narrative, whereas the left tends to be more tolerant of diverse narratives.

It would seem unsurprising that the end result of this, upon pulling the "center" of each party towards its own extreme, is essentially what we've seen -- ~50% of conservatives now believe in vaccine/pandemic conspiracy theories, vs liberals support some extremists at the local level, but also continue to support centrists like Biden at the national level.

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

#339

Post by avs733 »

guerrilla wrote: post #316
avs733 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and this being buried at the bottom highlights not a bias but a limitation and challenge of media explaining law to the public, which is there role. What you posted is fairly dense and obtuse to someone not in the field...it's technical, and it is abstracted from concrete meaning. So the news article about it used examples. People are now reacting to the examples used in the article, and more examples provided. Rathe…

Maybe we should work on elevating just plain literacy while we're at it.

I don't disagree with that but the language, norms, and content knowledge of ANY discioline result in a specific discourse that doesn't necessarily generalize or share easily.

It's the reason education folks and STEM folks generally have a hard time talking to each other.

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

#340

Post by dundarious »

I'm only a two chapters in at the moment, but am enjoying the book Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. While I believe he has rose-tinted glasses for pre-1980s journalism, and his information and analysis is UK-centric, one of his conclusions is apt.

The majority of journalists end up spending almost no time generating their own stories, or even checking them. Most of what you read in broadsheet newspapers is just parroting wire services, PR firms, the government, etc. Davies commissioned studies showing only 12% of stories in major broadsheets in 2 random weeks were generated by the journalist, and only 12% of the key facts were checked. He calls this churnalism, and it goes a ways to showing how it is that these institutions set the bounds for "acceptable" discourse, without any conspiracy -- just don't hire enough journalists and make them too busy to do the real work. Eventually the new cohort will think they're doing real work anyway.

I should say, I don't know the basis for Davies' critique of wire agencies, or why it is important to generate one's own stories. I haven't read the Suppliers chapter yet.

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