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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

#401

Post by ethbr0 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #333
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…

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.

> 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.

That's a great way of phrasing it, because it speaks to the economic reality.

You don't get hired as an independent or investigative journalist anymore, at the start of your career.

You do get hired as a content magnet for eyeballs.

This has always been a tension, but it's been exacerbated by the destruction of traditional news funding models and substitution of Facebook and Google ad networks.

So quite literally, the job is fanning the flames of culture war, regardless of how you feel personally. Because that's where the money is. And that's what you're being paid to do.

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

#402

Post by polytely »

busymom0 wrote: post #357
JamesBarney wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Until a decade ago, journalists used to be in touch with the everyday average Joe, made sustainable salary but not too much, used to go on ground to sites to report what was going on, present the facts and let people make up their minds. Now a days, it’s become a circle jerk on who can get the most twitter likes, they follow and retweet people of their same political side, get multi million salaries, have zero idea o…

Which journalists are getting multimillion salaries, that seems extremely high to me

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

#403

Post by janeroe »

wolverine876 wrote: post #399
janeroe wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are looking at it from different perspectives. You from the central planner's one. I'm from the position of an acting person, someone who doesn't believe anyone owes them anything, but at the same time preferring to keep what's earned. Someone who's not bought into redistribution programs that spend $4 to redistribute each $1 (actual research for the US), or any involuntary redistribution schemes for that matter.…

Perhaps your personal welfare is strongly linked to and dependent on that of others. For example, you need roads, security, education, health care, food, electricity, communication, law, customers, vendors, employees, business partners, etc etc.

Too bad the government is terrible at all of those things.

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

#404

Post by macintux »

temp8964 wrote: post #210
macintux wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this a thoughtful analysis of some of the more contentious material in the project. To me, it sounds like "factually wrong" is quite a stretch: there's a lot of nuance when trying to interpret history, and the economic impact of slavery appears to be the clearest place where the project overstepped. https://www.aier.org/article/fact-checking-the-1619-project-... Do you have other suggested reading beyond the…

Come on, the main thesis of the project is claiming 1619 is the true founding. And the project writer secretly removed it and denied she said it. > In September 2020, lead 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones criticized conservatives for their depiction of the project, arguing that it "does not argue that 1619 is our true founding".[12] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf responded on Twitter by citing statements f…

It hardly seems controversial to suggest that slavery was a fundamental building block of our country, and one that has had an enormous long-lasting impact on our society.

To label 1619 as the founding of the country sounds like hyperbole designed to draw attention and discussion.

Was she wrong to respond the way she did? Sure. And it's a shame that an important project to take a sober look at the legacy of slavery has been diminished by her reaction to the criticism, and generally mishandled by the NYT.

Does that mean that the project as a whole is "factually wrong"? That seems dubious at best.

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

#405

Post by forz877 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #303
kdkdkdkso wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have too much trust for NPR and the NYT after the revelations that so much of their reporting on Russian collusion and the first impeachment were false[0] and the Brian Sicknick death by fire extinguisher lie that was completely fabricated[1] by the news media. 0 https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a... 1 https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-official...

Or maybe you have too much trust in those sources? I don't find Greenwald credible, for example.

This is just it - most people criticize the media have a clear political agenda, it oozes out of them. In this case, it immediately goes to Trump and Russia, almost instantly, almost as if it's a campaign. It misleads by saying "we don't have direct evidence of this, therefore it must not have happened." The two articles linked are not convincing.

Often times people complain about the mainstream media and then post their own media, without convincing me why I should trust this media over any other media.

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

#406

Post by MikeUt »

wolverine876 wrote: post #389
MikeUt wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This level of skepticism would find even the Daily Mail as free of bias and agenda.

Another thing I've learned is that when they resort to insults, they have nothing substantive.

I pointed out (exaggerating only modestly) the absurd amount of benefit of the doubt you're giving the NY Times. If you believe that's an insult, I really can't help you.

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

#407

Post by ethbr0 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #400
wolverine876 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more left-leaning than they've ever been. What do they mean by 'left-leaning'?: My professors might have been left-leaning, but I rarely knew their politics. The question is what the students are learning. Also, conservatives have moved far rightward, which might make others relatively more leftish. Also, reactionaries politicize…

> Also, conservatives have moved far rightward, which might make others relatively more leftish. I don't think this is true, I think the left-wing media has fixated increasingly on the far-right or exaggerating the extent to which individuals on the right are "far-right" which gives the impression that the right is drifting, but it's just the media changing how it represents the right. To be clear, the right is chang…

I would summarize the drift as far-right voices are getting louder (in terms of air time / reach) and centrist-right voices are getting quieter.

On the left, far-left voices are also getting louder, but I don't think the centrist-left voices have gotten quieter as much as their centrist-right counterparts.

The end result is that "the right" seems more right (in terms of speech) while "the left" seems... conflicted (in terms of speech).

Even if that's masking the underlying counts and beliefs.

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

#408

Post by ethbr0 »

rayiner wrote: post #354
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…

Go back and compare CNN reporting from today to the 1980s. And even the straight news is extremely partisan in story selection: compare the coverage of De Santis to Cuomo in 2020.[1] Plus, fully half the content on CNN (and 80% on MSNBC) is opinion. I’m not a partisan. I spent most of my life as a registered Democrat and read the NYT every day as recently as 2012-2013. But wokeness has definitely taken over and the p…

There was a quip that the key innovation of Fox News was to blur distinction between its news and opinion segments.

Fox News news was traditionally (and still is, from what I can tell) actual news. What's not declared is the transition from a "news" segment to an "opinion" segment.

People who weren't around forget than CNN up until ~1995 was literally just news, 24/7. Here's what's happening in the world.

Once Fox News launched and trends became clear, all 24/7 news channels switched to a blend of news and commentary. Because that's what the market preferred.

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

#409

Post by wolverine876 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #347
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…

> What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. I'm sure some are, but in many cases they aren't. First of all, it's obvious to anyone observing from the outside, even absent propaganda. But it doesn't suffice to trust our intuition, so we can look to organizations like Heterodox Academy whose members are ideologically diverse academics that support their positions…

> Perhaps insofar as "most straight news" isn't political, but IME most political coverage is highly partisan (I don't know how anyone can argue the contrary with a straight face following last year's BLM coverage). To be clear, I'm a moderate liberal and I find the media coverage to be very biased as do many other liberals that I know

A quick point: You'll recall Trump got incredible amounts of coverage from the major news outlets.

But here is my hypothesis from a former 'moderate liberal', but not a partisan:

* The neo-reactionaries (the extreme reactionary conservatism that now dominates the GOP and right wing) politicize everything, especially anything having to do with racism.

* 'Moderate liberals' are defined most by 'moderate', not belief: They chose their positions by looking for a spot between current left and right, regardless of where those two are, where they can sound reasonable to all. It isn't dependent on values or beliefs, so as the conservatives shift far to the right, they moderates navigate to the right to some degree, to stay between their shoals (moderates of the 1990s, I think, would nearly be progressives now in many ways).

Why? In MLK's 'Letter from a Birmingham jail', he says his biggest obstacle is white moderates who want peace over justice. Absolutely read it - it says it far better than I do - and I believe he has it exactly right. They hate progressives because progressives bring what moderates hate most - tension, conflict. These days, where the conservatives have adopted a hyper-aggressive position, the 'safe' response is to not support it, but to not confront it and provoke them - that brings conflict. It's like telling people not to stand up to the bully because it might provoke them - just keep your head down, about racism, about climate change, etc.

I used to be a moderate. Then I realized: How could I keep head down about racism, about climate change, etc? Why was I doing it? I knew speaking up would alienate many people I know, I would be beyond the pale, which happened - I think that corroborates my hypothesis. More important than their relationship with me, than the truth of these issues, was their moderation; I violated their norms.

But once you shake loose from the moderate mental shackles it's actually quite clear. There's not much question of the issues. I'm not really progressive; I don't read the dogma or follow a cause; but you can't really argue with their positions.

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

#410

Post by endisneigh »

ethbr0 wrote: post #329
endisneigh wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AP English is available only to a narrow group of people. Most regular English classes have a very similar curriculum and almost certainly any English teacher on the high school level will say part of their learning objectives for their students is to improve critical thinking skills. > It seems straightforward to research it. How would you? Seems very difficult to me.

> How would you? Seems very difficult to me. If the question is "How effective is a course in reducing ones propensity to be "misinformed"?" then that's a pretty basic (and cheap) experimental psychology study. Set up a control group (diverse, large enough) that goes through a traditional curriculum. No added class. Set up a test group (diverse, matched, large enough) that adds the additional class. Afterwards, prese…

The identification of the so-called indefensible vs defensible information is probably the hardest thing here.

What’s something objectively indefensible that would require a course on misinformation to identify?

I also don’t really see how you can setup a control group - either this class is required in which case a control is not possible, or you introduce the massive selection bias.

The best way would be to assign people to taking this class, which I suppose could be straightforward. I sincerely doubt there would be any effect once you control for grades in something like English.

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