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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

#341

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

lordloki wrote: post #261
somehnacct3757 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two ways to lean left. Do some leftward leaning, or stand still while your reference point ("the right") leans away. I personally think both of these have happened. I bristle at the inference that only one of them is taking place.

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda...

The article is a few years old, but by most measures, the Democratic party has been moving from the center-right toward the center-left, making it a relatively centrist party on the global stage, while the Republican party has remained firmly right-wing.

Your comment appears to be true, but what we're seeing may simply be America rebalancing herself for the first time since the lead-up to the Cold War.

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

#342

Post by throwaway59553 »

Just ask a random journalist who thinks he's some Democracy Defender when was the last time any of his research uncovered some corruption scandal in any branch of the government or powerful financial or banking institution. Given that most news agencies depend on either publicity, or their billionaire owners to survive, it's not like they're intrinsically trustworthy.

Most of them are as brainless as the average news reader, quite more of a zealot for the system they're supposed to scrutinise than an impartial informer of daily events.

Just check most journalists' twitter accounts.

you don't need a new school course to know that you should always double check anything you read and try to go to the primary sources directly.

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

#343

Post by jwsteigerwalt »

The risk of propaganda is too large in any direction to start with news/journalism. Taking different path, if students are taught to challenge/accept/refute ideas in high school science, mathematics, history and economics they learn invaluable skills is far less political charged environments and can then apply those skills to critical analysis of political and journalistic content.

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

#344

Post by ethbr0 »

janeroe wrote: post #311
tstrimple wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh, I thought your "tax cuts not paying for themselves" is a figure of speech. And that's a literal quote. What is it supposed to mean? Like if you steal less from the people, you get less if that's your only source?

"Tax cuts pay for themselves" has been the conservative justification for how cutting taxes on the wealthy is fiscally conservative and actually benefits everyone, for ~4 decades.

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

#345

Post by thrwaway9871 »

MikeUt wrote: post #291
wolverine876 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In the NY Times, for example, I haven't seen it, Try now: NY Times title when a "story" (schoolyard scuffle) broke: A Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks at a Playground - https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytim... The title after the story turned out to be a hoax: Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault, and Family Apologizes - https://web.archive.org/web/201910…

You are now learning how biased hn are.

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

#346

Post by jonathankoren »

janeroe wrote: post #311
tstrimple wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh, I thought your "tax cuts not paying for themselves" is a figure of speech. And that's a literal quote. What is it supposed to mean? Like if you steal less from the people, you get less if that's your only source?

As an old person who actually remembers when George Bush (the dad) coined the term “voodoo economics” during the 1980 primary against Reagan, I’ll explain the central thesis to what backers call “supply side” economics.

It’s basically the same logic as selling merchandise at low cost. How does the government make money? Volume!

Seriously. The argument is that cutting taxes will spur economic growth that will grow the economy so much, that the loss in revenues will be made up by economic growth. i.e Tax cuts pay for themselves.

There is actually ample evidence that this doesn’t actually work, or at least hasn’t worked in 40 years. (Diminishing returns and whatnot.) I’d go so far as to argue that some supporters of this policy even know this because it gave cover for their real goal of simply cutting social programs under the guise of “we can’t afford it”.

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

#347

Post by throwaway894345 »

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…

> 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 with empirical research. Beyond that, we can do our own homework--look at the ideological composition of the media, academy, etc. If they're growing more ideologically homogeneous over time (they are) it supports the idea that these institutions really are becoming more partisan rather than "it's just Fox News making you believe they are more partisan" (as though moderate liberals put much stock in Fox News).

> But most straight news from major sources is impressively straight, IME.

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, and of course the conservatives--really the only people who think the media is on the right course are the left-most ~10% IME. Note also that a supermajority of national journalists live in the left-most of left-wing strongholds, so I really don't think it's a case of "90% are wrong about media bias".

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

#348

Post by ethbr0 »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #307
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…

>what's going on in journalism programs around the country that is allowing for so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"? It takes two to tango. People get propagandist content because they willingly consume propagandist content. They like it. If people really wanted to be informed, they would watch C-Span all the time and the usual networks would be relegated to niche…

C-Span makes my brain cry.

In the words of Obama (paraphrased from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee), when asked about how smart people in Congress are: 'You've got good people on both sides. You've got a lot of foolish people, but you've got some smart folks too.'

... Unfortunately, everyone gets equal time to speak.

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

#349

Post by ethbr0 »

bnralt wrote: post #218
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…

The problem, in my experience, is that most people are happy to learn "how to apply critical thinking to judge news stories," will agree to the principals in a general sense, and then go on and only apply such tools towards things they are biased against and while uncritically believing any reporting that either confirms their bias or seems to be part of the common sense of their peer group. For instance, NPR talks a…

It's a critical point.

After thinking about it (circa 2008ish?), I switched to the BBC for my base American news source, then check both US liberal and conservative media if it's a topic I'm interested in.

If you really want the facts, you shouldn't have any opposition to objectively reading someone from the other side, trying to make their case.

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

#350

Post by throwaway894345 »

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.

I think we're also increasingly seeing journalistic "power" consolidating on the coasts, in the bluest of blue districts (of course the most prestigious newspapers have always been coastal, but they've grown in prevalence while regional newspapers have fallen). This means that journalists for the largest publications are overwhelmingly far more left-wing than the rest of the country.
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