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News Literacy Project Teaches Students To Be Skeptical Media Consumers

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GatoRage

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News Literacy Project Trains Young People to Be Skeptical Media Consumers | PBS NewsHour | Dec. 13, 2011 | PBS

[video=youtube;ZJ8PgYFCN0M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ8PgYFCN0M[/video]
The video is also in the link above.

I think this is great and should definitely be taught. Being able to distinguish between actual facts and fiction or articles with certain agendas is extremely important. There's no use teaching children about subjects like evolution and climate change if half of them are going to be fooled on the issue by media nonsense in the future.

And I love how they chose a DailyMail article as an example of a bullshit article :lol:

What do you think about this?
 
It's about god damn time. No media outlet in the United States can be trusted to handle political discussion in a mature matter, and the sooner people realise this, the sooner we can get our real facts and get our country back on track.
 
Finally, kids are learning to not be lazy lie-infested zombies.
 
And to think, a research methodologies course in University is the first thing that taught me this.

Now if only, when articles actually do cite scientific studies, that these studies would be easier access since I see a lot of people saying things that were in fact, addressed somewhere in the discussion section but was left out in the paper itself.

Of course, there are times when said issue is addressed in the article itself and people still act like it wasn't, but at that point, its more of a personal issue than the media.
 
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GatoRage said:
News Literacy Project Trains Young People to Be Skeptical Media Consumers | PBS NewsHour | Dec. 13, 2011 | PBS

[video=youtube;ZJ8PgYFCN0M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ8PgYFCN0M[/video]
The video is also in the link above.

I think this is great and should definitely be taught. Being able to distinguish between actual facts and fiction or articles with certain agendas is extremely important. There's no use teaching children about subjects like evolution and climate change if half of them are going to be fooled on the issue by media nonsense in the future.

And I love how they chose a DailyMail article as an example of a bullshit article :lol:

What do you think about this?
Click to expand...

Finally, a class that teach student to think in a UNIVERSITY LEVEL. AKA, find source from scholars; not news, websites, nor encyclopedia.
 
Dr. Mecha said:
Finally, a class that teach student to think in a UNIVERSITY LEVEL. AKA, find source from scholars; not news, websites, nor encyclopedia.
Click to expand...

That's not the point of the class. The point is to teach students how to determine the validity and credibility of media sources. Also, academic works are not by default credible or useful, particularly in the age of publish or perish.
 
I do wonder if this includes IGN, Gamespot, and other game websites no one likes. Same with Screwattack and The Escapist.
 
Ghetsis-Dennis said:
I do wonder if this includes IGN, Gamespot, and other game websites no one likes. Same with Screwattack and The Escapist.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure being a skeptical media consumer doesn't restrict itself to newspapers.

Oh and if the language of half of those game reviews doesn't give anything away, I doubt this class helps.
Santabomb said:
That's not the point of the class. The point is to teach students how to determine the validity and credibility of media sources. Also, academic works are not by default credible or useful, particularly in the age of publish or perish.
Click to expand...
They're also not very accessible, and even if they were, its not as if the majority of them are written free of jargon that people outside the field would have an easy time of understanding.

Now let's say the introduction and discussion sections are written that way, it doesn't change the fact that they may not understand the data laid out in the results section or the methodology. As far as I can tell, if you make something sound smart enough, people will believe you.

With that said, its the popular media journalist's job to not only catch the attention of its readers, but to present these findings as accurately as possible. Obviously there's problems with getting things from secondary sources, which is why this class is being taught. By understanding the motives behind the media outlets publishing these articles, and looking at the journalist's own language which may indicate bias, anyone can become informed without having to have extensive knowledge in every single field that gets talked about. Merely citing something doesn't make an article credible either. You can cite, but if its from a scholarly journal people need a subscription to access, what's the point? Just as people can omit citations, people can lie about their citations (Oak, 2005) though I know some profs in my university actually provide their articles on their site through PDFs.

Reference
Oak, S. (2005). Look at how I make this up. The Journal of "You don't have access to this without a subscription", 20(5), 119-130.
 
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Sorry about that remark. I thought this is about making good essay's rather than teach children not to believe everything they hear on the news without going through of where said news got their info on.
 
I wonder what ages of children this will target. In Australia we have an English unit on the way the media handles the truth - but it isn't until 11th grade.
 
When I was in year 12 in Australia we did a unit called 'Telling the Truth' and we studied a show called 'Frontline' and the movie 'Wag the Dog'. I've never quite looked at media the same after that. And, as a budding teacher myself now, I fully believe that students need to be taught not to heedlessly believe everything they here
 
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