“I used to read the Daily News or the Post. Now I read The New York Times.”
-- Raquel Monje, high school senior indoctrinated by the NLP at Manhattan’s Facing History School
-- From "In the Media - Press Room" posted at the NLP website
The news-literacy movement has the potential to begin to rewrite the unflattering narratives about the press that have become so pervasive that we’ve nearly stopped questioning them—to remove the derogatory undertone from the phrase “mainstream media.” It has the potential to push back against the hijacking of the journalistic reputation—not only by a sustained and strategic smear campaign on the part of the political right (“the liberal media”), but also on the part of the political left (“the corporate media”).
To read more at the NLP website, CLICK HERE.
From "News Literacy Project Trains Young People to Be Skeptical Media Consumers" transcript posted at The PBS Newshour 12/13/11
JEFFREY BROWN, PBS Newshour: How can young people learn to be better consumers of news and information?
COLIN O'BRIEN, News Literacy Project: You want news sources that are transparent. You want to be able to see who is doing the reporting, see what their agenda is, see who funds them, see if they are, in fact, a credible source or not.
ALAN MILLER, News Literacy Project: There is so much potential here for misinformation, for propaganda, for spin, all of the myriad sources that are out there. More and more of, the onus is shifting to the consumer.
JEFFREY BROWN: And a slew of recent studies supports the notion that young people seek out traditional news sources less and less and that they have a difficult time knowing how to judge the legitimacy of the information that does come at them.
In response, the News Literacy Project, funded by a combination of foundations, corporations and individuals, develops lesson plans for teachers . . .
JEFFREY BROWN: The program also brings journalists into the classroom to run workshops.
JEFFREY BROWN: . . . the idea of making this into a national program got a recent boost from Michael Copps, a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
MICHAEL COPPS, FCC: And we need to focus on bringing all these together in the public sector and in the private sector to develop an online news literacy curriculum that can be made available across the nation. This can be a powerful antidote to the dumbing down of our civic dialogue that has taken place.
JEFFREY BROWN: To further the effort, the News Literacy Project and the American Library Association are launching workshops around the country to make high school students better media watchdogs, with a specific focus on the 2012 political campaign.
To read the entire program transcript above, CLICK HERE.
