Teachable moments in media.
April 8, 2017
| 7. To tell your kids |
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WashPost Magazine cover story, “Colleges turn ‘fake news’ epidemic into a teachable moment: Professors focus on news literacy for a generation raised on social media,” by Kitson Jazynka: “Professors interviewed for this story are teaching students not just to identify ‘fake news’ (a label previously reserved for hoaxes), but to detect bias, missing points of view, misleading slants and economic influences.” In his classroom at UCLA this spring, [former photojournalist] Jeff Share teaches his students … to apply the concept of triangulation to the news by searching out multiple sources and points of view to arrive as close as possible to the truth. … Share’s students experiment in the classroom with photography, shooting pictures from different positions to observe how shifting angles — or changes in lighting, composition and other photography techniques — can alter an image. As students start to recognize the potential for bias in photographs, they learn to read images more critically. |
[George Mason University professor Beth Jannery talking to her students about media literacy. (Pete Marovich/For The Washington Post)]
“…there has been a reawakening of interest in teaching media literacy at colleges and universities. Professors interviewed for this story are teaching students not just to identify “fake news” (a label previously reserved for hoaxes), but to detect bias, missing points of view, misleading slants and economic influences. We taught everybody to read after we had the printing press and now we have to teach everybody these information-vetting skills.
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The idea behind the game, is to use each news item as a jumping-off point to encourage students to make a deeper assessment of the media they consume.
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The idea behind the game is to use each news item as a jumping-off point to encourage students to make a deeper assessment of the media they consume.
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I’m probably more convinced now than ever that the real solution is for every 12-year-old in America to become inoculated against fake news. Every 12-year-old needs to be news literate. That should be a mantra for our country.”