Horowitz: News Literacy: An Essential Skill in the Age of the Internet
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts,” said Daniel Patrick Moynihan. As was so often the case, the late former US Senator, Harvard Professor and true public intellectual, got to the heart of the matter. Without an agreement on the basic facts of any particular issue or situation, reasoned and civil debate with the goal of achieving principled compromise, and common ground that is at the core of healthy political discourse becomes difficult to impossible. The wheels of democracy grind to a halt.
In today’s fragmented, niche media system- in which news consumers can and do select the news and information they receive based on their partisan views and ideology- searching examinations for the facts are becoming more rare and consequent agreement on them even more elusive. Loud and forceful opinion- which is cheaper to produce and attracts eyeballs and page views- is increasingly dominant. Further, people tend to tune in and click on to the opinions that reinforce their existing world view. For example, an overwhelming majority of MSNBC viewers voted for Barack Obama, while a similar sized majority of FOX viewers voted for Mitt Romney.
The rapid decline of daily newspapers and the declining audience for broadcast news, the traditional sources of agreed upon facts, compound the problem. Editors and other traditional news gatekeepers are in short supply and easily bypassed by the flood of information at people’s fingertips.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIn today’s bottom-up, democratic, Wild West of media, citizens must be their own discerners of fact. Fortunately, with the advent of the internet, the information to accomplish this goal is at every individual’s finger-tips. But to do so well and wisely is a learned skill that requires critical thinking.
That is the premise on a course on “News Literacy” devised by two former Newsday editors and reporters, James Klurfeld and Howard Schneider, and taught to a wide cross-section of students at Stony Brook University for the past several years. Through real time case studies, the course teaches students how to determine whether information provided in traditional news reports, on online sites, or through social media is truly reliable. To bring the message home to social media savvy college students, the professors amplify this point by asking students to evaluate whether the information they are reviewing can be reliably shared with others. Echoing John Dewey’s view of the importance of news and journalism to democracy, these two former reporters define the outcome of real journalism: as, “empowering citizens by educating them.”
Students taking the course learn about the acronym, VIA— Verification, Independence and Accountability. These are essential distinguishing characteristics of reliable journalism, as opposed to public relations or ideological propaganda. They also learn that they must be self-aware and factor in their own ideological biases into their critical assessment of news and information. Extensive social science and psychological research consistently shows that confirmation bias in which people only process the information that reinforces their existing beliefs and tune out any contrary facts is a basic characteristic of how we all process information.
Independent evaluations of the impact of the course on students’ long-term news consuming habits are encouraging. Now, more than 50 colleges are teaching a version of it, and there is strong interest from a number of high schools as well.
This is a course that all citizens can benefit from. Let[s hope it spreads far and wide. For those interested in learning more, click here for an article summarizing the course now posted on the Brookings Institution web site.
Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.
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