In an ever-changing world with a 24/7 news cycle, it is becoming more important than ever to know how to distinguish between fact and fiction.
The last week in January marked the second annual National News Literacy Week, an initiative organized by the News Literacy Project (NLP) and the E.W. Scripps Company to promote news literacy and help the public learn to identify misinformation.
Two BYU broadcast journalism students, Cecilee Henstrom and Sariah Farmer, as well as Melissa Gibbs, the manager of BYU’s broadcast news lab, Newsline, were interviewed by FOX 13 News about their experiences learning to identify accurate information and distinguish it from false information.
“The information we receive we have to be critically aware of where that information is coming from, if that information has a bias, what the purpose of that information is,” Gibbs said in the interview.
Read the full news report by Amy Nay at fox13now.com.
According to NLP’s website, news literacy is defined as “the ability to determine the credibility of news and other content, to identify different types of information, and to use the standards of authoritative, fact-based journalism to determine what to trust, share and act on. Being news-literate also means recognizing the critical role of the First Amendment and a free press in a democracy and interacting with news and other information in ways that promote engaged participation in civic life.”
The News Literacy Project’s website also provides a variety of resources for the public, including activities to strengthen news literacy skills and quizzes to test one’s knowledge of reliable sources.
