At a recent book talk I gave, a student at West Virginia University asked me how the media could improve its credibility with the public. I noted that the “media” was not a monolithic entity, but a diverse number of information outlets, some way more credible than others. For instance, the New York Times and the Washington Post and even CNN are much more likely to be telling the truth than commentators on Fox News, such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity who are known for spouting unproven conspiracy theories. Or Alex Jones of Infowars, who recently lost several defamation lawsuits for saying that the story of the children killed in the Newtown, CT shootings was a hoax. His ugly falsehoods prompted death threats against some of the grieving parents who had lost children in the Newtown shootings. I can only hope these court rulings bankrupt Jones, a man who has no moral center.
So why do so many people listen to such drivel? The problem is that many Americans are what I call “news illiterate.” They believe what they see on Facebook and other social media and think that information is just as credible as news from the mainstream press. They don’t understand that the most important principle of good journalism is verification, i.e. reporters must verify the facts of their stories before they publish them. When I was a journalism professor, I would devote an entire class to discussing why verification was so important and how it set journalism apart from other communication fields, such as public relations and social media. Many purveyors of social media don’t bother to verify what they read; they often click “like” and “share” without confirming that what they’re reading is accurate. Plus, many Americans are only seeing information that is shared by their friends on social media. They live in what scholars like to call an “echo chamber” without coming face to face with factual information that might differ from what they read and hear. And that is why we have many otherwise sane Americans believing that Trump won the 2020 election, or that JFK Jr. is still alive.
So how do we fix this problem? I propose that we implement news literacy classes in every middle school in the country. Such courses would explain the difference between credible sources of news and non-credible sources, so that kids as young as 11 or 12 can recognize that what they read on Facebook, youtube, instagram, snapchat or whatever platform they are drawn to, is not always the truth, or even close to it. And that by relying too heavily on info from social media, they are living in a silo that may deprive them of real news. These classes could be taught by former journalists who have lost their jobs because so many credible news outlets have been downsized or gone out of business. Even before COVID, the news industry was reeling from the loss of its primary business model: advertising. The ads that used to support local and regional newspapers have long since fled to the internet (and online giants like Facebook and Google), and COVID crippled the few remaining businesses that advertised in print or online. Those news outlets that have survived have turned to paywalls to finance their journalism, or crowdfunding, or both.
So why not employ laid-off journalists to teach our children how to distinguish between credible sources of information and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones who are bent on spreading misinformation, no matter how many people they harm?
This blog is also published on medium.com.
