Given the primary example used on the kids, the 2016 election, this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy". Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop? Remember, for weeks it was cast as Russian propaganda. What about the origins of covid.. will they discuss how at first the lab leak theory was discarded as "misinformation"? I could not trust a public school to ever touch such topics.
This is as comforting as hearing that schools are teaching religion.
The media has had a "golden age", where the largest vehicles did research and presented well fundamented ideas. It lasted for at least a few decades, as it was visibly improving at the 40's and was still very good at the 80's.
Things were never perfect, of course. And we have never had as many facts available to reach our own conclusions (so, it's arguable if people are less or more informed today), but looking only at the media, things weren't always that bad.
From NPR's reporting, it seemed like the class was more about looking for additional sources or examining sources.
I'm sure the students could find tons of examples of NPR's nonsense using these methods. Especially relevant is checking photos or videos accompanying articles, the main example given in the report, cause all the big players get caught on this one constantly.
> this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy".
Media literacy classes have already been shown to turn some percentage of kids into nazis no matter how you teach them, so any particular bias that might be getting instilled probably doesn’t matter too much.
If you tell kids to “Go on YouTube and do your own research about the Jews,” then whatever the teacher thinks stops being relevant after about 30 seconds.
Of course it is. The entire premise of "media literacy" is that what the mainstream media is telling you might not be true, so you should do your own research.
Which of course is accurate, but at the same time a lot of people would be better off just blindly trusting the media.
Did you watch the Danah Boyd video I linked to? There aren't many better Internet ethnographers than her. Like I don't know if she's the absolute best person in her field, but she's pretty easily top 10.
I've run into a variety of people that made savings, travel and career choices based on that idea, and it wasn't good for them. Of course they were from the midwest and so likely all of their influences would have been reinforcing the words of the President, but I also don't understand how that would be convincing, given how viruses work. Given how this virus works and spreads.
Not to mention China seemed to have mostly eradicated it by mid-March by simply shutting down for a few weeks. They still seem to have very few cases, many ppl don’t believe their reporting anymore, but at the time it really did look like a quick shutdown would end it.
It was "slow the spread" or "flatten the curve", not "stop the spread". The goal was to prevent the hospitals from being overrun while we built extra capacity, after which that extra capacity would allow us to go back to normal.
Instead, the extra capacity barely got used and was dismantled a month or two later.
Its equally easy to see how this was to keep compliance with the orders for as long as possible, then, and in hindsight. Even the most heavily locked places with an overly compliant population couldnt have gotten that result by saying it was going to last for 9 months+
Senators on the intelligence committee dumping shares and buying remote work stocks for … a two week disruption?
I said the same things in March 2020 I just still don't understand how other people process things.
I was once of the “this’ll be over by the end of April” people, but I didn’t mean the virus would be gone. Only that the initial response would be over (“flatten the curve”) and we’d go back to normal, accepting the deaths.
I didn’t think the new goal would become “no one can ever die of this”. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have said this would be over soon.
As far as I can tell, most public health decisions made up until this summer have been about preventing collapse of hospital systems. Individual health is of secondary importance to the system being able to handle ordinary levels of non-covid events.
Something changed a few months ago and now some states in the US are making decisions seemingly designed to collapse their health systems. It's tragically short sighted.
> I didn’t think the new goal would become “no one can ever die of this”. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have said this would be over soon.
Which place, specifically, do you think has gone with this kind of thinking? Because in all countries I know of outside of East Asia, this virus has been allowed to kill many more people than virtually any other infectious disease in the last 10 years.
This is insightful, but how was that convincing either? To me, it was more obvious that hard viral mitigations would last for 18 months (until 2022) before there were options available for people (such as an option for vaccines), and I was surprised by the speed of viral sequencing and then emergency authorizations. That was new technology and was impressive, for the people interested in vaccines the option was available.
I don't see how flatten the curve was convincing, in March 2020 or in hindsight.
That's separate from the comical moving goalposts of various Governors and counties.
Hug a Chinese person, if you're in Italy! N-95 masks don't even block the virus! You can pull your tshirt over your nose and you're safe! Masks are useless! Masks are MANDATORY! Vaccines will let you do everything! Masks are MANDATORY! Just 5 more jabs to stop the spread!
There's not many more capitalist places on the internet, the fact you identify HN as a "left wing mob" indicates you've completely lost touch with reality.
One of the nice things about HN is being exposed to a broad range of opinions. As fairly left wing myself, I don’t find it particularly welcoming nor hostile when it comes to political issues. Which is a refreshing change from the normal echo chambers both the left and right can get into. However, some people interpret “there exist people with different opinions than me” as somehow being a mob, which just seems like an angry attempt to silence discussion. (I’ve seen left and right complain about that on HN, so I think it’s less about politics alignment than it is about certain personality types that can be found across the political spectrum. The right’s equivalent of militant “SJW’s” or whatever the current bogeyman is.)
All of big tech is run by crony capitalist oligarchs working hand in hand with politicians which happen to all support one side. When all of big tech, media, academia, Hollywood, late night tv hosts, trillionaire corporations with horrible hiring, firing, poor working conditions support the same candidates and view points, maybe it’s not so pure.
Absolutely. This is somewhat similar to terms like "scientific creationism". It has nothing to do with science. From what I read in the article, this "news literacy" is more like pseudo-literacy, and similar to "scientific creationism", it lacks empirical support and cannot be meaningfully tested.
I did a module on news literacy at my public high school (not in USA). It typically involved taking some notable story and examining material from every publisher that had written on it. We examined both recent affairs (previous 2-3 years) and historical (women's right to vote, native people's/colonial affairs) and how they were covered in the media at the time. It was a fascinating thing to be taught about, and had a big focus on critical thinking - not just "what is written" but "why is it written this way", "what does the publisher want you to take from this".
When the lab leak theory emerged/was initially dismissed, I was actually reminded of my lessons from high school.
Yeah we had this at my private religious high school in Canada as part of civics class. It didn't really have a right or left bend, it focussed on critical thought, sourcing (anonymous sources vs named, credentialed source), fact verifiability, and reputation.
Especially with what the internet has done to news this really should be taught in schools everywhere.
Hunter Biden's laptop falls under this category. Corporate media and social media companies claim "fake news" and move to censor it a month before the election. An honest look at the actual reporting, as well as what followed, shows that this was not in fact the case.
As someone who actually engaged with that story, I found the reporting and posited facts to be incoherent and full of holes. It only made sense if one presumed the outcome. Literacy includes evaluating why something was covered by certain folks and not by others as well as the internal coherence and the inter-relationship.
> The kind of evidence provided by the GOP? Yes that kind.
Do you assume I somehow care? This and then Obama's 8 years of drone bombing of weddings in Pakistan, hospitals in Afghanistan, prolongation & expansion of mass surveillance all over the world just shows how "trustworthy" your government is (or in fact, any monopoly of violence).
> The GOP lies a lot, but usually for their own benefit.
I dislike both political parties, and wish we would pass ranked choice voting ASAP so we can break out of this two party system already.
Both parties are corrupt. However, only one has recently tried to overthrow our entire governmental system.
Edits for clarity, and to add that if someone takes an attack on their party as a personal attack, there are larger issues there (not that I am claiming you are, but it seems something worth mentioning in a discussion like this).
Do you believe that parties that in a joint effort "fortified" debates in 2000 to make sure no 3rd party could receive air time and wider audience, would commit political suicide introducing a mechanism that'd shake their positions?
> Both parties are corrupt. However, only one has recently tried to overthrow our entire political system.
I'm an outsider, is it the one that "fortified" the election [1]? I mean, Trump is an egotistical narcissist who didn't drain any swamps and probably didn't fulfill a single promise. But all those things "Trump has dementia", "he attacks the media", "writes too many executive orders like a dictator"... Weren't they just projections? Whose "press conferences" are even more disgraceful and staged than Putin's "pryamaya liniya" ("direct line")? Whose administration admits they're responsible for the censorship policies of social platforms? Who's flirting with oligarchs (not to be confused with entrepreneurs) and who lifted sanctions on Putin's pipeline while banning the building of a local one? The people from Bush administration, on whose side were they?
But I was referring to the one that incited a riot that rushed the Capitol.
However, neither will change until forced. The best way to accomplish that that I can see is for someone either independent or in a splinter group in one of the main parties to run on ranked choice. Until then, the best we can do is vote for whoever is best (or less bad :/ ) for each job, regardless of their party.
As entertaining as it is, mudslinging between parties doesn't accomplish much. There's so much garbage both have done, we'd just all get covered with plenty of mud left to spare.
> Using 2016 as an example doesn’t invalidate that goal or imply bias.
It actually does:
> Republicans' trust has not recovered since then, while Democrats' has risen sharply. In fact, Democrats' trust over the past four years has been among the highest Gallup has measured for any party in the past two decades. This year, the result is a record 63-percentage-point gap in trust among the political party groups.
From that report I just wanted to show that shortly before the 2020 election, the Gallup poll showed that confidence in the mass media has continued to decline among Republicans and independent voters, to 10% and 36%, respectively. Among Democratic voters, confidence rose to 73%.
Then you have other other polls from Gallup, like this one showing that six in 10 in US see partisan bias in news media. From the report:
> Americans Believe News Media Favors Democrats
Gallup asked those who perceive political bias in the news media to say which party the news media favors. Almost two-thirds (64%) of those who believe the media favors a political party say it is the Democratic Party. Only about a third as many (22%) believe the media favors Republicans.
> This is not new. Americans who perceive media bias have always said the direction of that bias leaned in favor of the Democrats, although the percentage holding that view has varied. The gap was smaller in 2003 and 1995, but was more similar to today's attitudes in 2000.
this is why that education is so critical. because the news literacy is countering the exact type of thinking you are responding to. Any analysis is treated as criticism. Analysis isn't criticism, its analysis.
Yes you are correct, you did read a different article, that’s the core problem. A large portion of Trump’s base still believes that fishy things happened in the election, if the journalist covering this story wanted to cover this without bias and truly believes that the program is a net positive (which I agree is probably true) they shouldn’t be injecting divisive politics into their coverage as these people are completely done with the media at this point, the OP is going easy describing what some of these people believe. They roll their eyes at anything these people say now, they have lost all faith in the media.
The story reads like the journalist is completely unaware of their implicit left wing bias and makes little effort to fix it - to them, this example is an obvious example to use but it will alienate readers on the other side (like the OP), yet they used it anyway.
I read the article and I disagree that the 2016 election is a specific example of what students in class actually learn about (which is what I interpreted when you said “used on the kids”). The 2016 example is actually part of a study to claim there is evidence that students have poor ability to discern from good quality and bad quality news sources, such as a video of dubious origin on Facebook.
The actual examples used in class was influencers talking about nutrition and a teacher talking about jan 6 being controversial in the class. And I think your concern that news literacy may be defined too simplistically in the classroom is valid but your reading of the article seems to have poor comprehension.
Didn't you study the difference in quality versus non-quality sources as a child? I remember lots of term papers where my references were questioned and only references of certain quality were allowed.
Are you suggesting that all sources are exactly equal? If not, then people need a framework to determine source quality, otherwise we aren't really preparing them for the world. What is your proposal?
You cannot learn from the government which news sources will give you reliable information about the government any more than you would trust cigarette manufacturers to tell you which studies about cigarettes to trust. Step 1 is abolishing government schools entirely.
Seize the university endowments, the crystallization of privilege, and dispense them as reparations. They are the ones perpetuating this depraved system to the next generation of government agents. No one will believe you unless you work for a place like the NYT, but you can't get into the NYT unless you came through a short list of universities that make sure you know what to say/do. They reinforce this by training the teachers to only accept their approved sources in schools.
Isn't the idea not about instilling trust in specific news sources, but teaching how to recognize a good source or critically thinking about and comparing different sources?
No. At best you get Chomsky's manufactured consent. You get to compare the NYT article to the WaPo article and decide which one has the best information, and you may argue vigorously within that narrow window. You will never be allowed to cite "unapproved" sources in school. You usually won't even be able to cite something like wikileaks except in the context of how an approved source wrote an article about them.
It doesn't matter how many times these news agencies get caught making stuff up out of whole cloth, they are "reliable news" because people are conditioned to believe it. Faith is strong.
Not sure why this is downvoted. This is what I was taught in the past - mainstream media is reliable and trustworthy. Hell, those same media organizations reinforce that belief when they attack less mainstream news sources.
Yet if you look at the list of mistakes the mainstream media has made in the past decade I’m not sure why anyone would assume they are worthy of an assumption of good faith reporting.
The problem is the non-mainstream is worse. It's like the alt-med argument - sure, point at "big pharma" and tell us how corrupt they are. That doesn't mean homeopathy works.
They trained you to divide the world into two neat and convenient boxes where one box is represented by the NYT and the other box is represented by Alex Jones and flat earthers.
No, 'they' didn't train me to do that, I'm capable of using my brain and evaluating sources. If anything 'they' taught me to examine primary and secondary sources, look for bias, and draw my own conclusions. 'They' also taught me statistics so I can understand the use and misuse of such things by journalists.
I've barely ever come across the NYT in my lifetime, not being American.
Sometimes people use concrete examples to explain abstract concepts. If the concrete examples aren't a part of your culture, the underlying abstract argument is disproven.
> Trump dump: president throws entire box of fish food into precious koi carp pond
> While his host, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, spoons small amounts of feed, the US leader gives the fish a large feast
> Having apparently lost patience with tempting the fish to the edge with modest offerings of food, Trump simply upended his wooden container and dumped its entire contents into the water.
> White House reporters captured the moment on their smartphones and tweeted evidence of the president’s questionable grasp of fish keeping.
> Abe is seen grinning, as is a woman in a kimono standing to one side. Next to her, Rex Tillerson – perhaps grateful for a moment of comic relief after he was named in the Paradise Papers – could not suppress a laugh, according to witnesses.
> Some speculated that a poor palace employee would be dispatched to the scene of Trump’s faux pas to the clean up the mess as soon as the two leaders disappeared inside.
> Trump is not alone in misjudging the fishes’ appetite, however. According to the Aquascape website, overfeeding is the most common mistake made by keepers of koi carp.
> “This can make your fish sick, and excessive amounts of waste that strains the limits of what can be biologically reduced, results in a decline of water quality,” the site says.
The whole article is written as "trump stupid, kill fish"
Of course the reality is... trump did it all by protocol, doing what the host did, first feeding by the spoon, then throwing in the rest... but they even managed to crop the video, showing only what trump did, and cutting Abe out of the frame.
This is not some random guy on facebook, or some cheap rag.. it's a (once) respectable newspaper. If I cannot trust them with reporting about something, that was recorded by many, many cameras, and with video available everywhere, how can I trust them with reporting about something, I have no direct insight to?
yeah, and it's sad, because it wasn't something that was unverifiable, it wasn't an "unnamed source"... it was something recorded by many cameras and broadcasted in many places... figuring out it was a lie was a 5 minute process.
How can i trust them then with an "unnamed source" stories, when they lie about stuff recorded on camera?
> Your support helps protect the Guardian’s independence and it means we can keep delivering quality journalism that’s open for everyone around the world. Every contribution, however big or small, is so valuable for our future.
Lol "quality journalism" as they say it themselves. Not my level of quality. They have good pieces. But hit-pieces like this makes me unable to support them at all.
Read what he's concerned about. It's not too difficult to suss out what he wants here. The fact that the mere mention of 2016 sent him into a complaining rant about laptops and lab leaks should tell you what you need to know.
There has to be some coordination, if suddenly all the protests and antifa demonstrations stopped seemingly overnight in news reporting.
I would be surprised if interactions with police quite suddenly turned less confrontational. People still do things to attract police intervention and police still respond and have to leverage lethal force, but we don't hear that much about it in the media. so, what gives?
> Given the primary example used on the kids, the 2016 election, this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy". Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop?
I suppose you have to pick an example to work from and frankly, the 2016 election was the most noteworthy and groundbreaking disinformation campaign.
A teacher could certainly talk about the latter, but neither Hunter Biden's laptop and Lab Leak Theory have the bulk of documentation to point to.
This is as comforting as hearing that schools are teaching religion.
You could have spared yourself that dig, it's beside the point and stupid.
The comparison with religion is actually good. In some countries religion is taught in school because religion is part of human culture, which is firmly within the bailiwick of school. So teachers teaching religion must be accredited by both the government (for competency) and by their religious authority (for adherence to dogma). That's good, because you know who they answer to, and since religious authorities are usually mainstream you won't get revolutionaries or apocalyptic types either.
But reading the news in school, it's like the Soviets teaching how to trust Prawda.
> So teachers teaching religion must be accredited by both the government (for competency) and by their religious authority (for adherence to dogma). That's good, because you know who they answer to, and since religious authorities are usually mainstream you won't get revolutionaries or apocalyptic types either.
Religious authorities have a long history of oppressing free thought, including questioning the authority or tenants of the religion, and rationality, such as science. I would not say they are usually 'mainstream', unless we circularly define mainstream as whatever the religion says.
Neutrality is an irrelevant goal. It's quite possible for the conclusions of critical thinking to fall on the left or the right - even the extremes of either. Falling for the center narrative is no more uncritical than falling for any other.
First, the parts of religion that are a part of human culture are usually not religious at all. That’s what the “cultural Christian”, or “Christian atheist” means. What happens in schools in countries like Poland is a religious indoctrination, and usually focuses on promoting social pathologies, such as denying reproductive rights and spreading hate speech against minorities.
Second, again using Poland as an example, this is largely outside of government control: the state cedes all authority about this part of schooling to Church, and Church is free to choose whatever propagandists it likes.
If the English lessons in the US are covering text analysis, reading comprehension then nothing stops teachers or whoever is responsible for managing the curricula to include issues like fake news, propaganda in today's media - especially in the virtual forms. Of course this might look easy on the paper and be hard to achieve in reality.
That lab leak theory is the most amazing example of widespread bias on all sides I've ever seen.
We went from it being banned on Facebook to it having mainstream acceptance in like a week despite ZERO change in the underlying evidence. The evidence was always just "well there's a lab there". The only thing that changed was Trump isn't president anymore.
It's the perfect rorschach issue for underlying bias, free of any clearcut facts that might be evaluated neutrally.
I've always been of the opinion that a lab leak is certainly possible, but still very unlikely. It's been wild seeing this rollercoaster that is entirely based on media coverage without one shred of evidence either way.
Very disenchanted with the media over the last 5 years, and it did not used to be this bad.
The coverup with a man who authorized the funding for the lab being the only American on the WHO scientific panel investigating the lab was the smoking gun for me.
It really doesn't matter if it came from the lab or from the environment. The fact that they covered it up shows the lab was breaking protocols and they believed it could have been the lab that released the virus.
The lab needs to be shut down and similar labs shut as well to institute a major overhaul of the system.
It's already been telegraphed wide and clear that there are a bunch of Western people dying to pin covid on China and that western media will give them airtime and print.
Why would China give them ammunition? Even if we assume that the virus didn't come from a lab, it's impossible to prove and handing over a bunch of raw data to a motivated actor has no upsides.
It's nice to dream about but it will never happen. The incentives are all wrong for public education to teach critical thought.
The politically appointed or "hired by reference" committees and/or teams of bureaucrat that are responsible for setting curriculum at the state level would never do that because then they'd have to answer to politicians on both sides of the isle for making their job harder. People operating at these levels of bureaucracy don't need to be told what the boss wants, they read the room and know in which direction they should be erring. Your career doesn't take you through those sorts of positions that far if you're not the kind of person who does that.
Furthermore, the career arc of someone who believes that society's problems will be solved or mitigated by helping the masses think critically is unlikely to take them anywhere near the high levels of public education policy.
And even if it did happen the schools wouldn't teach it and they'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming over a decades long period (because the unions and the municipalities have enough power to play that stalling game for that long) because corralling teenagers is harder when they can call you on your bullshit forcing you to address tough topics that have no good answer other than "I'm in charge, deal with it".
It actually happens a lot (either teacher flames parents for injecting too much "independence thoughts" or the other way around). It is also very inconvenient for politicians/big corps/media.
> like parents will go to school to flame teacher cuz their kid disagrees with them on $hot_topic?
Worse: for even bringing up a hot topic without bending entirely to the parent's opinion on it (where these opinions differ from a straight description of the facts, is when it's really annoying to deal with this—no amount of neutrality will make them happy, because that's "indoctrination" from their POV). Definitely doesn't have to get to the point of the kid disagreeing with the parent, just presenting anything that they don't agree with can result in angry calls or visits from parents.
Note also that you'd probably be very surprised what can count as a "hot topic".
I don't understand why they wouldn't use historical examples or stuff about aliens or big foot. History is a great filter and we can now somewhat reasonably understand smear campaigns and propaganda from decades ago. It's not as clear what's being manipulated at the current moment.
This just seems more like a way to influence children's political leanings.
History has always been manipulated. It’s written by the victor, after all (for the most part). It is very telling what your complaint is; you’re just mad that your favored whitewashing of history is being challenged.
It's telling that the user is upset that lies are being promoted by our media, to the extent that people are attempting to insert them into children's school curriculum?
It's just an awful line of reasoning to assert that because people have lied in the past, that we should cherish lies and continue to adopt new ones moving forward
Give it a rest. The fact you’re attributing words and sentiments I didn’t write and arguing with a straw man tells me there will be no productive discussion between us.
This is what you said to me: "you’re just mad that your favored whitewashing of history is being challenged". Do you even have remote understanding of what "productive discussion" means?
You realize that a major portion of the 1619 project is discussing demonstrating HOW history HAS been manipulated.
What you are referring to is the history we choose to center something DIFFERENT is somehow now being treated as 'manipulated'
It's not. Choosing what to center and what not to center isn't inherently manipulative, its human nature. Its why I focus on my running and my research and my partner at the expense of learning a new language or instrument. I center things in my life that I'm good at and bring me joy.
The fact that people are angry about shifting the centering is why literacy is important - because identifying the centering rather than jumping to 'bias' or 'manipulation' is where the literacy comes from.
Copy a little bit to show the dishonesty of the project creator:
> In September 2020, lead 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones criticized conservatives for their depiction of the project, arguing that it "does not argue that 1619 is our true founding".[12] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf responded on Twitter by citing statements from Hannah-Jones arguing that 1619 was the nation's true founding.[12] Philip Magness said in a Quillette essay that the claim that the project aimed to "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding" had been removed from the opening text of project's page on the New York Times' site without an accompanying correction notice.
you: it's not about reframing, they get facts wrong
the author: "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding"
I think this speaks to the fundamental issue that the entire conversation here AND the need for news literacy is about...taking a different lens on something cannot, by definition, be 'correct' or 'incorrect'. It is a perspective...it can be coherent or incoherent, it can be widely or not widely accepted. It is a claim, argumentation, it is not a fact. Reducing argumentation to 'a fact' or 'facts' debases discourse and is why we are stuck here as a society.
I found this a thoughtful analysis of some of the more contentious material in the project. To me, it sounds like "factually wrong" is quite a stretch: there's a lot of nuance when trying to interpret history, and the economic impact of slavery appears to be the clearest place where the project overstepped.
Do you have other suggested reading beyond the scope of that piece? Too much of the criticism I've found online seems to be attacking straw-man paraphrasing of the project.
Come on, the main thesis of the project is claiming 1619 is the true founding. And the project writer secretly removed it and denied she said it.
> In September 2020, lead 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones criticized conservatives for their depiction of the project, arguing that it "does not argue that 1619 is our true founding".[12] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf responded on Twitter by citing statements from Hannah-Jones arguing that 1619 was the nation's true founding.[12] Philip Magness said in a Quillette essay that the claim that the project aimed to "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding" had been removed from the opening text of project's page on the New York Times' site without an accompanying correction notice.
A simple reading of its Wikipedia page can get those information.
the thesis of an argument is by definition not a fact. It's a point...founding is a theoretical concept, its metaphorical, its not provable and demonstrable and repeatable.
I quoted the main thesis is to simply demonstrating the creator of project is a straight liar, so her work can't be trusted. You can get more information by reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
you disagree with the thesis of someone's argument. Mapping that to 'straight liar' is unlikely to lead to meaningful understanding of their point or sincere engagement with their work...its an unhelpful epistemic and ontological perspective.
> In September 2020, lead 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones criticized conservatives for their depiction of the project, arguing that it "does not argue that 1619 is our true founding".[12] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf responded on Twitter by citing statements from Hannah-Jones arguing that 1619 was the nation's true founding.[12] Philip Magness said in a Quillette essay that the claim that the project aimed to "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding" had been removed from the opening text of project's page on the New York Times' site without an accompanying correction notice.
in this situation, the OP class would teach kids to use lateral reading.
> what helped students distinguish misinformation the most is something called lateral reading. That can be as simple as opening a new tab and leaving the post to find more about the source of information. It appears to be effective.
in fact, you would be for this class
It would be clear that the class would help kids uncover that 1619 has many controversial claims
It hardly seems controversial to suggest that slavery was a fundamental building block of our country, and one that has had an enormous long-lasting impact on our society.
To label 1619 as the founding of the country sounds like hyperbole designed to draw attention and discussion.
Was she wrong to respond the way she did? Sure. And it's a shame that an important project to take a sober look at the legacy of slavery has been diminished by her reaction to the criticism, and generally mishandled by the NYT.
Does that mean that the project as a whole is "factually wrong"? That seems dubious at best.
I get your point. You can view history from several viewpoints or with certain political filters.
However, when you have academic historians, across the political spectrum, saying the 1619 Project has little resemblance to actual historical study, they should get you alarm bells ringing.
If someone has a rigorous, evidence based viewpoint that’s cool. Flimsy analysis and force fitting history into a particular narrative is not.
"The 1619 project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative."
They removed this quote from the interactive website without giving an explanation as to why. It's really obvious how biased they are.
Why should anyone care so much about Hunter Biden? It's not like Joe Biden filled his staff with his own children like Trump did. Hunter is just another shady businessman, not an elected official.
At the beginning, the lab leak "theory" was really just a baseless conspiracy theory since there was zero evidence of it. No wonder it was mostly racist right-wing media personalities pushing it.
This week, a story broke how Hunter Biden had yet another laptop stolen from him, this time with videos of him doing "crazy sex acts". [0]
Yet again, as in 2020, I was unable to share the link below in a private Facebook Messenger group. What else will be censored next, at the behest of the government?
I severely mistrust when the government tells you what and who to believe, and that includes our schools. Teach critical thinking, logic and fallacies, and leave it there - the students can make up their own minds.
I'm sure you know this, but you're only being downvoted because they think you're making shit up. I, unfortunately know that you are not making this shit up.
You know that the government has Facebook's internal codebase backdoored and are able to push out new commits, and that they are explicitly doing so to censor the messenger system?
They don't need access to the codebase to influence Facebook to censor information. You could just ask the social media companies to "block misinformation". There are sources in this thread showing the government admitting to doing that.
I don't think it's silliness; I actually find it quite concerning.
In recent times, there has been lots of evidence about how the government and social media companies have been colluding together to "prevent the spread of misinformation" [0]. They have been very transparent about this, and discuss it openly [1].
However, it must not be up to the government to determine what is or is not misinformation - this transposes to government censorship in the worst case, and prevents a healthy marketplace of ideas in the best case.
In the case of the "Hunter Biden Laptop" story (which was misrepresented often), it wasn't Facebook deciding on its own to censor it - it was at the behest of the government.
You don't know what you don't know. What knowledge are you missing because it could never be shown, because it wasn't shown to you? In the last few years, I've seriously worried about this.
I've had to diversify my media intake as an attempt to mitigate this, even when the reporting itself was of worse quality in non-standard media channels. (In many cases, I found it to be of higher quality, which was surprising).
I would recommend the same to you, because, especially in this case, you won't know what you're missing unless you look for it.
Please join the school board if you are so concerned. Schools have been teaching critical thinking when it comes to research topics for probably decades/hundreds of years. Remember primary sources? Remember conflicting sources and having to dig into why they were conflicting? Public school ain't perfect but I'd rather have kids know that there -is- bias, than do what you are suggesting which is....? nothign.
I mean one way to teach this class would be to simply cover current events in an over the top, biased way and then discuss the tricks used and concerns.
(Maybe students get credit for credibly challenging anything mentioned in the class)
I taught high school for a hot second. I think the approach you suggest would be terrifically engaging for students. Teach them the tricks and make a game of trying to fool one another by setting up two competing teams of "news media," print and talking heads. Essentially, you're teaching them informal fallacies.
If someone claims X is true because of Y it can be misinformation even if X is in fact true and it can not be misinformation even if X is in fact false.
For example, suppose I claim that using brand X soap can give you cancer because they use fat harvested from animals that grazed at a toxic waste dump and that fat contains the toxic chemicals that the animals ingested. Suppose it turns out that brand X soap can in fact give you cancer, but it is because some chemical used to make the soap's wrapping paper is carcinogenic and leaches into the soap. The soap itself is vegan soap with no animal products used in its manufacture. Same for the paper.
My claim is then misinformation even though my claim that the soap can give you cancer is true, because my reasons for the claim were wrong and I had no even remotely plausible evidence to believe those reasons.
The importance of coming to a common consensus on key issues and ideas as a society means that we gotta try, and public institutions is where it should happen foremost. Writing them all off with broad generalizations and cherry-picked moments from the last few years to justify it is just a long way of saying that everyone should give up without trying.
Giuliani met[1] with Andriy Derkach[2] on his 2019 Ukraine trip. Derkach is the target of a long-running US counter-intelligence operation. In September 2020 the Treasury Department sanctioned[3] Derkach for his work against American interests on behalf of Russian intelligence services. Prior to the sanction, US national security adviser Robert O’Brien personally advised President Trump that Giuliani's information should be considered tainted by Russia[4].
They could also look into all the Russia Collusion stories that turned out to be hot air. People’s overreliance on the Steele Dossier would actually be a good example.
Like there’s actually plenty of stuff on both sides to put together a pretty well balanced unit and I think it would be valuable. But you can’t expect partisans with ideological blinders to teach kids how to be objective.
... Did you just use a Twitter link that does nothing but make claims on numbers as a source? More specifically, it provides the claim that there was no tampering without any evidence.
Meanwhile [0] shows that they have the capability, and the motivations.
This is the exact reason we need a class like this.
Edit: And even looking at the numbers provided this is a mischaracterization. Slightly over 30% of Dem's believe it happened, and another slightly over 30% think it probably did. These two things are not equivalent.
The numbers come from a YouGov poll [0] as the image in the tweet shows.
Also I think it’s funny you link that senate report, because section VI of the report is titled “NO EVIDENCE OF CHANGED VOTES OR MANIPULATED VOTE TALLIES”
> The numbers come from a YouGov poll [0] as the image in the tweet shows.
The numbers provide no evidence for the second claim, which means that the twitter post is being intellectually dishonest.
> section VI of the report is titled NO EVIDENCE OF CHANGED VOTES OR MANIPULATED VOTE TALLIES
And there's not much (or no detectable) evidence of most hacks until suddenly there is. It is not unreasonable to assume a compromised system is compromised. I personally think there probably were not manipulation of the tallies, but I can understand thinking there probably was.
There's certainly much more evidence of it than say, Hunter Biden's laptop.
We know that Trump's campaign manager (working for free for Trump yet deeply in debt to a Russian oligarch) funneled internal campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer. This is according to Senate Republicans [1]. We also know that this info was passed on to the Russian FSB, which was engaged in a psyops campaign against the American public in an effort to elect Donald Trump. This is according to the Mueller Report and the US Treasury Department [2] [3]. Further context includes Trump's son, son-in-law, and campaign manager (the very same one working with a Russian FSB officer) meeting with a Russian spy at Trump's house to discuss trading dirt on Clinton in exchange for relaxed Russia relations (including lifting sanctions related to Russia's invasion of Crimea) [2].
What's more, Trump and his entire campaign lied about all of this, and Trump threw his weight and the weight of the government he controlled into obstructing the subsequent investigation. When the Mueller Report was finally released, it was torpedoed by Trump's attorney general, whose representation of the Mueller Report was characterized by a federal judge (who has seen more of the Muller Report than you or me) as "misleading" and "lacking candor":
"The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr's statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary"
"The speed by which Attorney General Barr released to the public the summary of Special Counsel Mueller's principal conclusions, coupled with the fact that Attorney General Barr failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller Report, causes the Court to question whether Attorney General Barr's intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report—a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report." [4]
Actual collusion between the Russian FSB and the Trump campaign occurred. It's documented and has been investigated by several bodies. Actual hacking of our political system by a foreign government in favor of one candidate occurred and has been investigated.
It's not that outrageous considering the facts that trickled out, especially this whopper confirmed by FBI: "Florida Governor Says Russian Hackers Breached 2 Counties" [0] In 2016. Also interesting that you don't mention the nearly 20% of Republicans or 40% of Independents who believed it.
==Like there’s actually plenty of stuff on both sides to put together a pretty well balanced unit and I think it would be valuable. But you can’t expect partisans with ideological blinders to teach kids how to be objective.==
What leads you to believe this will be partisan? Is it possible that your own partisanship is actually causing that belief?
I think it should be more generalized than "news" related but other than that, I applaud such lessons in public education.
Coursework should focus on aspects of information gathering/research; understanding sources, credibility, incentive/motive structures of those sources; comparison techniques between information sources for cross comparison; and then with all the information they gather, skills to apply critical thinking and assessment of the information. You also need to understand human biases that can creep in even when you're aware of the biases that often effect critical assessment.
In the information age, we need a population that's more educated about information, disinformation, misinformation, common propoganda/manipulation techniques, and so on. We also need a population who under certain conditions can do primary information gathering. Unless you're in the business of manipulating people or those who manipulate people align with your interests (they usually don't), then it's to your benefit to have informed peers to help fight off nonsense.
>Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop?
What exactly do you mean by this? Do you mean explaining how it was a giant ratfucking [1] shit-slinging fuckfest perpetrated by political animals? I don't think they ever really make their viewers aware of the fact that they're non-stop hounding a dude, who happens to be the child of a politician, that had to witness his mother and sister be literally crushed to death at a young age [2], while he too was being crushed to death. Gee, I can't imagine why somebody who had to live through that as a child might go on to live a slightly fucked up life.
I hope, that when discussing something such as "Hunter Bidens Laptop", they discuss the fact of how no coverage was given to conflicts of interest around a point like this regarding the other political party, such as the Trump Orgs fairly massive outstanding debts to China, the near infinite list of fucked up things Trump's children have gotten up to, disgusting facts such as when Trump offered to pay for a family members (child) cancer treatment, then took the money back because the parents did something to make him slightly mad, the fact he's had to pay prostitutes hundreds of thousands of dollars after being sued, going back to the fact he'd parroted donating the entirety of his salary to something charitable, and then... imagine this... actually didn't, lol.
But yes, of all the things and conflicts of interest that should be covered and reported on, surely "Hunter Bidens Laptop" is one of them. Man. Remember when people said "maybe it's not a good idea or very nice thing to do in having secret service members drive around a contagious Trump for a small self-serving driveby of a rally of supporters" that was reported by most reasonable news stations? Turned out they were right and one of said service members got so sick with COVID he had to have a leg amputated, and even with whatever insurance being a secret fucking service member entails, he's seriously struggling to afford care. I do not see any news stations bringing this back up though. Why isn't it reported on? This is something that should be discussed in any reasonable class they're attempting to create.
> Remember, for weeks it was cast as Russian propaganda
What was it, actually? I've lost track.
> will they discuss how at first the lab leak theory was discarded as "misinformation"?
If 50 or 100 years from now, we find out that aliens did in fact visit Roswell, NM, would we posthumously rehabilitate the UFO nuts and conspiracy theorists of today? Even if all their details were wrong?
It's possible to write the right answer on an exam through pure guesswork; that's why teachers say "show your work". It's possible to be a kook and say something that later turns out to be true. It's possible to call lab leak "misinformation" in 2020 but give it a bit more credence after new facts come to light. Especially when "lab leak" was being used as cover or deflection for incompetence and mismanagement of the pandemic response.
The problem with both of your examples is that they came from a source which had cried wolf (lied) a nearly unfathomable number of times. As an indie I hate to say it, but when there is so much noise to signal coming from one source, it's very likely for a rational person to default to ignoring info from that source. It's actually a decent strategy when there is more data than processing power. I have no problem with teaching that behavior at all. It would encourage sources to have a better SNR.
I should add that I am in no way validating either of your claims. I have not seen any info that warrants a "smoking gun" analysis of something evil happening in either case. So far we have chatter and some data points. Would love to be proven wrong on this as that would be a more interesting result.
> Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop? Remember, for weeks it was cast as Russian propaganda.
Remember how this story was botched by an entertainment show (not my definition, theres) disguised as news (Fox News)?[0]
I think this is the point. It's hard to take a "journalist" seriously when there's so many obvious points of amateurism. Kids should be taught to keep those stewards of information accountable and that shock jock news entertainment (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc.) should warrant extra criticism (if not downright ignored completely).
> Given the primary example used on the kids, the 2016 election, this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy".
I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, but their "punchline" conclusion was that "the video came from Russia". Sometimes if something isn't reported in certain countries because of bias it can be reported from other countries, even if the only reason they do so is to make that country look bad. It doesn't mean that the video was fake, or that it didn't show evidence of ballot stuffing.
I am not saying it was true, I haven't seen that particular video and I'm not one that pushes that particular idea and at this point I don't really care anymore. I'm just unimpressed if that's the reason they discounted it. They also talk about fossil fuel companies funding studies about climate change. While this can certainly be nefarious, it's also possible that they are the only ones motivated to study a particular aspect of climate change because no other groups will touch it because of politics.
"Look at the source" is only one piece of the puzzle. I think it's often sought after because it's a good way to dismiss something out of hand.
It would have been better, in my opinion, if they looked through the video and had the kids see if they can come up with other possible reasons for the actions they are seeing in the video other than "ballot stuffing", and then come up with ways they could try to validate those hypotheses and assign a "truthiness" rating to it. It doesn't matter who publishes a video if it's actually showing what it says its showing.
NPR deleted a tweet (with no retraction) that heavily implied a person who was violently attacked in his vehicle and then sped away to avoid the violence was a "right-wing extremist" involved in a "vehicle-ramming incident" [1] -- with zero reference to the violent attack initiated on the vehicle.
Additionally, the protesters who attacked the vehicle were arrested, including one who brandished a gun at the vehicle and another who assaulted the driver. [2]
These specific incident aside your overall point is good: news is not always right, one news not always agree with the other, each person must do own looking, reading, evaluation of evidence. This is what we need in "news literacy" not a course just saying "trust mainstream media".
I wish I could say 'oh read them all and you will figure it out'. That is unfortunately not very true. All of the brands have an agenda. Most are straight copy and paste of each other or slight re-writes. Some even are little more than a game of 'telephone'. Errors of omission or addition are rampant.
Funny enough it was NPR that clued me into this mess 20+ years ago. I was listening to them on a long drive. The same story came up over and over. Each NPR station pretended like they had wrote it themselves. Conan has a few fun skits that shows off this effect. If they are willing to lie about something so cheesy I have no choice but to think the 'big lies' would be easy. Our news is corrupt to its core, controlled by few large conglomerates and read by pretty faces and smooth voices.
If we are going to teach them to think critically, they not only need to think about the biases of sources, but to make decisions about trust. 'Everyone is equally and absolutely untrustworthy' is no more critical or skeptical than 'everyone is equally and absolutely trustworthy'. We can trust different news sources to different degrees, and in different situations. The National Enquirer is not the same as the New York Times.
> The same story came up over and over. Each NPR station pretended like they had wrote it themselves. Conan has a few fun skits that shows off this effect. If they are willing to lie ...
Should an important story only be available to listeners in one locality? If you drive between localities, you're going to hear some redundancy.
How is it a "lie" to broadcast a segment produced elsewhere? I think listeners are much better off getting the best segments in the country, and not being restricted to the limited resources of the local station. It would be very redundant (and obviously unaffordable) if every station ran a global news operation.
How did they "pretend"; did they say 'we produced this segment here in town X'? I've heard plenty of NPR and never had that impression at all (in fact, IIRC they say 'from our sister station in ...').
> The National Enquirer is not the same as the New York Times
This is true. But the NYT has an agenda, would you not agree? The Enquirer is easy to spot. The NYT is more subtle about what they do (mostly). I ask "If you have to 'unfilter' everything why am I reading this"? Look at the stories they choose to cover and ignore. Then look at the particular phraseology they use to talk about particular groups. Which groups are always in glowing terms. Which groups are constantly downed on. No group is that 'good/evil'. Selective editing of stories to make one side look better/worse is their typical weapon of choice.
Many are also using the Richelieu method "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
> How did they "pretend"; did they say 'we produced this segment here in town X'?
Yes they did say they had done it. They did not say 'from someone else', probably just a goof in the mad-lib script. It was just what keyed me into the subtle deceptions that go on in our news. On the face of it by itself it is not really that big of a deal. It is the pile of little lies that are not technically lies that are cause for concern. They are using top shelf persuasion techniques. Not for the good of the public or you or me. But as a way to get 'clicks' these days or move paper years ago. What the new set of persuaders call 'engagement'.
I can not honestly sit and say 'oh read this set' as they are brain junk food. Many are little more than outrage machines that try to keep engagement, usually by stroking cognitive biases and primed assumptions using the bernays techniques. You can try to sift through it but if they are just copying from each other and amping up outrage for something, playing the game of telephone. You are going to have a very hard time untangling that mess. Many times you roll backwards in time and have to become a news detective to find out the original source.
> the NYT has an agenda, would you not agree? The Enquirer is easy to spot. The NYT is more subtle about what they do (mostly). I ask "If you have to 'unfilter' everything why am I reading this"? Look at the stories they choose to cover and ignore. Then look at the particular phraseology they use to talk about particular groups. Which groups are always in glowing terms. Which groups are constantly downed on. No group is that 'good/evil'. Selective editing of stories to make one side look better/worse is their typical weapon of choice.
Everyone has an agenda, including you and I, but it's like saying 'everyone lies' or 'everyone can write' - the significance is in how much they lie and how well they write.
For the NYT, I see some bias toward their readers in the lighter features - e.g., right now there's a headline, '6 Ways to Tame Airline Nightmares'. That's obviously biased toward people wealthy enough to fly frequently. My impression is of some bias in those articles toward serving a more liberal readership, but I can't cite anything ATM, but that is different than an agenda.
In hard news, I don't see an agenda, i.e., a program to promote something, or much bias. They do talk about things that conservatives object to, such as discrimination against minorities and women, but a large part of journalism is reporting things others want covered up. They do the same to liberals - they break stories about major liberal figures, such as Hilary Clinton's email. They are hated by all sides, a great sign.
They don't report stories in the reactionary conservative sphere that lack facts, or if they do, they investigate and report the facts as they are, such as the election fraud and anti-vaccination claims. They label claims 'false' if they are well-established to be disproven or 'baseless' if appropriate. Journalism isn't affirmative action for political ideas and bad information; it's about what's actually happening in the world.
Their opinion pages have an entire spectrum of columnists; there is (almost) every kind of agenda there, absent the more extreme claims of neo-reactionaries. Their NY Times Editorials, from the newspaper, are definitely liberal in general, but that is labeled opinion.
> You are going to have a very hard time untangling that mess. Many times you roll backwards in time and have to become a news detective to find out the original source.
I don't find it hard. There are many sources, I know their natures, and I can put it together pretty easily. I rarely find I am surprised by changes in information: For example, the lab leak theory went from not 'false' as critics say, but 'unfounded' to 'potential' (and still not nearly established): I wasn't surprised; knowledge changes with new information. In part that's practice, I'm sure, but I think the agenda of many is to discredit the institution of journalism. I don't buy it.
"emotional labor" you never will hear outside of very leftwing area, same with use of term like "partner" or specification of "in heterosexual partnership". These are not noticeable for many readers from urban area but are almost jump off the page to any from, say, more rural background. Coverage clearly is more than "a little" bias.
> NYT has more than "some bias" toward liberal. It has Paul Krugman for regular opinion columnist
They have opinion columnists from the entire spectrum. Check out the opinion page - it's got everything, and in pretty good balance, from (pretty) far right to (pretty) far left.
> "emotional labor" you never will hear outside of very leftwing area, same with use of term like "partner" or specification of "in heterosexual partnership". These are not noticeable for many readers from urban area but are almost jump off the page to any from, say, more rural background.
First, this article isn't news; it's a how-to feature.
Let's assume it's true that the content is better known in 'leftwing areas'. Does that make it less valuable to readers everywhere? Also, the NYT is there to tell people things they don't already know, the most valuable ideas they can find; should they limit it by some political measure? Dumb it down because you think that people in rightwing areas can't handle something unfamiliar (I'm attributing that to you, because it's not my idea or the NYT's)? A more general and far more important question: Must everything be politicized and restricted accordingly?
'Heterosexual partnership' is in this sentence:
In heterosexual partnerships, emotional labor often falls to women, who are generally socialized to take on the emotional lives of others, said Arlie Russell Hochschild, professor emerita at University of California, Berkeley ...
Again, must everything be politicized? Can people in rural areas not handle the language? And what words should be used instead - 'marriages' would seem incorrect, not limiting it to heterosexual relationships would seem confusing.
.............
One problem with the parent's point is that (very, very broadly) liberalism seeks change and improvement, while conservatism seeks to keep things as they are or were. Naturally, innovations will come from more liberal sources.
Your assessment of "valuable ideas" being these is more bias, showing you are maybe in the NYT target demographic, so I am not surprised that you are finding coverage reasonable.
> what words should be used instead - 'marriages' would seem incorrect, not limiting it to heterosexual relationships would seem confusing.
Marriages probably the choice in other parts of the country, maybe "romantic relationships". Specify "heterosexual" is only left-wing thing, most others realize that gays are only small part and so do not bother to make mention. Saying "emotional labor often falls to the woman" would be most elegant though because it make implicit the normal man-woman scenario and avoid extra words.
> Must everything be politicized
Not in necessity but it does show significant bias on NYT. Also this is not all so much political as cultural.
> liberalism seeks change and improvement, while conservatism seeks to keep things as they are or were
You make a conflation between change and improvement, liberalism seeks the former and sometimes gets the latter. Some liberalism good and represent progress, some pointless and only change for change's sake. Example being push to use "nice words" for things every so many years. Idiot become retard become mentally handicapped become learning disabled... point here is that not every change is good change.
I feel like they should just teach more statistics. Learn about bias, sampling and significance.
> Students reportedly got a lot better at spotting questionable sources.
Like that's definitely a step in the right direction, i.e., don't just blindly trust what you see on Insta or FB, but I worry it'll just teach kids to blindly trust mainstream media like the NYTimes, which are not without their own biases.
Statistics and probability are two things that I think everyone should know. They help so much with understanding the news and whether or not something is actually relevant.
They should do that. They should also teach about actual journalism and not just information found online. I realize now that I had a great advantage in dating for several years someone who was in the College of Journalism at my University. I learned a great deal about what journalists do and why they do it that way.
It gave me a lot of insight about why it's unlikely someone who's invested a lifetime into a career would intentionally jeopardize all of it by not following the journalistic standards and ethics they had learned and studied for so long. About the difference between a factual statement and a biased statement. The purpose of an editor. What are the consequences when an editor makes a mistake. And so on.
At that time a lot of it was also how to develop film and run a darkroom, but that's obviously not taught anymore!
> unlikely someone who's invested a lifetime into a career would intentionally jeopardize all of it by not following the journalistic standards and ethics they had learned and studied for so long
This form of journalism is pretty much dead in America.
Moreover, journalists violate journalistic "ethics" all the time and there is very little risk to your career unless you do something really bad and obvious like plagiarism. Even then, you can often stage a comeback if people like your writing.
> This form of journalism is pretty much dead in America
Nearly, but we need it to come back.
We can't depend on every citizen having loads of spare personal time to spend doing their own journalistic research on every topic. It's impossible. And we can't just let "entertainment news" become the standard. The current chaos will just keep ramping up and up until the collapse of democracy. Yeah I know, many democracies have collapsed over human history. But we need to do something to bring back journalism, not just educate people about how to do their own journalism. That's about as sustainable as having everyone grow their own food. Which is to say, not sustainable at all.
The epistemological relevance of statistics at the level of daily news is almost non-existent. Heck, professional scientists routinely fail (for various reasons) to apply statistics correctly to very controlled circumstances. News reporting is quite far from the controlled experimental context in which statistics would be applicable.
I teach statistics to undergraduates...you are correct it is a VERY weird suggestion that presumes many things.
I'm trying to craft a more coherent and unfortunately long response to this whole conversation...HN is making some wild practical epistemic swings at this that are largely without merit.
Institutions have some level of accountability that Facebook memes don't.
The NYT is not an arbiter of truth. However I am much more likely to pay attention to a piece of journalism from them moreso than my neighbor who can't read saying vaccines are just microchips. At the very least there is a credibility factor that they have.
The US has always had biased media - people forget the famous newspapers of the federalists and the republicans as early as the birth of our country - however at times it was able to align with certain truths between factions. It seems this is what was really lost.
Journalism has taken a huge hit in this country and the effects are widespread. I'm not against hearing an argument for something. I am against hearing an argument based on an unsubstantiated rumor and "we don't know if it's true but WHAT IF IT IS true" reporting that exists today.
I'll tell you something...I teach undergraduate statistics. One of the projects I give students is to find a news article that talks about a research study and then find the research study. They have to analyze and compare them.
It's a hard project, students largely presume that news sources have bias, and some clearly do. But telling apart bias from good faith misunderstanding and sincere attempts at simplification of a message for an audience is really hard.
The issue isn't just 'statistics' its audience, its communication, its argumentation, its pre-existing knowledge...its a lot of factors.
Part of this is human nature and, frankly, our evolutionary brains inability to process the amount of information now available.
There is some good research...I'll find it and add it...with undergraduates that shows something really itneresting about information seeking and use behaviors:
* undergraduate engineering students often treat the act of searching for information on ther internet and getting results as directly akin to understanding the information their search returned.
* said differently, they think that the act of googling something is the same as understanding the results - even if they don't click on the results.
IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all. It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather than viral content. Which is of course great for NPR, but doesn’t help when your “trustworthy” media selection decide to suppress all arguments from another side, or remain silent on certain stories altogether.
Note: This comment was expanded a few times, but the gist remained the same.
Edit: No, I’m not saying “trust NPR, NYT and the like instead of viral content you see on Facebook” isn’t a good takeaway. I’m saying the more effective type of propaganda (at least for people who don’t tend to fall for the obvious crap) isn’t discussed.
> It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather than viral content. Which is of course great for NPR.
I had some minimal education on scrutinizing sources in high school and that's pretty much what it was. I think we spend maybe 10min talking about yellow journalism.
Topics such as evaluating which parties have what direct conflicts of interests or ancillary motivations and how that may affect their reporting were simply not covered. It would have been trivially easy to dig up a few non-controversial historical examples of people peddling very wrong narratives for the benefit of those who fund them.
Yes! This is my pet peeve! There are so many studies and sources that, if taken out of context and pointed correctly, can be used to support your claim.
Now combine with the good old “you don’t know what you don’t know” and you have a great tool to mislead the masses.
Add a bit of cognitive bias on top (combined with being profiled by “popular search engines” that give you the results you already believe in) and you’re hooked.
Underlining story: there is so much need for critical thinking in our schools!!!
I'm confused: Isn't this a very common narrative, especially among a certain political group?
> Underlining story: there is so much need for critical thinking in our schools!!!
That is the solution IMHO and IME: Teach critical thinking, not who is right or wrong. That's what my teachers did almost universally, what other teachers I know of did, and what seems to me is happening in this class.
Indeed. Jacques Ellul discusses this at length in his book "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" [1]. Whenever I reread this book I feel it's more and more relevant than before.
> "But modern propaganda has long disdained the ridiculous lies of past and outmoded forms of propaganda. It operates instead with many different kinds of truth— half-truth, limited truth, truth out of context. Even Goebbels always insisted that Wehrmacht communiqués be as accurate as possible."
Did you people even read the article or do all of you need to take this course?
it says right in the article what they're teaching kids and no it's not 'these news sources are the right ones' it's how to analyze the news like the headline says.
First, read the guidelines. Don’t do “did you even read the article” here.
Secondly, I did read the article. All it talks about is spotting questionable sources, comparing reports to shake out fake news, etc. As I said, the most effective propaganda tool is omission. You’re not going to compare sources on something you never even read about. After fact-checking a hundred times you’ll decide that NPR does report facts, but do those facts paint the whole picture? Also, comparing sources in this day and age is not helped by biases baked into search engines.
> As I said, the most effective propaganda tool is omission. You’re not going to compare sources on something you never even read about.
How is that a risk? What are the chances that anyone will only see news from one source?
> After fact-checking a hundred times you’ll decide that NPR does report facts, but do those facts paint the whole picture?
After fact-checking a hundred times, won't you learn NPR's strengths and limitations? And wouldn't you learn if facts are sometimes omitted?
I think we form nuanced, detailed, if often tacit opinions about the sources. For example, I'll articulate a little of mine:
* Rule #1: Never trust opinion pieces.
* NPR: Quality news, no deception or try to push an agenda, won't always dig deeply. Always present a pleasant tone and has light information density. An inefficient source, but sometimes have stories and facts that others lack - I wish I had more time for them.
* NY Times: World-changing revelations are taken for granted. Reporting is nuanced, never satisfying the desire for clarity (which is good - the world isn't clear). Sometimes leave critical questions (IMHO) unaddressed and can be lacking hardcore, expert analysis, and bury key facts in long, wordy reports. Recent, more narrative style is annoying.
* WSJ: Never quite trust them: Murdoch demonstrates they'll embrace the Reactionary movement at any cost to truth or society. WSJ reporting looks excellent - up to the standards of the best, like NYT, etc. - and they cover important stories, but a lot of doubt lingers.
> How is that a risk? What are the chances that anyone will only see news from one source?
The majority of people get their news from the limited 'free' articles that have been linked to them by Apple/Google/Facebook's recommended news based on your browsing habits to sell you more ads.
I don't need a study or source to make that claim. You need critical thinking to understand it.
You have too much trust for NPR and the NYT after the revelations that so much of their reporting on Russian collusion and the first impeachment were false[0] and the Brian Sicknick death by fire extinguisher lie that was completely fabricated[1] by the news media.
This is just it - most people criticize the media have a clear political agenda, it oozes out of them. In this case, it immediately goes to Trump and Russia, almost instantly, almost as if it's a campaign. It misleads by saying "we don't have direct evidence of this, therefore it must not have happened." The two articles linked are not convincing.
Often times people complain about the mainstream media and then post their own media, without convincing me why I should trust this media over any other media.
You say that as if your own position is beyond question, but what makes it true? What is your position?
You may find my position is far from yours and what you've normalized, but if you do understand these issues, you know that that's not a signal about accuracy; it's often a signal about biases when we don't have room for considering other POVs.
> IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all.
That doesn't mean it isn't taught. The article can't cover everything taught in the class. So that is unfounded.
> It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather than viral content.
What makes you say that's the main takeaway; can you cite something in the article or elsewhere? The only argument behind it is the unfounded claim above.
Are you suggesting people should trust viral content? How should they interact with information about their world and decide what to trust?
> doesn’t help when your “trustworthy” media selection decide to suppress all arguments from another side, or remain silent on certain stories altogether.
That's not my experience. Obviously, news sources have limited resources and time, so they can't report everything nor will they always make good decisions. They also are there to serve readers, and thus should omit information that lacks foundation in truth - I certainly don't want to waste my time on it. They won't be perfect, but the only core 'mainstream' source (e.g., major national publications, the NYT, WSJ, ABC News, etc.) that I've seen systematically show bias is Fox News (however, I don't watch CNN or MSNBC) and a little in the Washington Post, which I notice few people remark on.
In the NY Times, for example, I haven't seen it, despite people repeating ad infinitum that it happens (repetition, I hope they teach, has no correlation with truth). They even have an opinion page with as many conservative writers as anything else, and they are among their most popular columns.
Sorry but I don’t have time to write a case study on NYT biases. Also, you seem to be thinking purely in terms of U.S. politics, Democrats vs Republicans, left vs right. I’m talking more broadly. You’re not going to get a balanced view on a lot of international topics by consuming and comparing an ensemble of U.S. mainstream media (you can even throw British media in there) for instance, however bitterly they fight about U.S. politics.
Is that not problematic? You make an extraordinary claim, but then "there is no time for me to back it up." But there was time to make the claim, and this is ultimately the problem. You have just accepted out of hand that it is truth and want others to accept it.
Why should I trust anything you say, then? I don't doubt that there are biases, they're certainly are. But you're expecting us to just accept it out of hand.
Even the idea that an accent is "a bit" or "heavy" depends on believing that some particular way of speaking is the standard, with zero accent. It's very close to declaring some accent the "right" way to speak.
Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the natural human tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.
You're treating that theoretical average or median, even if no one speaks that way, as the standard accent against which all others are compared.
That's one way in which people sometimes choose a "right" or "zero" accent. Another is by social standing ("the queen's English" was literally that).
Either way, that's declaring one accent the right way of speaking, and describing people who speak differently as having a "heavy" accent instead of simply a different way of speaking.
Perhaps a specific example would make this clear. There are many dialects and accents of German in Germany. Which one would you declare the standard, and who would you describe as having a "heavy" accent?
My point is that making such a judgement is wrong to begin with, and one should simply describe a particular accent by its features or regional distribution, not as "heavy".
(And to respond, briefly, to the comment below: when learning a foreign language you choose to learn a particular dialect and accent. That doesn't make other accents "heavy", they just aren't the accent you've learned.)
It declares it standard, not "right". If you learn a foreign language having a standard to aim for is good and large deviations are difficult. Stop trying to turn this into right or wrong.
My whole point is to avoid turning this into right or wrong by realizing that an accent or a bias merely describes a particular way of speaking or thinking, not a degree of deviation from some standard.
In linguistics, this is the prescriptive vs descriptive debate. It's not controversial that a prescriptive grammar declares how a language should or ought to be used. Declaring one accent the standard is a similar prescriptive position.
There isn't a 'right' way to speak, but there are accurate facts against we can measure bias.
> Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the simplistic tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.
I'd add that the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.
> there are accurate facts against we can measure bias
In the context of reporting, bias isn't about reporting accurate facts. That's honesty or accuracy. A source could be very biased but 100% accurate (by cherry picking facts that fit an agenda) or neutral but inaccurate (by reporting everything they hear without any evaluation or judgement).
Bias is about choosing what facts are worth reporting, and which words (with similar denotations but different connotations) to use to describe those facts.
> the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.
Yes, I agree about choice of facts also being part of it (I wouldn't exclude accuracy either). I didn't use precise wording, so it's a good point to add.
But my conclusion is the same: The 'story' is usually pretty accurate, IME, within certain limitations (e.g., news moves quickly, and I find the NYT often omits some important questions, though not political ones).
When Trump did not penalize the Saudis after the Khashoggi killing, the Times said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/world/middleeast/trump-sa...
When Biden did the same: "For Mr. Biden, the decision was a telling indication of how his more cautious instincts kicked in, as the responsibilities of managing a difficult ally led him to find ways other than going directly after Prince Mohammed to make Saudi Arabia pay a price." - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/politics/biden-mbs-kha...
When the muslim immigrant Ahmad Al Alawi Alissa killed 10 people in Boulder, Colorado, the shooter is referred to as a "gunman whose motives remain a mystery":
> Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault ...
What significance do you see here?
> NY Times title after an islamic terrorist beheaded a teacher near Paris
Again, what is the significance to you? It's not that I can't guess at some of it, but to discuss it I need to know what you think.
> (interpretations of Trump and Biden motives)
Trump and Biden are different people with different motives; should they report those motives are the same? Trump brazenly pushed those motives into the public, as an attempt at cultural change and attack on his opponents. Biden seems open about his too.
Also, according to the article, Trump backed his statement with lies, as he often did; should they be reported as facts? Should that be ignored?
Finally, circumstances had changed. The murder was years ago, for example.
> Ahmad Al Alawi Alissa killed 10 people in Boulder, Colorado, the shooter is referred to as a "gunman whose motives remain a mystery"
Do you know the motives? Was there evidence of them at the time?
> "How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror"
That's an opinion piece, which is very different. You can find all sorts of agendas and biases in NY Times opinions, the entire spectrum (almost).
.....
My impression, very possibly false, is you want the NYT to assume and appease the propaganda of neo-reactionaryism (or a segment of it): anti-immigrant and religious prejudices, and the unsubtle propaganda of 'anti-white racism'. Not only are those evil, dangerous and ugly, they are baseless. Certainly they don't belong in journalism, and you won't find them in anything serious from any source.
I pointed out (exaggerating only modestly) the absurd amount of benefit of the doubt you're giving the NY Times. If you believe that's an insult, I really can't help you.
maybe i'm not aware of the curriculum, but propaganda seems like something that would be addressed in any conversation about news literacy? seems to be the very definition of news literacy -- knowing when to weed through reporting and look deeper. also, cherry picked reporting is an insignificant problem compared to knowing how to think critically about reporting. knowing how to think critically about the news would (ideally) fix this problem!
> It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather than viral content. Which is of course great for NPR, but doesn’t help when your “trustworthy” media selection decide to suppress all arguments from another side, or remain silent on certain stories altogether.
Did they post the syllabus in the article and I missed it? Or did you get on your hobby horse and just make unfounded assumptions?
"There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth."
The media (en masse) can be factual and yet instill a large bias. Stories with uneven sourcing, presentation and priority of different news stories, biased accompanying photographs, weirdly scaled graphs ... there are millions of ways to use facts selectively and tell a story that is factual but not truthful.
Skepticism is probably the most important part of media consumption. What am I reading? Where does it come from? Does the headline try to beg the question? Are there an equal number of sources on both sides? Do they have equal gravity? Where can I confirm these facts? Do they confirm or reject my pre-existing beliefs? And so on ...
It's a lot of work! That's why most people have poor media literacy. That's why we read something on social media at under 256 chars and believe it.
Conservatives at the time felt it was a first amendment rights violation. Further, they claim that this policy was leading to two talk show hosts, both leftists, but one claimed to be conservative.
That’s at least what was claimed. I don’t really know how you overcome that.
> On August 22, 2011, the FCC voted to remove the rule that implemented the Fairness Doctrine, along with more than 80 other rules and regulations, from the Federal Register following an executive order by President Obama directing a "government-wide review of regulations already on the books" to eliminate unnecessary regulations.
Seems like it hasn't been a thing for a decade, so I'm not so sure.
> I try to pinch my nose and read both parties' propaganda machines
There is a lot you can find that isn't in propaganda machines. One essential piece of propaganda is to say that everything is propaganda, like a liar saying everyone lies. The very good news is that, while nothing will meet a standard of perfection, there are excellent news sources - you have more access to quality news than anyone in history, thanks to the professionalization and expansion of journalism and to, of course, the Internet.
The first trick: Skip all opinion pieces. They are all BS from every side, IMHO.
Despite what those propagandists and opinion pieces say, the NY Times, Washington Post, and similar publications do provide quality news (don't read their opinion sections either).
> Despite what those propagandists and opinion pieces say, the NY Times, Washington Post, and similar publications do provide quality news (don't read their opinion sections either).
They do, but only on certain subjects they approve of. There are often major world or local events that are never covered in these outlets. Just to give some recent examples, the largest worker protests and strike in history happened in 2020 across India, and not 1 mainstream outlet in the US and UK covered it at all. Similarly, the miners' protests in NY were not covered in mainstream media.
I do agree that on the news they do cover, you can get decent facts from the papers you cite.
> the largest worker protests and strike in history happened in 2020 across India, and not 1 mainstream outlet in the US and UK covered it at all. Similarly, the miners' protests in NY were not covered in mainstream media.
I didn't see the New York miner protests in the NYT in a quick search, but I lack search terms and time. Do you mean the protests in support of Alabama miners?
I'm not saying that they don't miss stories and can't improve, a lot, but I think attacking journalism is trendy and normalized, and much of it is BS.
I have not found a single article about this in the NYT, BBC, Washington Post. The Guardian in the UK did cover these.
> Do you mean the protests in support of Alabama miners?
Yes, I mixed things up a bit. I have not been able to find an article about either the strike, nor the NYC protests about it. Rather amusingly, looking for UMWA or Alabama miner strikes, there are several articles about this, from ~1900s.
The main point I was making is that there is systematic bias on certain topics - especially workers' rights - in mainstream publications. There are other such topics as well, usually to do with the nitty gritty of US imperialism.
Well, media in the USA is often being accused of being left-leaning, when in fact it is almost universally right-of-center on almost every topic, except culture issues.
The claim is not necessarily that they ignore essential topics, so much as that they present a biased narrative of the world, even in the facts that they chose to cover at all - one biased against workers and against America's (perceived) enemies.
The people who accuse the NY Times of being biased towards liberals or progressives often forget how pro-war they were for example, how friendly they are to the military and security apparatus in general etc.
From a political point of view those are biased sources though, when 90+% of their journalists are self-proclaimed liberals this should be immediately obvious.
well when their job is to write about politics, do you really still think that is true? I'm not saying to disregard those sources as illegitimate, but take them with a grain of salt
> Despite what those propagandists and opinion pieces say, the NY Times, ... do[es] provide quality news (don't read their opinion sections either).
You ever read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent[1]? If you can't bring yourself to read the book, he made a film about it too [2]. But the book has hundreds of examples (well sourced) of why you should probably rethink that.
I'm mostly responding to attacks on the NYT from the right; it's interesting to think about it to a great extent. My first impression is that the NYT has broken from the 'consent manufacturing' apparatus, which is why so many 'moderates' attack it.
I don't see the point of this. a typical English class should already be teaching one how to critically think anyway and engage with text. There's no need for a specific "news literacy" course IMHO.
Growing up in Illinois and going to public schools, I have to say this is just making the situation worse.
My wife (who went to the same school district) and I both recall situations where politics were in the classroom. I recall in grade school with vivid detail my teacher saying “anyone who voted for bush is an idiot” and kids in the class becoming upset and the teacher doubling down. My entire time at school (through college) conservatives were demonized. Quite literally, I watched teachers call them evil. Anyone who spoke out would get punished. You could see the unequal treatment.
Conservatives are against equality, their racists, they cut education budgets, etc. when have any one here seen positive discussion about conservatives in your lives? think about it.
Just last year, during the pandemic, my wife’s younger brother was doing a zoom class behind me. His teacher was telling the students in home economics that “we need to reduce taxes or give universal income to black people”. She went on and on about inequity and how whites were evil.
I’m sure some of you believe I’m being hyperbolic, but here’s a near by school district:
This will be just a further weapon to indoctrinate and marginalize. People I know in the younger generations (in their 20s) who are conservatives are scared to speak and have been for years.
Now let’s consider something they may teach.. are they going to teach to check citations? I want you to open CNN or MSNBC right now, look at a few articles and check the citations. You’ll see why this is a problem.
> I recall in grade school with vivid detail my teacher saying “anyone who voted for bush is an idiot”
I never encountered anything like it or met anyone who did. My teachers always taught us to think critically; they didn't care what the topic was or what our conclusions were; it was about learning to think. Is there any research, such as a survey, of student experiences of political speech by teachers?
I'm sure we can find a few examples of anything, but we also all know well that there's a political group that is trying to denigrate and politicize every institution, from the media to schools to the FBI to the courts to scientists, etc. by saying they are biased toward liberals. Repeating its claims doesn't help; if we are going to think critically about it, and we should, we need some credible evidence.
To be fair, I’m not sure where you grew up. I was in a low ranked school district, and I’m sure there are always a few (perhaps many) bad apples. You also probably wouldn’t see this behavior if you didn’t deviate from the approved path.
isn’t the classic argument that being black in America is awful and whites can’t understand because they aren’t marginalized? I actually agree to an extent, but only so far as people don’t realize how it feels to be on the outside, unless that’s at there or have experienced it.
That being said, there’s a long list I can cite. Differing world views lead to dramatically different understandings in even interpretation.
An excellent example, my friend and I in school had to do an essay on the impacts of global warming. We chose the impact on animal populations in the Arctic, as there was a news article about some poor starving polar bears. Turns out (at the time) the population of polar bears and other animals was booming (while a few were decreasing). We showed some graphs, we were surprised about this honestly. We failed because “we didn’t show the impact of global warming” - seriously, I don’t have evidence, but it’s an ideological world view that teachers push.
In my AP government class in high school it was so bad the students would scream at the teacher. He had to regularly remove and suspend kids for getting aggressive at what they were being taught. Believe it or not, idk It was a personal experience.
> I'm sure we can find a few examples of anything, but we also all know well that there's a political group that is trying to denigrate and politicize every institution, from the media to schools to the FBI to the courts to scientists, etc. by saying they are biased toward liberals. Repeating its claims doesn't help; if we are going to think critically about it, and we should, we need some credible evidence.
I linked a lawsuit. You can also request the ciriculum from school districts you live in. You can also attend school board meetings. I urge you to do so and see for yourself.
I'll take your anecdote and tell you I never experienced anything like this from teachers in public school in IL.
Conservatives aren't demonized they are just disliked because of their political party affiliation and the actions of their elected representatives. I like conservatives, I would even say I love them, but I think they have moronic brain-dead opinions especially on things like CRT that they don't understand.
> People I know in the younger generations (in their 20s) who are conservatives are scared to speak and have been for years.
I haven't noticed this at all. The only time I've seen widespread silence from my conservative friends & family is after January 6th of this year. Could just be my circle, but almost all of them have gone radio silent, nothing at all to say any more. But before that they were definitely anything but quiet.
> Students say they often didn't see why, for example, a company writing about climate change receiving funding from the fossil fuel industry could skew the story. Many assume that if a social media influencer has tons of followers, it means they're trustworthy.
I see a similar outcome among adults, but these are adults who I know were raised to be skeptical (in the sense of science or critical thought), to think independently and critically, to look for bias in themselves and others, and to distrust power. I know they thought that way for most of their lives.
And now they accept things that have a paper thin veneer of truth and deep flaws, things that they would have easily penetrated just 5-10 years ago. If I examine it with the tools we've used our entire lives, conversations we've had many times in the past, I find myself beyond the pale, unwanted in the conversation.
Why? I don't know. I haven't before lived through mass insanity and mob psychology though I know it's happened, such as in Nazi Germany and arguably the Soviet Union. What are they doing? One thing I've noticed is that the 'reactionary' movement (I don't know another name - it's amazing that it's unnamed even at this date) first attacked postmodernism (while continuing to embrace its skepticism where it serves them), and as people were swept along and embraced that, they unilaterally disarmed themselves against the threats of personality cults, mob psychology, and other mass delusion.
But why? My impression is that ruining their game, as if we were playing Monopoly and I was seriously questioning the economics of it. But my real question is, how could they embrace it? How could they make such an obviously grievous error that will destroy their lives, their relationships (the poison affects all their behavior and thinking, not just about politics), communities, country, and world?
Followed by being able to afford multiple appeals courts (which also suggests my opinions match the reality I perceive, more than the generally assumed reality)
Followed by people assuming I'm part of a lizard race masquerading as human, thats when you know you've made it by every metric.
The first one has had various rungs, from casual conversation, to product managers agreeing without even playing devil's advocate, to board rooms. But being amplified across broad populations is even better. Being on this path, I can see how a lot of the population is susceptible. Its not really just about critical thinking or having been a critical thinker in one field before, its just degrees of susceptibility where certain formats of ideas occupy open registers in people's minds.
I’ve wondered this too. So far, all I can discern is that smartphones behave like a tasp, from Larry Niven’s scifi writings.
A tasp is a device that stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain. This rapidly leads to addiction and enslavement of the person(s) the tasp is used on.
We’re very easily controlled, and so many of us don’t even realize it.
Much of online content, including social media and games, are designed to be exactly that. Here's a great description from and early Facebook executive Tim Kendall, who compares it to tobacco company's work to promote addiction:
Social media preys on the most primal parts of your brain. The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions - it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage.
While this might be the first time a state has put this in the curriculum, I can say as the son of a school librarian that news and primary source disinformation/literacy education has been a standard among more forward-thinking library programs for the last 5-10 years. The need to have students be able to find a piece of information and then critically assess the validity of it, and if necessary explore alternate sources is a really important part of good research skills in the modern era.
In fact, when my mother got her masters of library science, I was suprised at how much of the curriculum was basically 101-level comp sci- databases, Unix, basic programming, Internet tech, etc. Being a school librarian is basically about Internet and news trust, maker tech, and research skills, rather than books and literacy.
So we shouldn’t bother trying to teach them how to catch even the most basic, stupid, obvious attempts to manipulate them, then?
I guess we shouldn’t patch security holes in any software, either. Attackers will just spend increasing amounts of effort to find new ones. It’s not worth developing vaccines for any diseases, either. They’ll just adapt. Why lock your car or your house? Determined people can pick the lock, or just break a window.
There is absolutely no benefit to be found in raising the bar so that the stupidest, low-effort attacks no longer work. None at all.
It's a bit tricky to say when I don't have the full details of what the course entails and haven't assisted to it myself.
I think my concern here is that this course would give the students a false sense of safety since they now have a recipe they can apply to "filter out the junk" making them blind the next evolution.
I also don't think your analogies fully grasp the matter (alt ought they are really good examples of "races to the bottom").
A more relevant analogy would be akin too: "Should we teach students about known vulnerabilities when attackers keep discovering new ones?".
To that my answer is, I'm not sure. There are a lot of vulnerabilities, and going over each known one would take a considerable amount of time. Perhaps spending more time learning other facets of software development would be a better a better use of time.
I'm surprised to see such negative reactions to this effort. Information and media literacy is sorely lacking in the present day USA and we could be doing much more to educate future generations on topics like this to help them make sense of an increasingly complex world of information.
No, it reveals that trust in establishment institutions are at record lows. When noteworthy institutions (Twitter, Facebook, Google) are claiming "promotion of truth" as the reason for what many believe is in reality pushing a biased agenda, it is not unreasonable at all to be highly skeptical of any institutional effort to promote "critical thinking".
The Democratic Republic of North Korea is in fact democracy. It says so in their name. The Ministry of Truth is also, in fact, a truthful organization. It is also clear in their name.
Okay. None of this is proof of anyone's opinion. But if you can accept that this is how many earnestly see the world, you don't have to psychoanalyze the comments here and come to a derogatory view of those writing them.
>trust in establishment institutions are at record lows
Yes, because one political party in particular has spent 40+ years working very hard to destroy trust in public institutions (you only mentioned private companies, but it's true in general for both). A media literate populace threatens that work. Their motivation for destroying trust isn't to replace it, but to make people think there is no truth, there is no way to determine right from wrong. There absolutely are ways to do these things, it just threatens their views and their power.
>But if you can accept that this is how many earnestly see the world, you don't have to psychoanalyze the comments here and come to a derogatory view of those writing them.
This is why I want media and information literacy to be more widespread, so the general public can understand what is happening and how things have changed since the days of Walter Kronkite. It's why I want education in all subjects to be more widespread and why people arguing against this do not.
Part of the primary school curriculum here in Norway is how to be critical of source material, no matter where it comes from. We call it “source criticism.” Summed up, it's about how trustworthy a source is, what method was used to obtain the data or opinions in the material (if any), whether the observations or claims in it are first hand or second hand, and whether its conclusions are reasonably objective or subjective. From there on, you can start to make up an opinion as to whether a source is “good” or “bad,” or neutral or biased. Good teachers will try to keep politics out of it, but there are definitively examples of teachers who for whatever reason keeps a political slant. In theory they could lose their job if they're caught indoctrinating their pupils, but in reality it's almost never an issue. On the other hand, in today's hyper-politicized world, I trust that most of the pupils quickly catch on if they try.
> We call it “source criticism.” Summed up, it's about how trustworthy a source is, what method was used to obtain the data or opinions in the material (if any), whether the observations or claims in it are first hand or second hand, and whether its conclusions are reasonably objective or subjective.
That sounds fantastic. What is known about, and what are your experiences with, the outcomes? After class? 1 year later? 5 years later? 20 years later?
This should be the top post, something we can learn from. Thank you.
I'm from Canada and we were taught something similar as early as grade school. But that was back in the 1990s and I'm not sure if it's currently part of the curriculum or if this was taught across the country as education curriculum is mostly a provincial responsibility.
It was explained to us in simple terms that everyone's experience with the world is unique. As such, there is no such thing as unbiased sources and we should always consume news critically. They were simpler times. The most political it got was when my teacher brought in the 3 main newspapers in our area and candidly shared with the class how they were stereotyped in their political editorial leanings. For Americans, think of it like sharing this statement: "Fox News leans toward Republican policies. The New York Times leans toward Democrat policies. USA Today is somewhere in between."
There wasn't any discussion of whether these newspapers were accurate or inaccurate. Fact checks weren't rattled off to us about each source. Rather, the teacher kindly explained to us that it was impossible to be unbiased and we did exercises to critically interpret news sources and see how the same topic might be covered by multiple sources.
I'm going on a bit of an aside for the historical context in which I had these lessons for the next two paragraphs, so feel free to skip to the final paragraph.
In some ways while they were simpler times informationally, Canada was going through wilder times politically back then. There's an argument to be made that Canada as a country was more divided in the early 1990s than the US is today. Québec separation was a very real possibility during this time and actively being sought within our political system. This wasn't just the online pissing contests that some Americans have talking about California or Texas separating from the union. Separatist parties were elected both at Québec's provincial level and as the official opposition party in Canada [EDIT: for Americans unfamiliar with this concept, our Prime Minister and the ruling party had to spend the majority of their daily routine responding to attacks from separatists in the House of Commons and every day the news would have this front-and-centre].
For those too young to remember, the political turmoil culminated in a referendum in the province of Québec -- 50.58% to stay in Canada and 49.42% to become an independent country. The Canadian military had to strategically fly its CF-18s out of their Québec base to American ones in case the referendum passed lest they fall into a foreign nation's hands. Our Prime Minister was busy actively seeking the support of President Bill Clinton and shoring up our gold supplies while the would-be leader of an independent Québec had an official visit to France complete with red carpet and television crews to discuss what their relationship would be once Québec separated.
What's my point? I suppose just to give Americans who still believe in the core concept of the country, a bit of hope. As divided as things are today, they can quickly change. Furthermore, I believe that it is possible to teach these things so they have real merit and aren't just tools of the current political ruling party even in uncertain and highly divided times.
If I understand it, it's more or less the same in Sweden and in that case the result is that becomes a basic part of adult life for many people and shows up in public discourse, in the papers, on TV, online*, etc..
* with some minor exceptions like literal fascists who spam things with their bots or puppets.
This sounds fantastic, and I also see 0% of anything like this being implemented at scale in the US public school system, no matter what label it goes under. The different biases and values of the various regions of the US are simply beyond one structure or framework for thinking about objectivity (at least for a very long time). Idk though, I hope I'm wrong
Basically the opposite of what Google and the news media are trying to do. Establish a list of official sources that you trust because in the age of deepfakes you can't be confident in the evidence itself.
Side note - I wonder how they'll treat Wikipedia in these classes. When I was in high school (<2016), they were still telling us not to use Wikipedia because "anybody can edit it" and the librarian once saw the Amerigo Vespucci page had been edited to say he was the "King of Grapes".
The core of the course should be critical thinking, with a heavy lean in on problem solving. The passive consumption of "stuff" - whether that's food or information - is the basis for so many of our so called crisises.
But - warning: editorial - The System is intentional in creating this mindless mindset. Not to worry Big * has it covered. Don't think. Just follow contentional wisdom, follow the narrative.
Moi? I spend a fair amount of time reading / listening / watching for what isn't said. This forces me to duck the click bait, hyperbole, sensationalism, etc. So often there are obvious questions that are ignored. That's a tell. I'm also recommend becoming hypersensitive to language and words. When there are big sweeping phrases (e.g., "everybody...") it's another tell.
Growing up, we had classes where our English and History teachers reviewed current events and historic periodicals (w/ original newspaper!)
This just seems to be instilling propaganda from a young age.
--
" That can be as simple as opening a new tab and leaving the post to find more about the source of information. It appears to be effective. "
And then the article goes more depressing from there, it's not per se news literacy, but general information technology literacy.
Anyone can spin up a LAMP stack and run a web server, or a blog and post content, buy a $9 domain and put a portrait of someone who does not exist - and link it to some scientific or even hijack an accredited offical.
What then? You're going to teach students how a WHOIS works?
(Granted I knew about WHOIS since middle school, but 99% of students though and todays generation I'm sure don't even care how the Internet works outside..)
This is a terrible idea. A lot of people are failing to realize that this is a bad precedent.
Even though the article spends most of the time talking about an example orthogonal to politics, it is clear that politics will be the main topic of this course. I have zero faith in the system to show the numerous examples of bad articles by the NYT, WP, NPR... anybody remembers the Covington kid?
The issue goes beyond self criticism of course. The state should not play a role in telling kids what they should or shouldn't read as a news source - because that's what will end up happen. I have zero faith that such class will actually engage in fruitful debates.
Nobody can "do their own research" and still have time to live, unless that's their whole job. This used to be the stated job of journalism, but that profession is now largely dead in ad or benefactor driven news agencies. Independent commentators, journalists, and writers are the only ones that have any hope of being trusted. They cannot institutionalize character and integrity. Glenn Greenwald and the intercept are the clearest examples.
Your mind is built for empathy and understanding the sort of ways that an individual might lie or deceive you, and what might corrupt them. Institutions are like alien structures, which have their own mechanisms for corruption, which are far less intuitive, and much easier to hide behind layers of arbitrary bureaucracy and methodology.
Ultimately, you cannot show a source is reliable, but you can show if one isn't. Sources that are up front about their biases and publicly admit errors get bonus points. Trust individuals, not institutions if for no other reason than because personal bias is the only form that you can intuit.
Mods, can you please take a look at these comments? I see a lot of the comments do not discuss the merits of the story and go into “there are good people on both sides” political arguments. This doesn’t feel like HN to me
489 comments
[ 7.7 ms ] story [ 737 ms ] threadThis is as comforting as hearing that schools are teaching religion.
Was there a time when it wasn't?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias#History
Things were never perfect, of course. And we have never had as many facts available to reach our own conclusions (so, it's arguable if people are less or more informed today), but looking only at the media, things weren't always that bad.
I'm sure the students could find tons of examples of NPR's nonsense using these methods. Especially relevant is checking photos or videos accompanying articles, the main example given in the report, cause all the big players get caught on this one constantly.
Media literacy classes have already been shown to turn some percentage of kids into nazis no matter how you teach them, so any particular bias that might be getting instilled probably doesn’t matter too much.
If you tell kids to “Go on YouTube and do your own research about the Jews,” then whatever the teacher thinks stops being relevant after about 30 seconds.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7FVyQCjNg
Quite a claim. Where has this been shown?
That's not what is being taught, according to the article.
Which of course is accurate, but at the same time a lot of people would be better off just blindly trusting the media.
> The entire premise of "media literacy" is that what the mainstream media is telling you might not be true
For example, the class studied a video that spread on Facebook, not in the mainstream media, for misinformation.
Did you watch the Danah Boyd video I linked to? There aren't many better Internet ethnographers than her. Like I don't know if she's the absolute best person in her field, but she's pretty easily top 10.
"two weeks" from mid-March would be April
"stop the spread" could reasonably interpreted as "we won, all is well"
Therefore, it's easy to see why people - including Trump - would be convinced this would all be done in April 2020.
Instead, the extra capacity barely got used and was dismantled a month or two later.
Senators on the intelligence committee dumping shares and buying remote work stocks for … a two week disruption?
I said the same things in March 2020 I just still don't understand how other people process things.
I didn’t think the new goal would become “no one can ever die of this”. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have said this would be over soon.
Something changed a few months ago and now some states in the US are making decisions seemingly designed to collapse their health systems. It's tragically short sighted.
If that were true, they wouldn't have gotten rid of the pop-up hospitals over a year ago.
Which place, specifically, do you think has gone with this kind of thinking? Because in all countries I know of outside of East Asia, this virus has been allowed to kill many more people than virtually any other infectious disease in the last 10 years.
I don't see how flatten the curve was convincing, in March 2020 or in hindsight.
That's separate from the comical moving goalposts of various Governors and counties.
Also, please don't use allcaps for emphasis - that's also in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
When the lab leak theory emerged/was initially dismissed, I was actually reminded of my lessons from high school.
Of course, this was pre-Internet and the focus was on written English... it's not like we were taught (say) how video editing can control perceptions.
Especially with what the internet has done to news this really should be taught in schools everywhere.
My takeaway is that they’re trying to teach students how to identify bad sources/reporting or outright fake news, not litigate specific news reports.
Using 2016 as an example doesn’t invalidate that goal or imply bias.
What was not in fact the case? Can you share your evidence?
Was the story of Russians electing Trump coherent and without holes?
It has real evidence. I can hunt down more if you like.
The senate council that had those findings was GOP lead. The GOP lies a lot, but usually for their own benefit.
Do you assume I somehow care? This and then Obama's 8 years of drone bombing of weddings in Pakistan, hospitals in Afghanistan, prolongation & expansion of mass surveillance all over the world just shows how "trustworthy" your government is (or in fact, any monopoly of violence).
> The GOP lies a lot, but usually for their own benefit.
For whose benefit is DNC lying?
I dislike both political parties, and wish we would pass ranked choice voting ASAP so we can break out of this two party system already.
Both parties are corrupt. However, only one has recently tried to overthrow our entire governmental system.
Edits for clarity, and to add that if someone takes an attack on their party as a personal attack, there are larger issues there (not that I am claiming you are, but it seems something worth mentioning in a discussion like this).
> wish we would pass ranked choice voting
Do you believe that parties that in a joint effort "fortified" debates in 2000 to make sure no 3rd party could receive air time and wider audience, would commit political suicide introducing a mechanism that'd shake their positions?
> Both parties are corrupt. However, only one has recently tried to overthrow our entire political system.
I'm an outsider, is it the one that "fortified" the election [1]? I mean, Trump is an egotistical narcissist who didn't drain any swamps and probably didn't fulfill a single promise. But all those things "Trump has dementia", "he attacks the media", "writes too many executive orders like a dictator"... Weren't they just projections? Whose "press conferences" are even more disgraceful and staged than Putin's "pryamaya liniya" ("direct line")? Whose administration admits they're responsible for the censorship policies of social platforms? Who's flirting with oligarchs (not to be confused with entrepreneurs) and who lifted sanctions on Putin's pipeline while banning the building of a local one? The people from Bush administration, on whose side were they?
[1]: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
But I was referring to the one that incited a riot that rushed the Capitol.
However, neither will change until forced. The best way to accomplish that that I can see is for someone either independent or in a splinter group in one of the main parties to run on ranked choice. Until then, the best we can do is vote for whoever is best (or less bad :/ ) for each job, regardless of their party.
As entertaining as it is, mudslinging between parties doesn't accomplish much. There's so much garbage both have done, we'd just all get covered with plenty of mud left to spare.
If you make big claims and then don't back them up, it's hard for me to see it as "censorship" vs "hype avoidance."
"Hype avoidance" is a nice euphemism though. I'll be sure to be wary of anyone using it going forward.
It actually does:
> Republicans' trust has not recovered since then, while Democrats' has risen sharply. In fact, Democrats' trust over the past four years has been among the highest Gallup has measured for any party in the past two decades. This year, the result is a record 63-percentage-point gap in trust among the political party groups.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrus...
Will you elaborate on how you feel the quote you included implies bias?
Then you have other other polls from Gallup, like this one showing that six in 10 in US see partisan bias in news media. From the report:
> Americans Believe News Media Favors Democrats
Gallup asked those who perceive political bias in the news media to say which party the news media favors. Almost two-thirds (64%) of those who believe the media favors a political party say it is the Democratic Party. Only about a third as many (22%) believe the media favors Republicans.
> This is not new. Americans who perceive media bias have always said the direction of that bias leaned in favor of the Democrats, although the percentage holding that view has varied. The gap was smaller in 2003 and 1995, but was more similar to today's attitudes in 2000.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/207794/six-partisan-bias-news-m...
The story reads like the journalist is completely unaware of their implicit left wing bias and makes little effort to fix it - to them, this example is an obvious example to use but it will alienate readers on the other side (like the OP), yet they used it anyway.
The actual examples used in class was influencers talking about nutrition and a teacher talking about jan 6 being controversial in the class. And I think your concern that news literacy may be defined too simplistically in the classroom is valid but your reading of the article seems to have poor comprehension.
Yet if you look at the list of mistakes the mainstream media has made in the past decade I’m not sure why anyone would assume they are worthy of an assumption of good faith reporting.
I've barely ever come across the NYT in my lifetime, not being American.
Good try though.
> https://web.archive.org/web/20171106063502/https://www.thegu...
> Trump dump: president throws entire box of fish food into precious koi carp pond
> While his host, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, spoons small amounts of feed, the US leader gives the fish a large feast
> Having apparently lost patience with tempting the fish to the edge with modest offerings of food, Trump simply upended his wooden container and dumped its entire contents into the water.
> White House reporters captured the moment on their smartphones and tweeted evidence of the president’s questionable grasp of fish keeping.
> Abe is seen grinning, as is a woman in a kimono standing to one side. Next to her, Rex Tillerson – perhaps grateful for a moment of comic relief after he was named in the Paradise Papers – could not suppress a laugh, according to witnesses.
> Some speculated that a poor palace employee would be dispatched to the scene of Trump’s faux pas to the clean up the mess as soon as the two leaders disappeared inside.
> Trump is not alone in misjudging the fishes’ appetite, however. According to the Aquascape website, overfeeding is the most common mistake made by keepers of koi carp.
> “This can make your fish sick, and excessive amounts of waste that strains the limits of what can be biologically reduced, results in a decline of water quality,” the site says.
The whole article is written as "trump stupid, kill fish"
Of course the reality is... trump did it all by protocol, doing what the host did, first feeding by the spoon, then throwing in the rest... but they even managed to crop the video, showing only what trump did, and cutting Abe out of the frame.
This is not some random guy on facebook, or some cheap rag.. it's a (once) respectable newspaper. If I cannot trust them with reporting about something, that was recorded by many, many cameras, and with video available everywhere, how can I trust them with reporting about something, I have no direct insight to?
How can i trust them then with an "unnamed source" stories, when they lie about stuff recorded on camera?
Lol "quality journalism" as they say it themselves. Not my level of quality. They have good pieces. But hit-pieces like this makes me unable to support them at all.
Who is using selective reporting to create a false narrative for what purpose?
I would be surprised if interactions with police quite suddenly turned less confrontational. People still do things to attract police intervention and police still respond and have to leverage lethal force, but we don't hear that much about it in the media. so, what gives?
The protest coverage faded out over time; anecdotally, so have the protests I've seen while driving around town.
I suppose you have to pick an example to work from and frankly, the 2016 election was the most noteworthy and groundbreaking disinformation campaign.
A teacher could certainly talk about the latter, but neither Hunter Biden's laptop and Lab Leak Theory have the bulk of documentation to point to.
You could have spared yourself that dig, it's beside the point and stupid.
The comparison with religion is actually good. In some countries religion is taught in school because religion is part of human culture, which is firmly within the bailiwick of school. So teachers teaching religion must be accredited by both the government (for competency) and by their religious authority (for adherence to dogma). That's good, because you know who they answer to, and since religious authorities are usually mainstream you won't get revolutionaries or apocalyptic types either.
But reading the news in school, it's like the Soviets teaching how to trust Prawda.
Religious authorities have a long history of oppressing free thought, including questioning the authority or tenants of the religion, and rationality, such as science. I would not say they are usually 'mainstream', unless we circularly define mainstream as whatever the religion says.
Second, again using Poland as an example, this is largely outside of government control: the state cedes all authority about this part of schooling to Church, and Church is free to choose whatever propagandists it likes.
We went from it being banned on Facebook to it having mainstream acceptance in like a week despite ZERO change in the underlying evidence. The evidence was always just "well there's a lab there". The only thing that changed was Trump isn't president anymore.
It's the perfect rorschach issue for underlying bias, free of any clearcut facts that might be evaluated neutrally.
If someone had collected US research grant money and went the other way would we call them 'paid by America'?
Like I said. The perfect rorschach issue.
Very disenchanted with the media over the last 5 years, and it did not used to be this bad.
It really doesn't matter if it came from the lab or from the environment. The fact that they covered it up shows the lab was breaking protocols and they believed it could have been the lab that released the virus.
The lab needs to be shut down and similar labs shut as well to institute a major overhaul of the system.
Why would China give them ammunition? Even if we assume that the virus didn't come from a lab, it's impossible to prove and handing over a bunch of raw data to a motivated actor has no upsides.
The politically appointed or "hired by reference" committees and/or teams of bureaucrat that are responsible for setting curriculum at the state level would never do that because then they'd have to answer to politicians on both sides of the isle for making their job harder. People operating at these levels of bureaucracy don't need to be told what the boss wants, they read the room and know in which direction they should be erring. Your career doesn't take you through those sorts of positions that far if you're not the kind of person who does that.
Furthermore, the career arc of someone who believes that society's problems will be solved or mitigated by helping the masses think critically is unlikely to take them anywhere near the high levels of public education policy.
And even if it did happen the schools wouldn't teach it and they'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming over a decades long period (because the unions and the municipalities have enough power to play that stalling game for that long) because corralling teenagers is harder when they can call you on your bullshit forcing you to address tough topics that have no good answer other than "I'm in charge, deal with it".
I've heard about it before, but I struggle hard to understand what does it mean
like parents will go to school to flame teacher cuz their kid disagrees with them on $hot_topic?
Worse: for even bringing up a hot topic without bending entirely to the parent's opinion on it (where these opinions differ from a straight description of the facts, is when it's really annoying to deal with this—no amount of neutrality will make them happy, because that's "indoctrination" from their POV). Definitely doesn't have to get to the point of the kid disagreeing with the parent, just presenting anything that they don't agree with can result in angry calls or visits from parents.
Note also that you'd probably be very surprised what can count as a "hot topic".
This just seems more like a way to influence children's political leanings.
It's just an awful line of reasoning to assert that because people have lied in the past, that we should cherish lies and continue to adopt new ones moving forward
What you are referring to is the history we choose to center something DIFFERENT is somehow now being treated as 'manipulated'
It's not. Choosing what to center and what not to center isn't inherently manipulative, its human nature. Its why I focus on my running and my research and my partner at the expense of learning a new language or instrument. I center things in my life that I'm good at and bring me joy.
The fact that people are angry about shifting the centering is why literacy is important - because identifying the centering rather than jumping to 'bias' or 'manipulation' is where the literacy comes from.
Updated: source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
clarifying: you claimed there were errors, pls provide examples. You made a claim, its not unreasonable to be asked to support it.
Copy a little bit to show the dishonesty of the project creator:
> In September 2020, lead 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones criticized conservatives for their depiction of the project, arguing that it "does not argue that 1619 is our true founding".[12] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf responded on Twitter by citing statements from Hannah-Jones arguing that 1619 was the nation's true founding.[12] Philip Magness said in a Quillette essay that the claim that the project aimed to "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding" had been removed from the opening text of project's page on the New York Times' site without an accompanying correction notice.
the author: "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding"
I think this speaks to the fundamental issue that the entire conversation here AND the need for news literacy is about...taking a different lens on something cannot, by definition, be 'correct' or 'incorrect'. It is a perspective...it can be coherent or incoherent, it can be widely or not widely accepted. It is a claim, argumentation, it is not a fact. Reducing argumentation to 'a fact' or 'facts' debases discourse and is why we are stuck here as a society.
https://www.aier.org/article/fact-checking-the-1619-project-...
Do you have other suggested reading beyond the scope of that piece? Too much of the criticism I've found online seems to be attacking straw-man paraphrasing of the project.
> In September 2020, lead 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones criticized conservatives for their depiction of the project, arguing that it "does not argue that 1619 is our true founding".[12] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf responded on Twitter by citing statements from Hannah-Jones arguing that 1619 was the nation's true founding.[12] Philip Magness said in a Quillette essay that the claim that the project aimed to "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding" had been removed from the opening text of project's page on the New York Times' site without an accompanying correction notice.
A simple reading of its Wikipedia page can get those information.
Wow.
May be you missed this?
> In September 2020, lead 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones criticized conservatives for their depiction of the project, arguing that it "does not argue that 1619 is our true founding".[12] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf responded on Twitter by citing statements from Hannah-Jones arguing that 1619 was the nation's true founding.[12] Philip Magness said in a Quillette essay that the claim that the project aimed to "reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding" had been removed from the opening text of project's page on the New York Times' site without an accompanying correction notice.
> what helped students distinguish misinformation the most is something called lateral reading. That can be as simple as opening a new tab and leaving the post to find more about the source of information. It appears to be effective.
in fact, you would be for this class
It would be clear that the class would help kids uncover that 1619 has many controversial claims
I am for the idea of this class. But I am pretty sure many teachers won't implement this idea netrually.
To label 1619 as the founding of the country sounds like hyperbole designed to draw attention and discussion.
Was she wrong to respond the way she did? Sure. And it's a shame that an important project to take a sober look at the legacy of slavery has been diminished by her reaction to the criticism, and generally mishandled by the NYT.
Does that mean that the project as a whole is "factually wrong"? That seems dubious at best.
However, when you have academic historians, across the political spectrum, saying the 1619 Project has little resemblance to actual historical study, they should get you alarm bells ringing.
If someone has a rigorous, evidence based viewpoint that’s cool. Flimsy analysis and force fitting history into a particular narrative is not.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians...
They removed this quote from the interactive website without giving an explanation as to why. It's really obvious how biased they are.
At the beginning, the lab leak "theory" was really just a baseless conspiracy theory since there was zero evidence of it. No wonder it was mostly racist right-wing media personalities pushing it.
Yet again, as in 2020, I was unable to share the link below in a private Facebook Messenger group. What else will be censored next, at the behest of the government?
I severely mistrust when the government tells you what and who to believe, and that includes our schools. Teach critical thinking, logic and fallacies, and leave it there - the students can make up their own minds.
[0] https://nypost.com/2021/08/11/video-reportedly-shows-nude-hu...
Wow, you could probably get a Pulitzer
>Facebook Messenger group
>the government
Does.
Not.
Compute.
Error
However, I do applaud your silliness as "Facebook government" almost sounds slightly correct for some swath of people.
https://www.newsweek.com/biden-administrations-admission-the...
In recent times, there has been lots of evidence about how the government and social media companies have been colluding together to "prevent the spread of misinformation" [0]. They have been very transparent about this, and discuss it openly [1].
However, it must not be up to the government to determine what is or is not misinformation - this transposes to government censorship in the worst case, and prevents a healthy marketplace of ideas in the best case.
In the case of the "Hunter Biden Laptop" story (which was misrepresented often), it wasn't Facebook deciding on its own to censor it - it was at the behest of the government.
You don't know what you don't know. What knowledge are you missing because it could never be shown, because it wasn't shown to you? In the last few years, I've seriously worried about this. I've had to diversify my media intake as an attempt to mitigate this, even when the reporting itself was of worse quality in non-standard media channels. (In many cases, I found it to be of higher quality, which was surprising).
I would recommend the same to you, because, especially in this case, you won't know what you're missing unless you look for it.
[0]https://reclaimthenet.org/fb-cdc-misinfo-collusion/
[1]https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/07/15/psaki_wer...!
(Maybe students get credit for credibly challenging anything mentioned in the class)
For example, suppose I claim that using brand X soap can give you cancer because they use fat harvested from animals that grazed at a toxic waste dump and that fat contains the toxic chemicals that the animals ingested. Suppose it turns out that brand X soap can in fact give you cancer, but it is because some chemical used to make the soap's wrapping paper is carcinogenic and leaches into the soap. The soap itself is vegan soap with no animal products used in its manufacture. Same for the paper.
My claim is then misinformation even though my claim that the soap can give you cancer is true, because my reasons for the claim were wrong and I had no even remotely plausible evidence to believe those reasons.
No. We gotta try.
1: Rudy Giuliani is involved
2: Rudy Giuliani specifically traveled to Ukraine in 2019 to dig up dirt on Biden, a mission that he publicly announced.
3: Rudy Giuliani is the GRU's "useful idiot" according to a report prepared for the White House by US intelligence services.
1: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukrainian-lawmaker-says-he-met-trump...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrii_Derkach
3: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1118
4: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi...
They could also look into all the Russia Collusion stories that turned out to be hot air. People’s overreliance on the Steele Dossier would actually be a good example.
Like there’s actually plenty of stuff on both sides to put together a pretty well balanced unit and I think it would be valuable. But you can’t expect partisans with ideological blinders to teach kids how to be objective.
Meanwhile [0] shows that they have the capability, and the motivations.
This is the exact reason we need a class like this.
[0] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Edit: And even looking at the numbers provided this is a mischaracterization. Slightly over 30% of Dem's believe it happened, and another slightly over 30% think it probably did. These two things are not equivalent.
Also I think it’s funny you link that senate report, because section VI of the report is titled “NO EVIDENCE OF CHANGED VOTES OR MANIPULATED VOTE TALLIES”
[0] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
The numbers provide no evidence for the second claim, which means that the twitter post is being intellectually dishonest.
> section VI of the report is titled NO EVIDENCE OF CHANGED VOTES OR MANIPULATED VOTE TALLIES
And there's not much (or no detectable) evidence of most hacks until suddenly there is. It is not unreasonable to assume a compromised system is compromised. I personally think there probably were not manipulation of the tallies, but I can understand thinking there probably was.
There's certainly much more evidence of it than say, Hunter Biden's laptop.
What's more, Trump and his entire campaign lied about all of this, and Trump threw his weight and the weight of the government he controlled into obstructing the subsequent investigation. When the Mueller Report was finally released, it was torpedoed by Trump's attorney general, whose representation of the Mueller Report was characterized by a federal judge (who has seen more of the Muller Report than you or me) as "misleading" and "lacking candor":
Actual collusion between the Russian FSB and the Trump campaign occurred. It's documented and has been investigated by several bodies. Actual hacking of our political system by a foreign government in favor of one candidate occurred and has been investigated.[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Report_O...
[3] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126
[4] https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Ba...
[0] https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723215498/florida-governor-sa...
==Like there’s actually plenty of stuff on both sides to put together a pretty well balanced unit and I think it would be valuable. But you can’t expect partisans with ideological blinders to teach kids how to be objective.==
What leads you to believe this will be partisan? Is it possible that your own partisanship is actually causing that belief?
Coursework should focus on aspects of information gathering/research; understanding sources, credibility, incentive/motive structures of those sources; comparison techniques between information sources for cross comparison; and then with all the information they gather, skills to apply critical thinking and assessment of the information. You also need to understand human biases that can creep in even when you're aware of the biases that often effect critical assessment.
In the information age, we need a population that's more educated about information, disinformation, misinformation, common propoganda/manipulation techniques, and so on. We also need a population who under certain conditions can do primary information gathering. Unless you're in the business of manipulating people or those who manipulate people align with your interests (they usually don't), then it's to your benefit to have informed peers to help fight off nonsense.
What exactly do you mean by this? Do you mean explaining how it was a giant ratfucking [1] shit-slinging fuckfest perpetrated by political animals? I don't think they ever really make their viewers aware of the fact that they're non-stop hounding a dude, who happens to be the child of a politician, that had to witness his mother and sister be literally crushed to death at a young age [2], while he too was being crushed to death. Gee, I can't imagine why somebody who had to live through that as a child might go on to live a slightly fucked up life.
I hope, that when discussing something such as "Hunter Bidens Laptop", they discuss the fact of how no coverage was given to conflicts of interest around a point like this regarding the other political party, such as the Trump Orgs fairly massive outstanding debts to China, the near infinite list of fucked up things Trump's children have gotten up to, disgusting facts such as when Trump offered to pay for a family members (child) cancer treatment, then took the money back because the parents did something to make him slightly mad, the fact he's had to pay prostitutes hundreds of thousands of dollars after being sued, going back to the fact he'd parroted donating the entirety of his salary to something charitable, and then... imagine this... actually didn't, lol.
But yes, of all the things and conflicts of interest that should be covered and reported on, surely "Hunter Bidens Laptop" is one of them. Man. Remember when people said "maybe it's not a good idea or very nice thing to do in having secret service members drive around a contagious Trump for a small self-serving driveby of a rally of supporters" that was reported by most reasonable news stations? Turned out they were right and one of said service members got so sick with COVID he had to have a leg amputated, and even with whatever insurance being a secret fucking service member entails, he's seriously struggling to afford care. I do not see any news stations bringing this back up though. Why isn't it reported on? This is something that should be discussed in any reasonable class they're attempting to create.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking
[2] https://www.biography.com/news/joe-biden-first-wife-daughter...
What was it, actually? I've lost track.
> will they discuss how at first the lab leak theory was discarded as "misinformation"?
If 50 or 100 years from now, we find out that aliens did in fact visit Roswell, NM, would we posthumously rehabilitate the UFO nuts and conspiracy theorists of today? Even if all their details were wrong?
It's possible to write the right answer on an exam through pure guesswork; that's why teachers say "show your work". It's possible to be a kook and say something that later turns out to be true. It's possible to call lab leak "misinformation" in 2020 but give it a bit more credence after new facts come to light. Especially when "lab leak" was being used as cover or deflection for incompetence and mismanagement of the pandemic response.
I should add that I am in no way validating either of your claims. I have not seen any info that warrants a "smoking gun" analysis of something evil happening in either case. So far we have chatter and some data points. Would love to be proven wrong on this as that would be a more interesting result.
Remember how this story was botched by an entertainment show (not my definition, theres) disguised as news (Fox News)?[0]
I think this is the point. It's hard to take a "journalist" seriously when there's so many obvious points of amateurism. Kids should be taught to keep those stewards of information accountable and that shock jock news entertainment (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc.) should warrant extra criticism (if not downright ignored completely).
[0] - https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-says-he-had-authenti...
I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, but their "punchline" conclusion was that "the video came from Russia". Sometimes if something isn't reported in certain countries because of bias it can be reported from other countries, even if the only reason they do so is to make that country look bad. It doesn't mean that the video was fake, or that it didn't show evidence of ballot stuffing.
I am not saying it was true, I haven't seen that particular video and I'm not one that pushes that particular idea and at this point I don't really care anymore. I'm just unimpressed if that's the reason they discounted it. They also talk about fossil fuel companies funding studies about climate change. While this can certainly be nefarious, it's also possible that they are the only ones motivated to study a particular aspect of climate change because no other groups will touch it because of politics.
"Look at the source" is only one piece of the puzzle. I think it's often sought after because it's a good way to dismiss something out of hand.
It would have been better, in my opinion, if they looked through the video and had the kids see if they can come up with other possible reasons for the actions they are seeing in the video other than "ballot stuffing", and then come up with ways they could try to validate those hypotheses and assign a "truthiness" rating to it. It doesn't matter who publishes a video if it's actually showing what it says its showing.
NPR deleted a tweet (with no retraction) that heavily implied a person who was violently attacked in his vehicle and then sped away to avoid the violence was a "right-wing extremist" involved in a "vehicle-ramming incident" [1] -- with zero reference to the violent attack initiated on the vehicle.
[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbEIlsUUcAACYht.jpg
Additionally, the protesters who attacked the vehicle were arrested, including one who brandished a gun at the vehicle and another who assaulted the driver. [2]
[2] https://www.wave3.com/2020/06/18/protesters-arrested-followi...
NPR's tweet came after the arrest and live video footage of the incident. They chose to run the story anyway.
Funny enough it was NPR that clued me into this mess 20+ years ago. I was listening to them on a long drive. The same story came up over and over. Each NPR station pretended like they had wrote it themselves. Conan has a few fun skits that shows off this effect. If they are willing to lie about something so cheesy I have no choice but to think the 'big lies' would be easy. Our news is corrupt to its core, controlled by few large conglomerates and read by pretty faces and smooth voices.
If we are going to teach them to think critically, they not only need to think about the biases of sources, but to make decisions about trust. 'Everyone is equally and absolutely untrustworthy' is no more critical or skeptical than 'everyone is equally and absolutely trustworthy'. We can trust different news sources to different degrees, and in different situations. The National Enquirer is not the same as the New York Times.
> The same story came up over and over. Each NPR station pretended like they had wrote it themselves. Conan has a few fun skits that shows off this effect. If they are willing to lie ...
Should an important story only be available to listeners in one locality? If you drive between localities, you're going to hear some redundancy.
How is it a "lie" to broadcast a segment produced elsewhere? I think listeners are much better off getting the best segments in the country, and not being restricted to the limited resources of the local station. It would be very redundant (and obviously unaffordable) if every station ran a global news operation.
How did they "pretend"; did they say 'we produced this segment here in town X'? I've heard plenty of NPR and never had that impression at all (in fact, IIRC they say 'from our sister station in ...').
This is true. But the NYT has an agenda, would you not agree? The Enquirer is easy to spot. The NYT is more subtle about what they do (mostly). I ask "If you have to 'unfilter' everything why am I reading this"? Look at the stories they choose to cover and ignore. Then look at the particular phraseology they use to talk about particular groups. Which groups are always in glowing terms. Which groups are constantly downed on. No group is that 'good/evil'. Selective editing of stories to make one side look better/worse is their typical weapon of choice.
Many are also using the Richelieu method "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
> How did they "pretend"; did they say 'we produced this segment here in town X'? Yes they did say they had done it. They did not say 'from someone else', probably just a goof in the mad-lib script. It was just what keyed me into the subtle deceptions that go on in our news. On the face of it by itself it is not really that big of a deal. It is the pile of little lies that are not technically lies that are cause for concern. They are using top shelf persuasion techniques. Not for the good of the public or you or me. But as a way to get 'clicks' these days or move paper years ago. What the new set of persuaders call 'engagement'.
I can not honestly sit and say 'oh read this set' as they are brain junk food. Many are little more than outrage machines that try to keep engagement, usually by stroking cognitive biases and primed assumptions using the bernays techniques. You can try to sift through it but if they are just copying from each other and amping up outrage for something, playing the game of telephone. You are going to have a very hard time untangling that mess. Many times you roll backwards in time and have to become a news detective to find out the original source.
Everyone has an agenda, including you and I, but it's like saying 'everyone lies' or 'everyone can write' - the significance is in how much they lie and how well they write.
For the NYT, I see some bias toward their readers in the lighter features - e.g., right now there's a headline, '6 Ways to Tame Airline Nightmares'. That's obviously biased toward people wealthy enough to fly frequently. My impression is of some bias in those articles toward serving a more liberal readership, but I can't cite anything ATM, but that is different than an agenda.
In hard news, I don't see an agenda, i.e., a program to promote something, or much bias. They do talk about things that conservatives object to, such as discrimination against minorities and women, but a large part of journalism is reporting things others want covered up. They do the same to liberals - they break stories about major liberal figures, such as Hilary Clinton's email. They are hated by all sides, a great sign.
They don't report stories in the reactionary conservative sphere that lack facts, or if they do, they investigate and report the facts as they are, such as the election fraud and anti-vaccination claims. They label claims 'false' if they are well-established to be disproven or 'baseless' if appropriate. Journalism isn't affirmative action for political ideas and bad information; it's about what's actually happening in the world.
Their opinion pages have an entire spectrum of columnists; there is (almost) every kind of agenda there, absent the more extreme claims of neo-reactionaries. Their NY Times Editorials, from the newspaper, are definitely liberal in general, but that is labeled opinion.
> You are going to have a very hard time untangling that mess. Many times you roll backwards in time and have to become a news detective to find out the original source.
I don't find it hard. There are many sources, I know their natures, and I can put it together pretty easily. I rarely find I am surprised by changes in information: For example, the lab leak theory went from not 'false' as critics say, but 'unfounded' to 'potential' (and still not nearly established): I wasn't surprised; knowledge changes with new information. In part that's practice, I'm sure, but I think the agenda of many is to discredit the institution of journalism. I don't buy it.
But these are opinion, so examine one news story from also today: https://www.nytimes.com/article/emotional-labor.html
"emotional labor" you never will hear outside of very leftwing area, same with use of term like "partner" or specification of "in heterosexual partnership". These are not noticeable for many readers from urban area but are almost jump off the page to any from, say, more rural background. Coverage clearly is more than "a little" bias.
They have opinion columnists from the entire spectrum. Check out the opinion page - it's got everything, and in pretty good balance, from (pretty) far right to (pretty) far left.
> "emotional labor" you never will hear outside of very leftwing area, same with use of term like "partner" or specification of "in heterosexual partnership". These are not noticeable for many readers from urban area but are almost jump off the page to any from, say, more rural background.
First, this article isn't news; it's a how-to feature.
Let's assume it's true that the content is better known in 'leftwing areas'. Does that make it less valuable to readers everywhere? Also, the NYT is there to tell people things they don't already know, the most valuable ideas they can find; should they limit it by some political measure? Dumb it down because you think that people in rightwing areas can't handle something unfamiliar (I'm attributing that to you, because it's not my idea or the NYT's)? A more general and far more important question: Must everything be politicized and restricted accordingly?
'Heterosexual partnership' is in this sentence:
In heterosexual partnerships, emotional labor often falls to women, who are generally socialized to take on the emotional lives of others, said Arlie Russell Hochschild, professor emerita at University of California, Berkeley ...
Again, must everything be politicized? Can people in rural areas not handle the language? And what words should be used instead - 'marriages' would seem incorrect, not limiting it to heterosexual relationships would seem confusing.
.............
One problem with the parent's point is that (very, very broadly) liberalism seeks change and improvement, while conservatism seeks to keep things as they are or were. Naturally, innovations will come from more liberal sources.
> what words should be used instead - 'marriages' would seem incorrect, not limiting it to heterosexual relationships would seem confusing.
Marriages probably the choice in other parts of the country, maybe "romantic relationships". Specify "heterosexual" is only left-wing thing, most others realize that gays are only small part and so do not bother to make mention. Saying "emotional labor often falls to the woman" would be most elegant though because it make implicit the normal man-woman scenario and avoid extra words.
> Must everything be politicized
Not in necessity but it does show significant bias on NYT. Also this is not all so much political as cultural.
> liberalism seeks change and improvement, while conservatism seeks to keep things as they are or were
You make a conflation between change and improvement, liberalism seeks the former and sometimes gets the latter. Some liberalism good and represent progress, some pointless and only change for change's sake. Example being push to use "nice words" for things every so many years. Idiot become retard become mentally handicapped become learning disabled... point here is that not every change is good change.
> Students reportedly got a lot better at spotting questionable sources.
Like that's definitely a step in the right direction, i.e., don't just blindly trust what you see on Insta or FB, but I worry it'll just teach kids to blindly trust mainstream media like the NYTimes, which are not without their own biases.
It gave me a lot of insight about why it's unlikely someone who's invested a lifetime into a career would intentionally jeopardize all of it by not following the journalistic standards and ethics they had learned and studied for so long. About the difference between a factual statement and a biased statement. The purpose of an editor. What are the consequences when an editor makes a mistake. And so on.
At that time a lot of it was also how to develop film and run a darkroom, but that's obviously not taught anymore!
This form of journalism is pretty much dead in America.
Moreover, journalists violate journalistic "ethics" all the time and there is very little risk to your career unless you do something really bad and obvious like plagiarism. Even then, you can often stage a comeback if people like your writing.
Nearly, but we need it to come back.
We can't depend on every citizen having loads of spare personal time to spend doing their own journalistic research on every topic. It's impossible. And we can't just let "entertainment news" become the standard. The current chaos will just keep ramping up and up until the collapse of democracy. Yeah I know, many democracies have collapsed over human history. But we need to do something to bring back journalism, not just educate people about how to do their own journalism. That's about as sustainable as having everyone grow their own food. Which is to say, not sustainable at all.
Seems like a weird suggestion.
I'm trying to craft a more coherent and unfortunately long response to this whole conversation...HN is making some wild practical epistemic swings at this that are largely without merit.
The NYT is not an arbiter of truth. However I am much more likely to pay attention to a piece of journalism from them moreso than my neighbor who can't read saying vaccines are just microchips. At the very least there is a credibility factor that they have.
The US has always had biased media - people forget the famous newspapers of the federalists and the republicans as early as the birth of our country - however at times it was able to align with certain truths between factions. It seems this is what was really lost.
Journalism has taken a huge hit in this country and the effects are widespread. I'm not against hearing an argument for something. I am against hearing an argument based on an unsubstantiated rumor and "we don't know if it's true but WHAT IF IT IS true" reporting that exists today.
It's a hard project, students largely presume that news sources have bias, and some clearly do. But telling apart bias from good faith misunderstanding and sincere attempts at simplification of a message for an audience is really hard.
The issue isn't just 'statistics' its audience, its communication, its argumentation, its pre-existing knowledge...its a lot of factors.
Part of this is human nature and, frankly, our evolutionary brains inability to process the amount of information now available.
There is some good research...I'll find it and add it...with undergraduates that shows something really itneresting about information seeking and use behaviors:
* undergraduate engineering students often treat the act of searching for information on ther internet and getting results as directly akin to understanding the information their search returned.
* said differently, they think that the act of googling something is the same as understanding the results - even if they don't click on the results.
- Mark Twain
Note: This comment was expanded a few times, but the gist remained the same.
Edit: No, I’m not saying “trust NPR, NYT and the like instead of viral content you see on Facebook” isn’t a good takeaway. I’m saying the more effective type of propaganda (at least for people who don’t tend to fall for the obvious crap) isn’t discussed.
I had some minimal education on scrutinizing sources in high school and that's pretty much what it was. I think we spend maybe 10min talking about yellow journalism.
Topics such as evaluating which parties have what direct conflicts of interests or ancillary motivations and how that may affect their reporting were simply not covered. It would have been trivially easy to dig up a few non-controversial historical examples of people peddling very wrong narratives for the benefit of those who fund them.
Now combine with the good old “you don’t know what you don’t know” and you have a great tool to mislead the masses.
Add a bit of cognitive bias on top (combined with being profiled by “popular search engines” that give you the results you already believe in) and you’re hooked.
Underlining story: there is so much need for critical thinking in our schools!!!
I'm confused: Isn't this a very common narrative, especially among a certain political group?
> Underlining story: there is so much need for critical thinking in our schools!!!
That is the solution IMHO and IME: Teach critical thinking, not who is right or wrong. That's what my teachers did almost universally, what other teachers I know of did, and what seems to me is happening in this class.
It's common for both political groups...
The people who don't think their political group distorts the truth are a prime target for this class.
> "But modern propaganda has long disdained the ridiculous lies of past and outmoded forms of propaganda. It operates instead with many different kinds of truth— half-truth, limited truth, truth out of context. Even Goebbels always insisted that Wehrmacht communiqués be as accurate as possible."
1: https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512
it says right in the article what they're teaching kids and no it's not 'these news sources are the right ones' it's how to analyze the news like the headline says.
Secondly, I did read the article. All it talks about is spotting questionable sources, comparing reports to shake out fake news, etc. As I said, the most effective propaganda tool is omission. You’re not going to compare sources on something you never even read about. After fact-checking a hundred times you’ll decide that NPR does report facts, but do those facts paint the whole picture? Also, comparing sources in this day and age is not helped by biases baked into search engines.
How is that a risk? What are the chances that anyone will only see news from one source?
> After fact-checking a hundred times you’ll decide that NPR does report facts, but do those facts paint the whole picture?
After fact-checking a hundred times, won't you learn NPR's strengths and limitations? And wouldn't you learn if facts are sometimes omitted?
I think we form nuanced, detailed, if often tacit opinions about the sources. For example, I'll articulate a little of mine:
* Rule #1: Never trust opinion pieces.
* NPR: Quality news, no deception or try to push an agenda, won't always dig deeply. Always present a pleasant tone and has light information density. An inefficient source, but sometimes have stories and facts that others lack - I wish I had more time for them.
* NY Times: World-changing revelations are taken for granted. Reporting is nuanced, never satisfying the desire for clarity (which is good - the world isn't clear). Sometimes leave critical questions (IMHO) unaddressed and can be lacking hardcore, expert analysis, and bury key facts in long, wordy reports. Recent, more narrative style is annoying.
* WSJ: Never quite trust them: Murdoch demonstrates they'll embrace the Reactionary movement at any cost to truth or society. WSJ reporting looks excellent - up to the standards of the best, like NYT, etc. - and they cover important stories, but a lot of doubt lingers.
The majority of people get their news from the limited 'free' articles that have been linked to them by Apple/Google/Facebook's recommended news based on your browsing habits to sell you more ads.
I don't need a study or source to make that claim. You need critical thinking to understand it.
0 https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a...
1 https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-official...
Often times people complain about the mainstream media and then post their own media, without convincing me why I should trust this media over any other media.
you... may want to take a refresher course in the topic at hand
You may find my position is far from yours and what you've normalized, but if you do understand these issues, you know that that's not a signal about accuracy; it's often a signal about biases when we don't have room for considering other POVs.
> IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all.
That doesn't mean it isn't taught. The article can't cover everything taught in the class. So that is unfounded.
> It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather than viral content.
What makes you say that's the main takeaway; can you cite something in the article or elsewhere? The only argument behind it is the unfounded claim above.
Are you suggesting people should trust viral content? How should they interact with information about their world and decide what to trust?
> doesn’t help when your “trustworthy” media selection decide to suppress all arguments from another side, or remain silent on certain stories altogether.
That's not my experience. Obviously, news sources have limited resources and time, so they can't report everything nor will they always make good decisions. They also are there to serve readers, and thus should omit information that lacks foundation in truth - I certainly don't want to waste my time on it. They won't be perfect, but the only core 'mainstream' source (e.g., major national publications, the NYT, WSJ, ABC News, etc.) that I've seen systematically show bias is Fox News (however, I don't watch CNN or MSNBC) and a little in the Washington Post, which I notice few people remark on.
In the NY Times, for example, I haven't seen it, despite people repeating ad infinitum that it happens (repetition, I hope they teach, has no correlation with truth). They even have an opinion page with as many conservative writers as anything else, and they are among their most popular columns.
Why should I trust anything you say, then? I don't doubt that there are biases, they're certainly are. But you're expecting us to just accept it out of hand.
No, I really don’t give a damn about whether others accept it. I can post my opinion simply as food for thought.
"... has a bias" is trivially true for just about anything. That also makes that sentence useless unless you add more information.
Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the natural human tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.
Also, you are drawing the wrong conclusion. "Everyone has..." is simplistic. Some have more, some less is nuanced.
That's one way in which people sometimes choose a "right" or "zero" accent. Another is by social standing ("the queen's English" was literally that).
Either way, that's declaring one accent the right way of speaking, and describing people who speak differently as having a "heavy" accent instead of simply a different way of speaking.
Perhaps a specific example would make this clear. There are many dialects and accents of German in Germany. Which one would you declare the standard, and who would you describe as having a "heavy" accent?
My point is that making such a judgement is wrong to begin with, and one should simply describe a particular accent by its features or regional distribution, not as "heavy".
(And to respond, briefly, to the comment below: when learning a foreign language you choose to learn a particular dialect and accent. That doesn't make other accents "heavy", they just aren't the accent you've learned.)
In linguistics, this is the prescriptive vs descriptive debate. It's not controversial that a prescriptive grammar declares how a language should or ought to be used. Declaring one accent the standard is a similar prescriptive position.
> Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the simplistic tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.
I'd add that the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.
In the context of reporting, bias isn't about reporting accurate facts. That's honesty or accuracy. A source could be very biased but 100% accurate (by cherry picking facts that fit an agenda) or neutral but inaccurate (by reporting everything they hear without any evaluation or judgement).
Bias is about choosing what facts are worth reporting, and which words (with similar denotations but different connotations) to use to describe those facts.
> the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.
Agreed.
But my conclusion is the same: The 'story' is usually pretty accurate, IME, within certain limitations (e.g., news moves quickly, and I find the NYT often omits some important questions, though not political ones).
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-official...
Try now:
NY Times title when a "story" (schoolyard scuffle) broke:
A Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks at a Playground - https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytim...
The title after the story turned out to be a hoax:
Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault, and Family Apologizes - https://web.archive.org/web/20191001003852/https://www.nytim...
NY Times title after an islamic terrorist beheaded a teacher near Paris: French Police Shoot and Kill Man After a Fatal Knife Attack on the Street - https://web.archive.org/web/20201016193107/https://www.nytim...
When Trump did not penalize the Saudis after the Khashoggi killing, the Times said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/world/middleeast/trump-sa...
When Biden did the same: "For Mr. Biden, the decision was a telling indication of how his more cautious instincts kicked in, as the responsibilities of managing a difficult ally led him to find ways other than going directly after Prince Mohammed to make Saudi Arabia pay a price." - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/politics/biden-mbs-kha...
When the muslim immigrant Ahmad Al Alawi Alissa killed 10 people in Boulder, Colorado, the shooter is referred to as a "gunman whose motives remain a mystery":
‘I Know She’s Gone, but Why?’: Love and Loss at a Boulder Grocery Store - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/us/colorado-shooting-fune...
Gunman Kills 10 in Grocery Store - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/us/boulder-colorado-shoot...
One of the few stories by the Times that identifies the mass killer is titled "An Immigrant Family Caught Up in a Distinctly American Tragedy" - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/us/boulder-gunman-alissa....
But they're not shy about leading with race when white women do.. something: "How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror" - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/racism-white-wom...
> Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault ...
What significance do you see here?
> NY Times title after an islamic terrorist beheaded a teacher near Paris
Again, what is the significance to you? It's not that I can't guess at some of it, but to discuss it I need to know what you think.
> (interpretations of Trump and Biden motives)
Trump and Biden are different people with different motives; should they report those motives are the same? Trump brazenly pushed those motives into the public, as an attempt at cultural change and attack on his opponents. Biden seems open about his too.
Also, according to the article, Trump backed his statement with lies, as he often did; should they be reported as facts? Should that be ignored?
Finally, circumstances had changed. The murder was years ago, for example.
> Ahmad Al Alawi Alissa killed 10 people in Boulder, Colorado, the shooter is referred to as a "gunman whose motives remain a mystery"
Do you know the motives? Was there evidence of them at the time?
> "How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror"
That's an opinion piece, which is very different. You can find all sorts of agendas and biases in NY Times opinions, the entire spectrum (almost).
.....
My impression, very possibly false, is you want the NYT to assume and appease the propaganda of neo-reactionaryism (or a segment of it): anti-immigrant and religious prejudices, and the unsubtle propaganda of 'anti-white racism'. Not only are those evil, dangerous and ugly, they are baseless. Certainly they don't belong in journalism, and you won't find them in anything serious from any source.
Did they post the syllabus in the article and I missed it? Or did you get on your hobby horse and just make unfounded assumptions?
edit: We can thank Ronald Reagan for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
The media (en masse) can be factual and yet instill a large bias. Stories with uneven sourcing, presentation and priority of different news stories, biased accompanying photographs, weirdly scaled graphs ... there are millions of ways to use facts selectively and tell a story that is factual but not truthful.
Skepticism is probably the most important part of media consumption. What am I reading? Where does it come from? Does the headline try to beg the question? Are there an equal number of sources on both sides? Do they have equal gravity? Where can I confirm these facts? Do they confirm or reject my pre-existing beliefs? And so on ...
It's a lot of work! That's why most people have poor media literacy. That's why we read something on social media at under 256 chars and believe it.
That’s at least what was claimed. I don’t really know how you overcome that.
Definitely best to read from a lot of different slants.
Seems like it hasn't been a thing for a decade, so I'm not so sure.
There is a lot you can find that isn't in propaganda machines. One essential piece of propaganda is to say that everything is propaganda, like a liar saying everyone lies. The very good news is that, while nothing will meet a standard of perfection, there are excellent news sources - you have more access to quality news than anyone in history, thanks to the professionalization and expansion of journalism and to, of course, the Internet.
The first trick: Skip all opinion pieces. They are all BS from every side, IMHO.
Despite what those propagandists and opinion pieces say, the NY Times, Washington Post, and similar publications do provide quality news (don't read their opinion sections either).
They do, but only on certain subjects they approve of. There are often major world or local events that are never covered in these outlets. Just to give some recent examples, the largest worker protests and strike in history happened in 2020 across India, and not 1 mainstream outlet in the US and UK covered it at all. Similarly, the miners' protests in NY were not covered in mainstream media.
I do agree that on the news they do cover, you can get decent facts from the papers you cite.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=india+worker+protests+site%3Anytim...
I didn't see the New York miner protests in the NYT in a quick search, but I lack search terms and time. Do you mean the protests in support of Alabama miners?
I'm not saying that they don't miss stories and can't improve, a lot, but I think attacking journalism is trendy and normalized, and much of it is BS.
I am talking about the 2020 general strike(s) (trade unions estimate 250 million people joined, though others push for much smaller numbers): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_general_strike_of_2020.
I have not found a single article about this in the NYT, BBC, Washington Post. The Guardian in the UK did cover these.
> Do you mean the protests in support of Alabama miners?
Yes, I mixed things up a bit. I have not been able to find an article about either the strike, nor the NYC protests about it. Rather amusingly, looking for UMWA or Alabama miner strikes, there are several articles about this, from ~1900s.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Alabama+miner+strike+site%3Anytime...
The main point I was making is that there is systematic bias on certain topics - especially workers' rights - in mainstream publications. There are other such topics as well, usually to do with the nitty gritty of US imperialism.
I wish all the critics would compare notes.
The claim is not necessarily that they ignore essential topics, so much as that they present a biased narrative of the world, even in the facts that they chose to cover at all - one biased against workers and against America's (perceived) enemies.
The people who accuse the NY Times of being biased towards liberals or progressives often forget how pro-war they were for example, how friendly they are to the military and security apparatus in general etc.
What is that based on?
> 90+% of their journalists are self-proclaimed liberals this should be immediately obvious
People can do their jobs without injecting their political opinions. I see that every day.
Yes, but ...
> I'm not saying to disregard those sources as illegitimate, but take them with a grain of salt
we agree.
You ever read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent[1]? If you can't bring yourself to read the book, he made a film about it too [2]. But the book has hundreds of examples (well sourced) of why you should probably rethink that.
1. https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuwmWnphqII
I'm mostly responding to attacks on the NYT from the right; it's interesting to think about it to a great extent. My first impression is that the NYT has broken from the 'consent manufacturing' apparatus, which is why so many 'moderates' attack it.
Since time at school is zero sum, every political victory that results in a new pet topic being taught will inevitably shrink core education.
Maybe this trend helps explain events like this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.oregonlive.com/politics/202...
Most of the first graders I know can read, it can be hard to fathom how you make it 12 years without knowing that…
My wife (who went to the same school district) and I both recall situations where politics were in the classroom. I recall in grade school with vivid detail my teacher saying “anyone who voted for bush is an idiot” and kids in the class becoming upset and the teacher doubling down. My entire time at school (through college) conservatives were demonized. Quite literally, I watched teachers call them evil. Anyone who spoke out would get punished. You could see the unequal treatment.
Conservatives are against equality, their racists, they cut education budgets, etc. when have any one here seen positive discussion about conservatives in your lives? think about it.
Just last year, during the pandemic, my wife’s younger brother was doing a zoom class behind me. His teacher was telling the students in home economics that “we need to reduce taxes or give universal income to black people”. She went on and on about inequity and how whites were evil.
I’m sure some of you believe I’m being hyperbolic, but here’s a near by school district:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/06/critical-race-theory-i...
This will be just a further weapon to indoctrinate and marginalize. People I know in the younger generations (in their 20s) who are conservatives are scared to speak and have been for years.
Now let’s consider something they may teach.. are they going to teach to check citations? I want you to open CNN or MSNBC right now, look at a few articles and check the citations. You’ll see why this is a problem.
I never encountered anything like it or met anyone who did. My teachers always taught us to think critically; they didn't care what the topic was or what our conclusions were; it was about learning to think. Is there any research, such as a survey, of student experiences of political speech by teachers?
I'm sure we can find a few examples of anything, but we also all know well that there's a political group that is trying to denigrate and politicize every institution, from the media to schools to the FBI to the courts to scientists, etc. by saying they are biased toward liberals. Repeating its claims doesn't help; if we are going to think critically about it, and we should, we need some credible evidence.
isn’t the classic argument that being black in America is awful and whites can’t understand because they aren’t marginalized? I actually agree to an extent, but only so far as people don’t realize how it feels to be on the outside, unless that’s at there or have experienced it.
That being said, there’s a long list I can cite. Differing world views lead to dramatically different understandings in even interpretation.
An excellent example, my friend and I in school had to do an essay on the impacts of global warming. We chose the impact on animal populations in the Arctic, as there was a news article about some poor starving polar bears. Turns out (at the time) the population of polar bears and other animals was booming (while a few were decreasing). We showed some graphs, we were surprised about this honestly. We failed because “we didn’t show the impact of global warming” - seriously, I don’t have evidence, but it’s an ideological world view that teachers push.
In my AP government class in high school it was so bad the students would scream at the teacher. He had to regularly remove and suspend kids for getting aggressive at what they were being taught. Believe it or not, idk It was a personal experience.
> I'm sure we can find a few examples of anything, but we also all know well that there's a political group that is trying to denigrate and politicize every institution, from the media to schools to the FBI to the courts to scientists, etc. by saying they are biased toward liberals. Repeating its claims doesn't help; if we are going to think critically about it, and we should, we need some credible evidence.
I linked a lawsuit. You can also request the ciriculum from school districts you live in. You can also attend school board meetings. I urge you to do so and see for yourself.
Conservatives aren't demonized they are just disliked because of their political party affiliation and the actions of their elected representatives. I like conservatives, I would even say I love them, but I think they have moronic brain-dead opinions especially on things like CRT that they don't understand.
As I’m sure you’re aware, CRT discusses implicit bias and how to mitigate.. perhaps apply it outside of race?
I haven't noticed this at all. The only time I've seen widespread silence from my conservative friends & family is after January 6th of this year. Could just be my circle, but almost all of them have gone radio silent, nothing at all to say any more. But before that they were definitely anything but quiet.
I see a similar outcome among adults, but these are adults who I know were raised to be skeptical (in the sense of science or critical thought), to think independently and critically, to look for bias in themselves and others, and to distrust power. I know they thought that way for most of their lives.
And now they accept things that have a paper thin veneer of truth and deep flaws, things that they would have easily penetrated just 5-10 years ago. If I examine it with the tools we've used our entire lives, conversations we've had many times in the past, I find myself beyond the pale, unwanted in the conversation.
Why? I don't know. I haven't before lived through mass insanity and mob psychology though I know it's happened, such as in Nazi Germany and arguably the Soviet Union. What are they doing? One thing I've noticed is that the 'reactionary' movement (I don't know another name - it's amazing that it's unnamed even at this date) first attacked postmodernism (while continuing to embrace its skepticism where it serves them), and as people were swept along and embraced that, they unilaterally disarmed themselves against the threats of personality cults, mob psychology, and other mass delusion.
But why? My impression is that ruining their game, as if we were playing Monopoly and I was seriously questioning the economics of it. But my real question is, how could they embrace it? How could they make such an obviously grievous error that will destroy their lives, their relationships (the poison affects all their behavior and thinking, not just about politics), communities, country, and world?
My opinions having weight
Followed by being able to afford multiple appeals courts (which also suggests my opinions match the reality I perceive, more than the generally assumed reality)
Followed by people assuming I'm part of a lizard race masquerading as human, thats when you know you've made it by every metric.
The first one has had various rungs, from casual conversation, to product managers agreeing without even playing devil's advocate, to board rooms. But being amplified across broad populations is even better. Being on this path, I can see how a lot of the population is susceptible. Its not really just about critical thinking or having been a critical thinker in one field before, its just degrees of susceptibility where certain formats of ideas occupy open registers in people's minds.
A tasp is a device that stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain. This rapidly leads to addiction and enslavement of the person(s) the tasp is used on.
We’re very easily controlled, and so many of us don’t even realize it.
https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycomme...
Social media preys on the most primal parts of your brain. The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions - it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage.
In fact, when my mother got her masters of library science, I was suprised at how much of the curriculum was basically 101-level comp sci- databases, Unix, basic programming, Internet tech, etc. Being a school librarian is basically about Internet and news trust, maker tech, and research skills, rather than books and literacy.
News outlets fights amongst other news outlets to get the most attention and clicks.
Surely if you teach kids a recipe on how to spot questionnable sources, these sources will adapt to look legitimate.
I guess we shouldn’t patch security holes in any software, either. Attackers will just spend increasing amounts of effort to find new ones. It’s not worth developing vaccines for any diseases, either. They’ll just adapt. Why lock your car or your house? Determined people can pick the lock, or just break a window.
There is absolutely no benefit to be found in raising the bar so that the stupidest, low-effort attacks no longer work. None at all.
I think my concern here is that this course would give the students a false sense of safety since they now have a recipe they can apply to "filter out the junk" making them blind the next evolution.
I also don't think your analogies fully grasp the matter (alt ought they are really good examples of "races to the bottom").
A more relevant analogy would be akin too: "Should we teach students about known vulnerabilities when attackers keep discovering new ones?".
To that my answer is, I'm not sure. There are a lot of vulnerabilities, and going over each known one would take a considerable amount of time. Perhaps spending more time learning other facets of software development would be a better a better use of time.
The Democratic Republic of North Korea is in fact democracy. It says so in their name. The Ministry of Truth is also, in fact, a truthful organization. It is also clear in their name.
Okay. None of this is proof of anyone's opinion. But if you can accept that this is how many earnestly see the world, you don't have to psychoanalyze the comments here and come to a derogatory view of those writing them.
Yes, because one political party in particular has spent 40+ years working very hard to destroy trust in public institutions (you only mentioned private companies, but it's true in general for both). A media literate populace threatens that work. Their motivation for destroying trust isn't to replace it, but to make people think there is no truth, there is no way to determine right from wrong. There absolutely are ways to do these things, it just threatens their views and their power.
>But if you can accept that this is how many earnestly see the world, you don't have to psychoanalyze the comments here and come to a derogatory view of those writing them.
This is why I want media and information literacy to be more widespread, so the general public can understand what is happening and how things have changed since the days of Walter Kronkite. It's why I want education in all subjects to be more widespread and why people arguing against this do not.
That sounds fantastic. What is known about, and what are your experiences with, the outcomes? After class? 1 year later? 5 years later? 20 years later?
This should be the top post, something we can learn from. Thank you.
It was explained to us in simple terms that everyone's experience with the world is unique. As such, there is no such thing as unbiased sources and we should always consume news critically. They were simpler times. The most political it got was when my teacher brought in the 3 main newspapers in our area and candidly shared with the class how they were stereotyped in their political editorial leanings. For Americans, think of it like sharing this statement: "Fox News leans toward Republican policies. The New York Times leans toward Democrat policies. USA Today is somewhere in between."
There wasn't any discussion of whether these newspapers were accurate or inaccurate. Fact checks weren't rattled off to us about each source. Rather, the teacher kindly explained to us that it was impossible to be unbiased and we did exercises to critically interpret news sources and see how the same topic might be covered by multiple sources.
I'm going on a bit of an aside for the historical context in which I had these lessons for the next two paragraphs, so feel free to skip to the final paragraph.
In some ways while they were simpler times informationally, Canada was going through wilder times politically back then. There's an argument to be made that Canada as a country was more divided in the early 1990s than the US is today. Québec separation was a very real possibility during this time and actively being sought within our political system. This wasn't just the online pissing contests that some Americans have talking about California or Texas separating from the union. Separatist parties were elected both at Québec's provincial level and as the official opposition party in Canada [EDIT: for Americans unfamiliar with this concept, our Prime Minister and the ruling party had to spend the majority of their daily routine responding to attacks from separatists in the House of Commons and every day the news would have this front-and-centre].
For those too young to remember, the political turmoil culminated in a referendum in the province of Québec -- 50.58% to stay in Canada and 49.42% to become an independent country. The Canadian military had to strategically fly its CF-18s out of their Québec base to American ones in case the referendum passed lest they fall into a foreign nation's hands. Our Prime Minister was busy actively seeking the support of President Bill Clinton and shoring up our gold supplies while the would-be leader of an independent Québec had an official visit to France complete with red carpet and television crews to discuss what their relationship would be once Québec separated.
What's my point? I suppose just to give Americans who still believe in the core concept of the country, a bit of hope. As divided as things are today, they can quickly change. Furthermore, I believe that it is possible to teach these things so they have real merit and aren't just tools of the current political ruling party even in uncertain and highly divided times.
* with some minor exceptions like literal fascists who spam things with their bots or puppets.
But - warning: editorial - The System is intentional in creating this mindless mindset. Not to worry Big * has it covered. Don't think. Just follow contentional wisdom, follow the narrative.
Moi? I spend a fair amount of time reading / listening / watching for what isn't said. This forces me to duck the click bait, hyperbole, sensationalism, etc. So often there are obvious questions that are ignored. That's a tell. I'm also recommend becoming hypersensitive to language and words. When there are big sweeping phrases (e.g., "everybody...") it's another tell.
This just seems to be instilling propaganda from a young age.
--
" That can be as simple as opening a new tab and leaving the post to find more about the source of information. It appears to be effective. "
And then the article goes more depressing from there, it's not per se news literacy, but general information technology literacy.
Anyone can spin up a LAMP stack and run a web server, or a blog and post content, buy a $9 domain and put a portrait of someone who does not exist - and link it to some scientific or even hijack an accredited offical.
What then? You're going to teach students how a WHOIS works?
(Granted I knew about WHOIS since middle school, but 99% of students though and todays generation I'm sure don't even care how the Internet works outside..)
Even though the article spends most of the time talking about an example orthogonal to politics, it is clear that politics will be the main topic of this course. I have zero faith in the system to show the numerous examples of bad articles by the NYT, WP, NPR... anybody remembers the Covington kid?
The issue goes beyond self criticism of course. The state should not play a role in telling kids what they should or shouldn't read as a news source - because that's what will end up happen. I have zero faith that such class will actually engage in fruitful debates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_...
The bill, the classroom experience, the examples are all about tools and heuristics to evaluate ANY news source.
Strawman argument...
I highly recommend it - teenagers, students, adults - it's for everyone!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI&feature=youtu.be
Description: dozens/hundreds of newscasters reading the exact same script.
Your mind is built for empathy and understanding the sort of ways that an individual might lie or deceive you, and what might corrupt them. Institutions are like alien structures, which have their own mechanisms for corruption, which are far less intuitive, and much easier to hide behind layers of arbitrary bureaucracy and methodology.
Ultimately, you cannot show a source is reliable, but you can show if one isn't. Sources that are up front about their biases and publicly admit errors get bonus points. Trust individuals, not institutions if for no other reason than because personal bias is the only form that you can intuit.