Coalition emerging to fight fake news
Concerns are growing about whether our society is doing enough to identify and reject the proliferation of false information masquerading as news online.
There is particular concern about the ability of schoolchildren to recognize the difference between that which is meant to mislead them and that which is real, reliable news.
A recent Associated Press story pointed out that alarmed lawmakers in some states are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction.
I was part of a panel discussion on this topic at last week’s Columbus Metropolitan Club luncheon when Columbus City Schools board member Eric Brown suggested the same thing — that schools should be doing more to teach students how to be discerning news consumers.
The big question, of course, is how do we accomplish this? And not just for schoolchildren, but for everyone? All of us in the digital age are bombarded with ads, blog posts, tweets and Facebook posts that look to be legitimate.
After the panel discussion, Patricia Williamsen, executive director of Ohio Humanities, told me that the council had received a grant that will help it raise awareness about the need for media literacy.
“We’ve watched the elections and the whole culture of incivility and misinformation spin out over the past two years,” she said, and it has led to heartache and discord — even death in the case of Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman protesting a hate group was run down by a car driven by a white supremacist from Ohio.
“We’re not really grappling with the concept of where
this information is coming from,” Williamsen said. “And more disturbing is that the majority of Americans don’t have the tools to evaluate the information they are receiving on social media, on websites and 24-hour news sites.”
We know that unscrupulous people are making up stories for fun, for profit or for nefarious purposes. Some of it is political. Some of it is simply designed to play to emotions or stereotypes and sow distrust and hate that lead to division.
I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but the future of our democracy depends on an informed citizenry. And being wellinformed takes more work now than ever, because there are so many sources of information and some of them are spreading garbage.
Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public schools to do more to teach media-literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy, according to The Associated Press story by Ryan J. Foley.
It’s important to note that the effort has been bipartisan, but it has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico.
Several more states are expected to consider similar bills this year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii.
“I don’t think it’s a partisan issue to appreciate the importance of good information and the teaching of tools for navigating the information environment,” said Hans Zeiger in the AP story. Zeiger is a Republican state senator in Washington who cosponsored a bill that passed in his state earlier this year. “There is such a thing as an objective source versus other kinds of sources, and that’s an appropriate thing for schools to be teaching.”
Advocates say the K-12 curriculum has not kept pace with rapid changes in technology. Studies show many children spend hours every day online, but struggle to comprehend the content that comes at them.
“Five years ago, it was difficult to get people to understand what we were doing and what we wanted to see happen in education and the skills students needed to learn,” Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education told AP. “Now there is no question about the vitalness of this in classrooms.”
A study published last year by Stanford University researchers also brought the issue into focus. It warned that students from middle school to college were “easily duped” and ill-equipped to use reason with online information.
One way to avoid being duped is to consider taking the “Pro-Truth Pledge” put forth by my fellow panelist last week, Ohio State University professor Gleb Tsipursky. He encourages us to share only truth by factchecking, providing balance, citing sources and distinguishing between fact and opinion. You can find more about it at www. ProTruthPledge.org.
In Ohio, organizations such as the Columbus Metropolitan Club, Ohio Humanities and The Dispatch see the need to address this issue and are doing so in their own ways. We all want to do more, however, and we’re looking for partners in this cause. I hope you’ll join the effort to make sure all of us are discerning readers and well-informed.