#378 – Information and News Literacy, with Brittney Smith

In this episode, Brittney Smith from the News Literacy Project discusses the importance of news and information literacy in today’s digital age. She emphasizes the need for students to critically evaluate the credibility of information and understand the role of journalism in the information sharing process. Brittney highlights strategies like pausing before sharing, lateral reading, and training social media algorithms to filter credible content. She also discusses the differences between misinformation and disinformation, as well as the impact of artificial intelligence on news literacy. The News Literacy Project offers various free resources, including their Checkology virtual classroom, The SIFT educator newsletter, and RumorGuard platform, to help educators effectively teach these skills.

News literacy is the ability to determine the credibility of news and other information and to recognize the standards of fact-based journalism to know what to trust, share and act on.

News Literacy Project

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• Become Information and Media Literate (article collection)
• The News Literacy Project, with Brittney Smith (podcast episode)
• Media Literacy, with Dr. Federica Fornaciari (podcast episode)
• A Media Literacy Toolkit for Election Season (article)
• The News Literacy Project (article)

Resources to Support Critical Literacy Skills

In today’s digital world, where misinformation spreads faster than ever, critical news literacy skills have become essential for students. The ability to assess credibility, recognize misinformation, and engage thoughtfully with news is a foundational skill—not only for academic success but for informed citizenship. Organizations like the News Literacy Project are working to provide educators with the tools they need to equip students with these critical thinking skills.

Our guest, Brittney Smith, shares many practical strategies and free resources that can help educators effectively teach news literacy. These resources offer educators hands-on ways to integrate news literacy into their teaching. Whether you’re looking to help students pause before sharing emotionally charged content, train their social media feeds to generate balanced perspectives, or bring a journalist into your classroom, this episode is packed with insights and actionable resources. Here are a few highlights from the episode:

• About Our Guest: Brittney Smith is the Senior Manager of District Partnerships – East for the News Literacy Project. She’s a former science educator, having taught biology, anatomy, and physiology in Cincinnati, Ohio. In her current role at the News Literacy Project, she facilitates onboarding, training, and webinars for teachers.
• The News Literacy Project (NLP): NLP is a national education nonprofit that is also very committed to nonpartisanship. They create resources for educators to teach their students the skills needed to be news literate. They also partner with districts and state organizations to help build programs geared toward making sure that students are news literate upon graduating high school.
• The Importance of News Literacy: Brittney explains, “There are many different types of literacies, and they all kind of overlap. And of course, this is broader than just news literacy, but our focus is news literacy itself, and that is the ability to determine the credibility of sources . . . and recognize standards-based journalism.” She adds, “You really have to start with news literacy before you can move on to the other types of literacy because you have to be able to assess the credibility of information before you decide what to do with that information.”
• Information vs. News Literacy: Brittney shares, “Information literacy is aligned with library sciences, and it’s about helping students learn to find, and evaluate, and use information, while news literacy is focused on understanding the role that credible information and a free press play in both their lives and in the life of our democracy.” This includes learning strategies that can be used to assess the credibility of online information.
• Favorite Strategy: Brittney’s favorite information literacy strategy is to pause and slow down when you encounter information that makes you feel in any way emotional, whether that is surprise, fear, anger, or even humor. When consumers react emotionally, they often bypass the critical thinking process. Brittney says, “My best tip is to always tell people to slow down and engage some of those critical thinking skills.”
• Lateral Reading: Another news literacy strategy is lateral reading. This involves cross-referencing information with other sources covering the same topic. Does the message stay the same across different platforms and sources, or do you notice differences? Any differences should be studied more carefully.
• Social Media Algorithms: Brittney says that students can also work on training their social media algorithms to give them more well-rounded content. She explains, “You shape your algorithm, but your algorithm also shapes you.” She adds, “By following and interacting with accounts that are sharing credible information—or at least are credible news sources that are going to let you know when they’ve messed up and they need to retract the story—I can kind of keep the nonsense out because if I’m not engaging with it, then the algorithm is not going to suggest it to me, or at least not as frequently.”
• Make It Real: Educators should strive to use real examples of misinformation that they’re seeing on social media platforms. You can find these types of resources at NLP. Brittney explains, “We use lots of real-life examples of viral rumors, especially in our RumorGuard platform and in our Checkology lessons.”
• Misinformation vs. Disinformation: “I would say that the biggest difference between the two is in terms of intent to deceive,” says Brittney. “So, the disinformation is going to be those misleading posts that are designed to trick you. . . . But then, there are also people who are encountering information like you and me, and they want to share it with their social networks and the people that they care about, but sometimes, they don’t check to make sure that it’s credible.” In these instances, people do not have ill intent, but the information they share is still considered misinformation because it is false. Brittney sums it up, saying, “Disinformation lives under the misinformation umbrella, so it’s all kind of misinformation, but disinformation is specific to that [which] is designed to deceive.”
• CARES: In their free RumorGuard resource, NLP examines viral rumors and debunks them based on five factors: claim, authenticity, reasoning, evidence, and source. Spelled out, this forms the acronym CARES. Brittney points out, “We’re not just saying, ‘Oh, this is false.’ We’re saying, ‘Here’s why this isn’t true, and here is the process that we used for determining that this is not credible.’”
• Impact of AI: Brittney says, “AI has also made it easier than ever to create and fake content, and it’s getting better every day. And so, you really have to rely on your news literacy training. You have to be a healthy skeptic.”
• Student Use of AI: “Have kids use AI to tell you about something that you know really well or that they know really well,” Brittney says. “And then, kind of evaluate that information. It can really help underscore that AI sometimes presents false information with great credibility.”
• Seven Standards: There are seven standards of quality journalism that journalists learn to follow when they are engaged in their training. These are emphasized at NLP. They include concepts such as using multiple credible sources, using relevant facts and details, avoiding bias, presenting facts in a necessary context, and offering documentation. Brittney adds, “And then, you want to look for journalists to be fair. They’re respecting their sources, respecting their subjects, [and] sharing multiple viewpoints, which also goes along with balance.”
• NLP Resources: There are many free resources available on the News Literacy Project website. Two of those include Checkology and Newsroom to Classroom Visits. The Newsroom to Classroom program allows you to bring a practicing journalist into your classroom, either virtually or in person, to interact with your students as part of a lesson. The website also includes a bundle of six popular infographics, as well as The Sift, which is a free, weekly educator newsletter.
• Infographic: Brittney highlights NLP’s newest infographic about detecting tricks of context. She says, “It is definitely a wonderful resource for you to use to help your students learn to look out for four common tricks of context: false context, misrepresentation, stolen satire—which is a big problem on social media—and selective edits.”
• District Fellowship Program: NLP is sponsoring a district fellowship program. Recipient districts work with NLP staff over 3 years to design and implement district-wide plans to strengthen news literacy. Brittney adds, “This is a paid opportunity, $10,000 per year, so $30,000 total goes to that district to help them with that plan, and it includes support like professional learning guidance with your curriculum.” Applications are available on the NLP website at newslit.org/district-fellowship.