#402 – News Literacy in America: A Teen Study, with Kim Bowman and Peter Adams

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What is the News Literacy Project?
• What are NLP’s five learning standards for news literacy?
• What are teens’ attitudes toward media literacy?
• According to the survey results, what are some of teens’ best news literacy skills?
• According to the survey results, what are areas of concern regarding teen news literacy skills?
• Why is teaching news literacy important?
• How can you begin addressing news literacy in your classroom?

• The News Literacy Project (official website)
• The Sift (News Literacy Project)
• Checkology (News Literacy Project)
• Newsroom to Classroom Visits (News Literacy Project)
• Resource Library (News Literacy Project)
• Daily Do Now Slides (News Literacy Project)

#402 News Literacy in America: A Teen Study, with Kim Bowman and Peter Adams

AVID Open Access
56 min

Keywords

News literacy, media literacy, teen study, civic empowerment, information landscape, critical thinking, social media, AI generative technology, news media, educational resources, curriculum integration, nonpartisan education, student engagement, misinformation.

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Kim Bowman 0:00
There’s an expectation, I think, that teens have of wanting to see media literacy in schools, but not getting that yet.

Peter Adams 0:07
You know, I really see this as something that students have a right to, and it’s really a big key to their civic empowerment and civic agency in an increasingly digital world.

Paul Beckermann 0:22
The topic for today’s podcast is news literacy in America, a teen study with Kim Bowman and Peter Adams. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:42
Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:53
I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:54
And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and we’re

Paul Beckermann 0:59
here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:03
Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:07
Our quote for today is from the News Literacy Project in their summary of “News Literacy in America: A Study of Teen Information Attitudes, Habits and Skills, 2024.” They write, “Teens want media literacy instruction included in their education. An overwhelming majority of teens, 94%, say that schools should be required to teach media literacy.”

All right, Michelle, I’ll let you kick it off today. What are you thinking about that?

Michelle Magallanez 1:34
Well, that quote really hits home. When 94% of teens are saying that media literacy should be a required part of their education, they’re not just asking for another class. They’re asking for tools to navigate the world they’re growing up in. They’re living in an information-rich and often misinformation-saturated environment—social media, AI-generated content, deepfakes, viral videos. This is their reality. Media literacy isn’t just about spotting fake news anymore. It’s about critical thinking, source evaluation, understanding algorithms, and even knowing when to step away to preserve your own mental health.

Paul Beckermann 2:16
Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, I’ve taught teens long enough to know that they’re not that quick to step up and say, “I want to learn about this.” You know, if they’re asking for something, they really mean it. Unfortunately, I think there’s probably a little bit of a trend in education right now to really slide back toward the basics of reading and math and things like that, and it tends to push topics like this into the margins. I really hope that we can reevaluate that and put a little bit more emphasis on media and news literacy, because personally, I’d argue that’s one of the most important skills our students are going to walk away with in this—like you said—information-saturated world that they’re in. If they can’t navigate that, it’s going to be really tough.

And on that note, I’m really excited to have our two guests today, because they have some insights into this study, and they’re going to share with us. We’re excited to welcome Kim Bowman and Peter Adams to the show today. Kim is the Senior Manager of Research at the News Literacy Project, and Peter Adams is the Senior Vice President of Research and Design at the News Literacy Project. Welcome, Kim and Peter.

Kim Bowman 3:24
Thank you so much for having us.

Peter Adams 3:24
It’s great to be with you here.

Paul Beckermann 3:25
Our pleasure. You want to each take a moment and introduce yourselves to our listeners?

Kim Bowman 3:30
Sure. My name is Kim Bowman, and I work with Peter on all things research at the News Literacy Project. I work on projects like the survey study that we’re going to talk about today, and I also do things like collecting user research, which puts me in touch with a lot of teachers in a lot of different classroom contexts, so that I can learn more about what their news literacy needs and wants are. I’m a former middle school social studies teacher myself from Richmond, Virginia, so I know how hard it can really be to find that right example, that just-right lesson plan. And I love that part of my job where I get to connect with educators and listen and learn about how we can help meet the moment and meet their classroom needs with the content that we’re making at the News Literacy Project, which is all free.

Paul Beckermann 4:21
Awesome. How about you, Peter?

Peter Adams 4:23
Great, yeah. I’m Peter Adams. I get to lead a team of very talented folks that work on both research and our curriculum development and professional learning programs at the News Literacy Project, overseeing our weekly email newsletter for educators that we call The Sift, our website that curates examples of viral misinformation and sort of distills what students can learn from them, called Rumor Guard. So I get to work with a lot of talented former educators and journalists on this team, and it’s a lot of fun. And as Kim mentioned, an important mission.

I’m also a former classroom educator, though I’ve been with NLP now for more than 15 years. So I’ve been with NLP for quite some time and watched the organization grow as I think our mission has just grown in importance. And so, you know, I really see this as something that students have a right to, and it’s really a big key to their civic empowerment and civic agency in an increasingly digital world.

Paul Beckermann 5:24
For sure. Fifteen years. How long has the News Literacy Project been around?

Peter Adams 5:28
About that long.

Peter Adams 5:29
About 15 years and some months. So, you know, I came in in the first year of NLP’s existence.

Paul Beckermann 5:36
Awesome. That’s amazing. And you set us up perfectly to talk about what you and your team have done. You conducted a survey that’s called “News Literacy in America: A Survey of Teen Information Attitudes, Habits and Skills.” And I think a lot of parents and teachers want to know, you know, what is on my kid’s mind? So can you give us a high-level overview of what this survey is, the intent of what you were looking to accomplish, and how you conducted it?

Kim Bowman 6:07
Sure. We put together a 37-question survey early last year, and our goal was to learn about how teens think about, experience, and engage with today’s information landscape. We really wanted to assess the state of news literacy education in America so that we can better serve their news literacy needs. So when our questionnaire was set, we engaged SSRS, an independent research company, to conduct a nationally representative survey of 1,110 teens, ages 13 to 18, and that was in May of 2024. So that’s when the data was collected that we’ll be talking about today. So it’s always helpful to keep that timeline context in mind, because some things can update pretty quickly, like artificial intelligence. So we just want to keep that date in mind.

And when the results came in, we shared them out by breaking them into NLP’s five news literacy standards, so that we could get a sense of how teens were doing when it comes to those benchmarks that we have. And I know we’re going to dive into different topics today, so I’ll stop there for now.

Paul Beckermann 7:23
All right. Well, let’s dig into some of the findings. What did the survey uncover about student attitudes about media literacy?

Kim Bowman 7:31
Yeah, I think this goes back to the quote that you had at the top of the episode, which I love that you plucked out. This data point that we have: 94% of teens said that they support a media literacy requirement in schools. And while I did anticipate that we’d find some support among teens, I was pretty surprised that it was this overwhelming amount of support, which to me, knowing how young people and teenagers in schools know better than anyone how many graduation requirements they have, how many standards, how many tests that they’re going to take—for them to say that they are welcoming yet another requirement to their already overfull plate is, I think, a really big endorsement. It really shows how valuable they think the news literacy knowledge and skill sets are for their everyday lives. It’s something that I think they know is going to serve them really well, and so it’s something they really want to see added to their curriculum.

And it stands in stark contrast to another data point that we found with media literacy, that only 39% of teens said that any of their classes included any media literacy instruction during the 2023-2024 school year. So just to reiterate, our question was, “Have any of your classes at school this year included any media literacy instruction?” So it could be just one lesson that entire year, and they could have said yes to this question, but only 39% were able to confirm that yes, they had had any media literacy instruction. So there’s an expectation, I think, that teens have of wanting to see media literacy in schools, but not getting that yet. And so we want to see that gap closed.

Paul Beckermann 9:28
Do you have any insights as to why that gap might actually be existing?

Kim Bowman 9:33
I think one of them has to do with the policy landscape.

Peter Adams 9:39
The legislative landscape is made up of states that have issued or passed a resolution to require media literacy education or to endorse it, or require it to be studied, or for resources for educators to be collected. I think it’s just a handful of states that have required media literacy education.

Kim Bowman 10:01
One of the areas that I think can be really helpful in helping elevate news literacy is just defining the field. There’s lots of different terms that you might hear that are related to news literacy, like information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy. And these are fields that are all related to one another. And defining the field, I think, is a really helpful way to help an understanding, a broader understanding of what the skill set looks like, what the knowledge looks like, what the concepts look like when you’re talking about news literacy.

One of the ways that we do that at News Literacy Project is by creating things like our Framework for Teaching News Literacy, our grade band expectations, and our five standards that I mentioned earlier to define exactly what we’re looking for when it comes to news literacy learning, news literacy benchmarks.

Paul Beckermann 10:57
Do you want to list what those five standards are? I don’t know that we got those.

Kim Bowman 11:01
Sure. Our first standard has to do with information types, so students distinguish news from other types of information and can recognize both traditional and non-traditional advertisements.

The second standard is about free press. Students acknowledge the importance of the First Amendment in American democracy and a free press to an informed public.

The third standard is about credibility. Students understand why professional and ethical standards are necessary to produce quality journalism, and they can apply understanding of those standards to discern credible information and sources for themselves.

The fourth standard is verify, analyze, and evaluate. Students demonstrate increased critical habits of mind, including effective verification skills and the ability to detect misinformation and faulty evidence.

And standard five is about citizenship. Students express and exercise civic responsibility by seeking, sharing, and producing credible information as effective participants in a democracy.

Michelle Magallanez 12:05
I love that. And then, given how the survey was structured, how did you help teens articulate the gap they feel in their news literacy knowledge? What are they struggling with that they really want more help with in the classroom to develop the skills they need to critically evaluate the information landscape?

Kim Bowman 12:26
Yeah, I think one of the areas that stood out to me where teens were struggling a bit had to do with that first standard of information zoning. Zoning information is all about distinguishing between information types like news, opinion, advertisements, entertainment. And what we did is we put together a series of three questions where we asked them to distinguish between different types of information. And across all three of those questions, only 18% of teens were able to correctly answer all three.

And to give you a sense of the types of questions we asked here, one of them had an article with the label “brand studios” and “content from Safeway,” which are labels that would signify it’s an advertisement, a branded piece of content. And only 50%—half of teens—were correctly able to identify that article as an advertisement in the major news outlet.

The second question had to do with an op-ed piece with the label “commentary” in the title or in the headline, and again, only about half of teens accurately identified this article as an opinion.

And then the last question was of Google search results for “best headphones,” and 59% of teens were able to correctly identify that the label of “sponsored” next to the options that were in that search result indicated that they were paid to be there in the Google search results, so partially an advertisement.

Michelle Magallanez 14:00
That’s quite compelling.

Kim Bowman 14:03
Exactly. My thoughts exactly. So another data point in there that was interesting to me is that we didn’t find any statistical significance when it came to older teens versus younger teens. So that meant older teens are not more likely to get those questions right, which to me tells me that it’s unlikely that just being exposed to more content is going to give you the ability to zone that information. It’s really something that seems really foundational, seems really straightforward, but it’s something that we need to be teaching—how to identify those different types of zones. It needs to be something that we are really making sure that teens know how to do and practice, especially in different contexts, because an advertisement in one location on social media, for example, can look very different from an advertisement on a news outlet website.

Peter Adams 14:59
Yeah, the whole sort of rationale for that first standard is that, you know, it’s so essential as a foundational piece for everyone to be able to distinguish between different kinds of information, especially in an information environment where everything is just referred to and presented to us as content. You know, if you think about your social media feed, or you think about a teen scrolling through TikTok, they may see posts from, you know, influencers, their friends, propagandists, wellness influencers who are selling sort of bunk products, and then a post from like, you know, ABC News or the Washington Post, all in a stream, right?

So if they’re not distinguishing at the point of consumption, like, “That’s to entertain me. This is an opinion. This is actually standards-based news. Oh, that’s an ad,” then they’re really, you know, kind of left vulnerable to being manipulated by some of the folks who aren’t producing information with the same kind of honesty and transparency that some other folks are.

Paul Beckermann 16:02
Yeah, and I was going to say, even in the news agencies, a lot of times now we’re seeing analysis or commentary as the lead story for the day on the website versions, which is fine—they’re calling it out—but if students aren’t paying attention to that and are reading it as, you know, straight news, there’s another layer.

Peter Adams 16:22
That’s another layer. You know, we’ve also seen some of the very popular, you know, media bias charts and ratings and ranking systems that are so popular for folks make the same mistake. They fold opinion content in with straight news content in some of these ratings. So in some of the collections of pieces that they are rating for bias, it really affects how you understand the enterprise of journalism, how you understand a particular news organization. You know, if you see a column and you think, “Oh, that’s biased,” you know, it’s kind of the point. It’s supposed to be making an argument. It’s supposed to be taking a position. That’s very different than a straight or hard news report, you know, from that same organization.

So just helping students add that level of nuance to their judgment, so that they can, you know, so they can make sound decisions on their own to stay informed.

Paul Beckermann 17:15
For sure. Let’s dig a little deeper into the free press piece of things. What did the survey show that teens’ attitudes are toward journalists and those organizations that they work for?

Kim Bowman 17:27
We had three questions to gauge teen trust in news media, and the outcome of our trust scale was that most teens fell in the medium trust range or the low trust range when it came to their trust in news media. And the three questions that we asked—two of them had to do with news media bias, and one of them had to do with journalism standards.

So the first question asked whether teens thought that journalists take the standards of fairness and accuracy seriously in their work. And just over half of teens said that they did think they had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in journalists to take those standards seriously.

But when it came to news media bias questions, we saw a lot more distrusting responses. So the first bias question was, “Which of these statements comes closer to your view? Do news organizations try to minimize bias, or do they intentionally add bias to their coverage?” And the majority, 69%, said that they believe that news organizations intentionally add bias to their coverage and only present facts that support their own perspective.

The last question of the set of three asked, “Compared to other people who create content about current events, would you say that journalists tend to be more biased, less biased, or about the same?” And 80% of teens said that they believe that journalists are more or equally biased compared to other content creators. So there seems to be a lot of skepticism or maybe cynicism when it comes to how teens are viewing news media, and especially when it comes to the topic of news media bias.

Peter Adams 19:14
Yeah, I would agree. And I kind of think there is so much antipathy directed toward, quote, “the media” in popular discourse and in public discourse that teens, you know, no doubt have absorbed some of this. And so we saw, you know, quite a bit of that reflected in the findings that Kim just mentioned, not really distinguishing between, you know, a straight news report and anybody else online. So that speaks to that first standard again, where it’s all just kind of content and anything has an equal chance of being, you know, true or transparent or independent or trustworthy.

We also had a finding in the survey that 45% of teens said that professional journalists and the organizations they work for do more to harm democracy than protect it, which is alarming, right? I mean, the First Amendment protections, press protections provided under the First Amendment are there for a very good reason—for the press to be able to play a watchdog role, to hold powerful people to account, to hold government to account, and private interests, corporations. And this just really demonstrated sort of a lack of concern with that or a lack of appreciation for that role, which, again, I think, given some of the rhetoric today, might make sense. But I think it’s a warning shot for educators all across the country to really double down on helping students understand why press protections are baked into the First Amendment, why the Founding Fathers felt like that was such an important thing to protect, and the role that a free and independent press plays in democracy.

Michelle Magallanez 20:48
I mean, and given that context, given the level of cynicism and antipathy that teens have towards media outlets at the moment, I’m just curious, did you discover any information around their awareness of or interaction with conspiracy theories, especially given the cultural context that we’re living in the moment? How are they viewing that type of news and propaganda coming at them?

Kim Bowman 21:19
Yeah, we did find some pretty alarming findings when it comes to conspiracy theories. We were curious to hear from teens whether when they’re on social media, whether they see posts that spread or promote conspiracy theories while on their preferred social media platforms. And 80% of them said that they did see those types of posts. The frequency tended to vary. 20% said daily, 31% said weekly, and so on. But just the fact that 80% are getting conspiracy theory posts on their social media feeds is something that I don’t think we should ignore.

Conspiracy theories can be incredibly enticing. They’re designed to be engaging and activating those parts of our brains that like to make sense of things that might be really complicated. They provide sort of a more simple, straightforward understanding of something when there’s shades of gray. They can make things very black and white. When you’re feeling isolated and alone, they can give you community. So they really activate all these different parts of our psychology. They’re really appealing to us. And unless teens are aware of that and are prepared and have those defenses against conspiracy theories and the ways in which they sort of hook you and draw you in, I think we’re doing teens a real disservice to not really talk about that topic and how the psychology of conspiratorial thinking works.

We did ask teens, “What are some of the topics that they have seen when it comes to conspiracy theories on their social media feeds?” And we heard things, you know, like aliens exist, sort of like superstitions, kind of things like that. But we also heard ones that were a little more heading into that dangerous rabbit hole, might relate more to communities that have extremist ideologies. We heard things like the Earth is flat, the moon landing was a hoax, the world is ending. And when we asked whether they believe in any of the conspiracy theories they see on their social media feeds, 81% said that they believed one or more of them.

So for age 14, there is some research out there to suggest that that’s around when conspiracy theories tend to be really absorbing for teenagers and adolescents. So it’s something that we need to make sure that they are prepared to handle and have those defenses and the protections on how to recognize them and recognize that they’re trying to draw you in.

Peter Adams 24:06
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of our materials at the News Literacy Project about conspiracy theories try to help educators teach students why conspiracy theories are so enticing to people, why they’re psychologically soothing. I mean, they provide people with—they can be very complex and contorted theories, but at base, they’re very simple. The world has a secret group of evil people who are doing a thing, and you’re part of a special group that has caught on to this. So there’s a community aspect to it as well, and it gives people a sense of control, and that feels good, and it makes you feel special. And I think teens especially are vulnerable to that.

And I, you know, I would also add that those exposure numbers, while we were relieved that they didn’t believe, you know, 85% of everything they see—you know, they did reflect that there was some skepticism; they see much more than they believe—just that exposure has some pitfalls and perils for teens, right? If you see a claim over and over again, even if you dismiss it at first, you begin to think there’s at least some truth there, right? That there are conspiracies that are controlling things like the weather or political outcomes, that, you know, the government and news organizations are conspiring to mislead the public or distract the public from the real story over here.

So the more that rhetoric you hear, the more you sort of bake that into your understanding of how the world works. And, you know, again, I would argue that’s dramatically disempowering for teens, right? Civically disempowering for them as well. And, you know, Kim mentioned this, quite dangerous. A lot of the tropes and ideas and symbols involved in conspiratorial communities have roots in, you know, anti-Semitism or other extremist ideologies, and they may not be aware of that until they start to really get down into it, and then they get exposed to some hateful ideology as well.

Kim Bowman 25:53
Yeah, I was thinking back to when I was a kid and I pulled a library book on Bigfoot. It’s not like I had an algorithm then handing me something on something more dangerous, something that’s more extreme, whereas kids these days, that library book is a social media post, and that algorithm might send them in a very different direction after that first interest in a conspiracy theory. So I think it’s a different landscape, and it’s important to have that knowledge out there on how these types of theories work.

Paul Beckermann 26:28
You make a great point about where students are actually getting their information and how that’s sort of changing over time. Where are kids getting their news today, and are they actively trying to seek it out, or are they just running into it? Or what’s the access piece like?

Kim Bowman 26:45
Yeah, half of teens said that they keep up with news without really trying. We also called this “news finds me.” But there are 15% of teens that said they do actively seek out news to stay informed, and 36%—that said 36% that said that they don’t really keep up with the news.

One of the things that I always want to make sure I’m thinking about when we’re doing research is the limitations of research. And in this question, in writing up the results for it, it really had me thinking about that idea of actively consuming the news versus passively consuming the news, and what that looks like on social media. Because we do know that the number one place that teens said that they’re getting news is on social media.

And when I think about social media and news consumption, when I’m being active about it, maybe it’s me following journalists. Maybe it’s me following news outlets. Maybe it’s me liking and sharing news stories that I’m seeing in my feed. Training my algorithm seems like a very active part of news consumption with social media. But I also think that there’s this sort of passivity that you can sort of fall back on, like if you feel like your algorithm is doing a good job. If you followed enough news outlets and journalists, you might kind of step back and kind of let your algorithm take the wheel a little bit.

So thinking about it in terms of active and passive, I started to sort of question my own question of, like, if I’m on social media, what does that look like being active, being passive? Teens might have a very different relationship with how they think about being more active news consumers versus letting news find them in those spaces. So it’s just an area I think that would really benefit from further research. I’d love to read more about young people and how they get the news.

Peter Adams 28:44
Yeah, I totally agree, you know, with Kim, that there’s a lot more digging to be done around that, particularly around how students think about what counts as news. You know, I think a lot of surveys ask students, “Where do you get your news?” And they say, “On social media.” But we don’t know how many of those teens are actually following standards-based news organizations. And, you know, you can get credible information on social media, but you can also see a lot of people giving you hot takes, getting the facts wrong as they speculate or talk about current events and issues.

And so we know that, you know, the broader public and teens also, you know, have some squishiness in the way they think about news. They say, you know, “I get my news,” but that might mean just reading posts about people talking about newsworthy events, and that’s not the same thing as getting fact-based, standards-based news. And so we really try—that speaks back to that NLP standard one—of really helping students understand, like, not all information is created equal, and getting news to stay informed is a deliberate civic act that everybody needs to sort of bake into their media diet.

Michelle Magallanez 29:52
That’s fascinating. And sort of speaking of algorithms and how social media serves up information to people, I’m curious if you discovered anything about how students are using AI and how that is impacting their view of the world and how they interpret the information.

Kim Bowman 30:12
Yeah, artificial intelligence is constantly changing, so I want to just flag at the top here that our data is from last year, so I would love to see some updated stats on this. But here’s what we found last year. Most teens, it seems, don’t regularly use generative AI technologies. We heard from 55% of teens said that they use generative AI chatbots, but only 5% reported being daily users of those chatbots. And then when it comes to AI image generators, those numbers are even lower. 33% of teens use AI image generators, but only 2% report being daily users.

So when it comes to the narrative out there about young people’s relationships with school work and homework kind of being upended by AI technologies, as of last year, I don’t know that we were there yet. But it’s always changing, and so it could be different this year, and something I would love to see some new data on.

But when it comes to their skepticism of chatbots, we did see that half of teens are skeptical of chatbots producing accurate and fair information, which was heartening to see. At least half of teens have that skepticism already, because AI chatbots can hallucinate; they can make up information. And they kind of operate in the sense of like a really fancy, complicated autocomplete, just trying to anticipate what you want, which can produce all sorts of different results. So it was good to see that 50% of teens did have that skepticism.

Paul Beckermann 32:04
So I’m going to open it up here a little bit. Were there any other major revelations that you noticed as you were going through the data?

Kim Bowman 32:12
I think one of the biggest things that stood out to me was a trend that we were seeing over the course of the entire survey, which is that when we were looking at media literacy instruction associations—so those teens who said, “Yes, I have had some media literacy instruction in one or more of my classes,” versus the teens that said, “No, I did not”—we saw that exposure to media literacy instruction was associated with higher trust in news media, more frequent news consumption, and increased confidence in doing reverse image searches.

Teens who are on social media said they were more likely to fact-check social media content before liking, sharing, or posting, and they were more likely to engage in civic-minded activities such as pushing back against misinformation when they see or hear it. So to me, those findings are incredibly promising when it comes to the potential impact of media literacy instruction. Because again, the question we asked was not, “Did you have an entire semester of media literacy? Did you have a robust unit around this topic?” It was just, “Did at any point during this school year, did you happen to have any media literacy instruction?”

So if we’re already finding statistical significance between students who said yes and no to that with just that level of bar to cross, imagine what we would be able to do with an infrastructure designed to really deliver news literacy education in a robust way, with news literacy standards in all 50 states, news literacy teaching requirements, professional development to support educators feeling comfortable in how to teach these topics. I think it would be just transformative in how teens are able to handle these types of skills and concepts and knowledge.

Peter Adams 34:10
Agreed. And I think a related trend in the data is that students who actively seek out news show all sorts of benefits, right? I think a reduced susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking, a more accurate understanding of journalism and how it works, less cynicism. So the people who actually, the students who actually engage with standards-based news more and actively seek it out, demonstrate that they actually value it. You know, they were less likely to say that journalists intentionally add bias, for example. But students who generally don’t actively seek it out are sort of, I think, more vulnerable to some of the rhetoric that they hear—people sort of bashing the media recklessly, usually for personal gain.

So I would just, you know, sort of underscore that for your audience and for educators everywhere, there is a real benefit to getting exemplary journalism in front of students. I think way too often when people talk about or think about media literacy or news literacy, they think about criticizing news coverage and putting negative examples in front of teens and say, “Look at this terrible headline,” ignoring the fact that there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of headlines that were not terrible, that met the mark, that there were important investigations that do important things in your community, local newspapers. You know, there’s research that shows that when a local newspaper goes away, taxes go up, pollution goes up, corruption goes up, all sorts of costs that citizens bear go up in much higher, you know, proportion to the cost of buying your local newspaper.

And so giving students an understanding of that watchdog role, of what journalists do, and also holding up exemplary pieces of journalism that demonstrate things like independence and fairness and accountability that don’t ask you to sort of trust them on the facts—that they show you exactly where they got the information and you can check it yourself—is such an important part, and it can foster all sorts of interesting conversations and discussions in the classroom.

One quick plug: we have the weekly email newsletter I mentioned that’s called The Sift. It’s very popular among our educators. It is the sort of weekly rundown of the week in news literacy, and it includes everything from examples like that of exemplary journalism or debates in journalism over style, over how journalists should or shouldn’t use AI, over, you know, how they should or shouldn’t cover a specific issue, to examples of viral misinformation and press freedom issues as well. So I couldn’t recommend that too much to educators if they’re just getting started with news or media literacy or just want to get to know NLP. That’s a great starting point.

Paul Beckermann 36:50
I second that, and I get that in my inbox every week. Excellent.

Michelle Magallanez 36:55
Kind of thinking about everything we’ve discussed and what you’ve learned from this survey, what do you feel are the big—you’ve talked about the importance of—what does it look like? You see states consider having news literacy as part of their legislation, that they either have requirements. But I’m thinking more at sort of the more local level, at school sites. What do you feel are those implications? What can educators do to help pump the work you’re doing? And then what actions need to be taken to achieve the results that you’re hoping to see in the future?

Kim Bowman 37:31
Yeah, I think this study shows that there’s both a demand for news literacy education among teens and a need for news literacy education among them. And we don’t need to wait for the policy to catch up with what we’re doing at the classroom level. There’s lots of steps that educators can take right now to infuse their classroom curricula with news literacy education.

As a former social studies teacher, historical thinking skills come to mind to me as an area where a lot of what I was teaching with historical thinking skills about sources, about corroboration, those have a lot of overlap with news literacy skills and knowledge. So we can go into our curriculum right now and find those entry points for bringing in news literacy. And we have a great resource on our website, newslit.org, called the Framework for Teaching News Literacy and Grade Band Expectations for Teaching News Literacy that would be a great starting point to get those ideas for entry points in your curriculum. It’s a subject that can really cross over so many different subject areas, and so there’s just so many different opportunities to bring in that learning.

But I also would want to acknowledge that we do need that systemic infrastructure in place at the district and the state level to have those standards requirements, the teaching requirements, and the PD requirements to really support educators in this work. So also having that bipartisan legislation in all 50 states would be a great step as well.

Paul Beckermann 39:17
As a former media specialist myself, library media specialist, another resource you have in your school is that library media specialist. And they are oftentimes experts on this subject area, and they are probably dying to get in your classroom and work with your students. So reach out to those folks as well.

Peter Adams 39:33
Absolutely, or support you in your teaching and play that sort of role across the building. We’ve seen that happen, you know, time and again. And sadly, too many schools are now lacking a full-time media specialist, which is not a good trend in my view.

Yeah, I would echo a lot of what Kim said. I also think that the survey just sort of acts as a heat map and a road map for educators to home in on very, very specific skills. Distinguishing between branded content and news content is a fundamental skill. The examples that we have, you know, screenshots of, you can mimic and make on your own. You can go to basically any news organization that publishes both branded content and straight news content and create, you know, a two, three, four, five example slide deck and work through this with students. Help them understand, you know, why news organizations are under pressure to produce non-traditional ads and branded content, and then have a great ethical discussion about, you know, whether news organizations should publish this stuff. And, you know, help them understand sort of some of the financial pressure on news organizations. There’s all sorts of ways that you can go with that.

So yeah, I think overall, the structure of the survey can lead you into all sorts of content areas across STEM fields, English Language Arts, Social Studies and Civics. And so I would just encourage, you know, every educator to kind of find their toehold in there if they’re interested in the study, and then also sort of see our framework, which also has very specific grade band expectations linked into it that you can explore for your content area and your grade band.

Paul Beckermann 41:16
You both mentioned some very specific tools that teachers can use. So that’s a great segue into our toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 41:22
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 41:33
All right, it’s toolkit time. Michelle, I’m going to let you go first. What’s something you’d like to drop in for our listeners?

Michelle Magallanez 41:39
Well, just to reinforce the tool we were just talking about, because for me, I think integration—how to help teachers take various concepts and integrate them into their content area—and I love the idea of the Framework for Teaching News Literacy with Grade Band Expectations, so that if I’m an ELA teacher, STEM teacher, there are clear ideas for me to make it relevant within the context that I’m teaching, so that my students say, “Hey, if I’m learning computational thinking skills over here in STEM, there is a direct relationship to the fifth standard in news literacy.” So ta-da, what you’re learning is applicable across multiple content areas. Isn’t that great?

Paul Beckermann 42:19
That is great. And I’m going to drop in the News Literacy Project website, and the two of you can talk a little bit more about it if you want. But especially the Checkology Virtual Classroom—that is such a fantastic resource, and it’s free, and it’s a really great entry point for teachers to get their students into some very specific news literacy lessons. I’d strongly encourage you to check it out. And then if you want, we’ve got a couple past episodes of Unpacking Education with Brittany Smith from the News Literacy Project who came on and talked about some of those resources. So feel free to go back and check some of those out.

All right, so Kim and Peter, you get a chance to drop something in too. You can highlight something off your website or something else, totally up to you. What would you like to add?

Kim Bowman 43:04
I’ll build off of what you said and highlight two lessons in Checkology. I think a couple of the topics that we talked about today that can be especially tricky to talk about in the classroom are conspiratorial thinking and understanding news media bias. And we have two lessons in Checkology on both of those topics. One is called “Conspiratorial Thinking,” one is called “Understanding Bias.” And so if you’re not sure how to have those conversations in your classroom and you’d like a little bit more guidance on them, I think that would be a great place to start.

With the Understanding Bias lesson, you know, trust in news media is something that is a two-way street. And so journalists and news organizations need to be able to build up that trust by having consistent, high-quality reports and articles that they’re outputting. But news consumers, which include young people, also need to be able to identify when they’re seeing those high-quality reports and articles, when they’re seeing that journalists are upholding those standards of quality journalism. So what we can be doing is teaching those skills to identify: What are those zones of information? Is this a straight news article? What types of standards am I seeing in this? How do I find those standards? What do they look like in the different contexts? And so going into Checkology and checking out some of those lessons, I think, can give you a good sense of having a nuanced understanding of complicated topics like that.

Peter Adams 44:48
For sure. I think digging into that subject of bias—and I would just second what Kim talked about—is essential. I mean, you know, lots of people perceive news coverage in different ways. Our perceptions of news coverage are themselves incomplete and flawed. We have our biases too, and people tend to forget that. So that lesson is really important.

A couple of lessons or a couple of resources I wanted to lift up. One is another Checkology lesson that we launched this past fall, in the beginning of this school year, called “Introduction to Algorithms.” It is, I think, our funniest and most entertaining lesson to date, because it personifies algorithms and then a super cool version of our algo called Gen, which is generative AI. So there’s a whole chapter dedicated to generative AI. We know educators are struggling with how to approach that topic in the classroom, both in terms of chatbots and text generators, but also synthetic image and video generators. So it’s a really fun lesson to help students understand how search algorithms work, what the advantages and disadvantages and pitfalls are there, how to use them, you know, in a savvy, sound way. Suggestion algorithms—just to be aware of how algorithms steer them online—and then to get into the generative stuff is really exciting.

And then another resource that’s been super popular for us, also new this year, is our Daily Do Nows. These are linked into each issue of The Sift, but they also live on our resource library and on our website. These are, you know, just what it sounds like—five do nows that we add to this running slide deck every week. It’s a Google slide deck. They span our five standards, so you’ll get everything from differentiating between different kinds of information to press freedoms and First Amendment watchdog stuff, to the characteristics of credibility and the standards of quality journalism, to pieces about viral misinformation, or how to sort of synthesize all that and apply it as an active participant in democracy, which is our fifth standard. So those come out every single week, and we understand that not every educator can do a 30 or 45-minute, you know, Checkology lesson. And for those who just have time for a do now once a week or a couple times a month, we think that’s a great option as well.

Paul Beckermann 47:03
So again, this is all on the News Literacy Project website. And what’s the web address for that?

Peter Adams 47:08
So our main website is newslit.org, and that’s where you will find our resource library, Checkology. You can find a link to that at newslit.org, but Checkology lives at checkology.org. And then Rumor Guard is that website that has curated examples of viral misinformation that give you a quick distillation of the fact checks about that misinformation, but more importantly, flag for you what students can learn from that example. That lives at rumorguard.org.

We are taking steps to make sure all of our resources are brought together in a more searchable format. But for right now, you can head to newslit.org, click on Educators, and go from there. You’ll find links to Checkology, links to Rumor Guard, all the things.

Paul Beckermann 47:52
Awesome, and we’ll make sure we put links to those in our show notes as well.

Peter Adams 47:56
Absolutely. The News Literacy Project is also, you know, rigorously non-partisan. It’s just a vital value of ours as an organization. It also is just foundational to the field of news literacy. There is nothing partisan about the ability to find credible information. I know this is a big concern among educators. We live in almost an unprecedentedly polarized and divided political environment right now. This is on everyone’s mind. We are, you know, absolutely dedicated to non-partisanship as a principle. We bake it into everything we do. And again, you know, we see it as foundational to the field itself. So if something is overtly partisan, it’s not actually teaching news literacy. It’s doing something else in our view.

So, you know, we try very hard to engage the issues of the day, including political issues, rumors about political figures, but to do so in a way that is fair, that’s non-partisan, that is balanced across all of our resources. So I just wanted to get that out there so educators could sort of understand that going in and set their mind at ease on that front.

Paul Beckermann 49:01
All right, Michelle, you know what time it is.

Michelle Magallanez 49:02
Time for that one thing.

Transition Music 49:04
It is. It’s time for that one thing. Time for that one thing. It’s that one thing.

Michelle Magallanez 49:18
Okay, it’s going to be really hard to just give one thing in this episode, because it was such a rich conversation that is so timely given the era in which we live at the moment. But what I do want to really reiterate is what Peter had shared about educators getting a little nervous about what they can bring into their classroom, because so many eyes are looking at them. And I think bringing that awareness that news literacy and the work that you’re doing within your organization is non-partisan, and the objective is really helping students develop the skills that they need to be really rigorous and analytical thinkers, so that they can look at any piece of information, really unpack it in a meaningful way.

So that’s one thing I very much want to underscore, because no one should be afraid to bring this topic into the classroom, especially when—my one thing—students are asking for this. When they recognize that this is such an important topic, you’ve got to meet them where they’re at. And the fact that you have developed such fun and rigorous ways to engage them—I love the idea of Daily Do Nows, because we know with teens, they want to give back. They want to help their community. And if you’re giving them ideas of how to make actionable what they’ve learned, it’s only going to be a win for them. So congratulations. You guys are doing amazing work, and I’m just so excited to be a part of this conversation.

Paul Beckermann 50:51
Yeah, that’s great, Michelle. Totally agree. I’m going to reflect on something that was shared a little earlier about even just a little bit of news or media literacy during the year has this big impact. I mean, just a little bit. And these are our future adults that we’re shaping here. They’re going to—not very long in the future—they’re going to be out there, they’re going to be voting for people, they’re going to be making adult decisions. A little bit can go a long way. So I just encourage our teachers to do what you can, but try to do a little bit at least.

All right, Kim and Peter, we’re going to let you have a one thing too. What’s your final thought for the day?

Kim Bowman 51:33
I’ll just reiterate that I think part of what we can do right now is find those entry points in the curriculum and see what you’re already doing in the classroom. I know that there’s a million different things on everyone’s schedule each year with their curriculum and standards, but typically we can find those entry points that we’re already covering and bring this content in there. Teens know that this is important. They know that it applies to their everyday lives. They know that it’s something that is going to serve them really well, and we want to be rising to meet that expectation that they have of us. So I would encourage your listeners to crack open that curriculum and see where those entry points are.

Paul Beckermann 52:25
Awesome. Peter?

Peter Adams 52:25
Yeah, you know, I would just point out that I think the survey underscores this as well, that the information environment today is vast. It’s enormously complex, it’s overwhelming, it’s frustrating, it can be confusing. But when you layer in a sort of lack of news literacy, when you layer in cynicism and conspiratorial thinking, it actually, you know, makes it more confusing and overwhelming for teens. So that’s why I think we see that effect of some media literacy education.

Because if you’re cynical, if you think every content creator is secretly strategically manipulating things to achieve some secret ideological goal, you know, it seems impossible to know what you can believe. But if you help students understand how newsrooms, how standards-based legitimate newsrooms actually operate, why they do the things they do, if you invite journalists into your classroom virtually—which you can do through Checkology, by the way; we have a whole directory of volunteers—and actually talk to them about their work and what they do, some aspects of the information environment get simpler, right? Some aspects of judging credibility get simpler if you give them the tools to do so and to avoid those pitfalls and traps and rabbit holes that are out there, even as you help them dig into the stuff that’s genuinely complex, like all the different types of ads and advertisements and influencers with hashtag ad on their posts. That’s complex, and we need to help them do that. Conspiracy theories can be really complex. Algorithms and generative AI are complex but also empowering.

But I think there’s a way that, you know, the information environment is both more and less complex than a lot of people feel it is, and media literacy and news literacy are really the key to unlocking that for students.

Paul Beckermann 54:07
All right, well, you’ve both given us lots of keys for unlocking this. Really appreciate the insights that the survey has revealed for us, and you sharing those with us, and also the specific tools and strategies that are available at the newslit.org website that teachers can go out there and grab. Their free resources can really help empower you to empower your students. So thank you, both Kim and Peter, for being here. We really appreciate your time with us today.

Peter Adams 54:36
Thank you so much.

Kim Bowman 54:36
Thank you so much. Thanks.

Rena Clark 54:38
Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 54:41
We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 54:53
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education. And remember,

Rena Clark 54:59
go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 55:02
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 55:05
You make a difference.