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1. News Literacy teachers select a piece of news content like this Times article on climate change, for example. (The content should be appropriate for the students’ reading level.)

2. As students read the article, they highlight sources and the information attributed to them. They might use a blue pencil to mark the source’s name (e.g., Teresa Marks, director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality), and a green pencil to mark the information they provide (e.g., “This is not going to be the Armageddon that some people think”).

3. Then, they can determine how reliable each source is, and therefore the information attributed to her or him. Students can rate each source for reliability using the Imvain checklist (PDF).

4. The class can discuss which sources they think seem most reliable and why, and they can consider possible biases that sources might have, based on their job title or background. Then, armed with new insight gained from evidence analysis and source evaluation, they can discuss the complex issues raised in the article.

5. After practicing in the classroom, students might be challenged to apply this news judgment to things they read on their own, whether on the Internet, in a newspaper, via social media or anywhere else. Invite them to bring in examples of pieces that fail the Via or Imvain tests and explain why.

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As a follow-up to our post offering 50 ways to teach with current events, we asked Rory O'Connor, director of the Digital Resource Center at Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy, to share practical ways to help students become savvy news consumers. - The Learning Network The Need for News Literacy
Instead of a limited number of "trusted" and "objective" news sources, like the familiar network anchors, we now have an almost limitless number of outlets on the Internet and TV. In fact, anyone can publish a blog or tweet. With that democratization of news production and consumption comes an even greater responsibility for all of us to become savvy news consumers. Teaching students lifelong news literacy skills seems more important than ever.

"News Literacy" is an emerging discipline that empowers students to use analytical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports and information sources. It asks teachers to "reinvent current events" so that learning about the news goes beyond expanding awareness of events and becomes a real-world critical-thinking activity.
How One School Teaches It
Using an approach acquired from the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University, and after training at the center's summer institutes, the principal and staff at Intermediate School 303, a New York City public middle school in Coney Island, Brooklyn, implemented a program to encourage students to become smarter readers and analysts.

In its curriculum, the school stresses concepts like the need to evaluate information and sources. Each week the sixth, seventh and eighth graders at I.S. 303 study the concepts and learn how to apply them to current stories in the news.

Sometimes they use free educational media materials like these, created and distributed for classroom use by Stony Brook and often featuring journalists and reporting from The New York Times.

The lessons are then shared more broadly throughout E.L.A., Social Studies and other courses - as well as at home with parents, siblings and friends.
Learning Tools to Empower Students
Among the techniques pioneered by the center and in use at I.S. 303 is the use of simple mnemonics like "Via" (the triad of values that characterize reliable information: product of a verification process, from an independent person who is accountable) and "Imvain" (good journalism rests on sources who are independent, multiple, verified, authoritative, informed and named).

Here's how it can work in the classroom:

1. News Literacy teachers select a piece of news content like this Times article on climate change, for example. (The content should be appropriate for the students' reading level.)

2. As students read the article, they highlight sources and the information attributed to them. They might use a blue pencil to mark the source's name (e.g., Teresa Marks, director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality), and a green pencil to mark the information they provide (e.g., "This is not going to be the Armageddon that some people think").

3. Then, they can determine how reliable each source is, and therefore the information attributed to her or him. Students can rate each source for reliability using the Imvain checklist (PDF).

4. The class can discuss which sources they think seem most reliable and why, and they can consider possible biases that sources might have, based on their job title or background. Then, armed with new insight gained from evidence analysis and source evaluation, they can discuss the complex issues raised in the article.

5. After practicing in the classroom, students might be challenged to apply this news judgment to things they read on their own, whether on the Internet, in a newspaper, via social media or anywhere else. Invite them to bring in examples of pieces that fail the Via or Imvain tests and explain why.

As students work, have them keep in mind that:

Independent sources are preferable to self-interested sources.

Multiple sources are preferable to a report based on a single source.

Sources who Verify or provide verifiable information are preferable to those who merely assert.

Authoritative and/or Informed sources are preferable to sources who are uninformed or lack authoritative background.

Named sources are better than anonymous ones.

How News Literacy Fits in the Curriculum
Carmen Amador, principal at I.S. 303, explains the school's decision to integrate News Literacy into its curriculum: "We're proving to a lot of middle schools that our students can delve into these articles, they can interpret, they can become meta-cognitive and understand what is going on. Before News Literacy, they really couldn't tell you what was happening in their communities or the world at large. Now they're talking to you about the latest news reports, and why they believe or don't believe them."

News literacy has become a crucial information-age skill set for all of us - but especially young people. It helps determine how we know what we know, who will decide what we think, and how we can make convincing and credible arguments to others. And its emphasis on source evaluation and evidence analysis aligns with both the Common Core standards and the new "C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards."

As Ms. Amador states in the video, teaching news literacy both creates an awareness of current events within the school and develops children into critical thinkers.

How do you teach news literacy? Tell us below.

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Guest Post | Practical Tools for Teaching News Literacy

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As a follow-up to our post offering 50 ways to teach with current events, we asked Rory O'Connor, director of the Digital Resource Center at Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy, to share practical ways to help students become savvy news consumers.

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The fake news epidemic is disturbing. How do we fight it? Well, we can take a hint from how the medical community fights the flu or any other virus. We inoculate ourselves. In this post, I'll teach you how I teach about fake news.

Just as the flu shot exposes a person to enough of the dead "harmless" virus to cause immunity, we can also expose students to things that have already been verified or shown to be fake. By exposing our students to things that look very real, we can help them notice and understand that many things that look real, are lies. We can also help them understand why shady companies and organizations actually benefit from fake news (like a movie coming out this month in one of these examples.)

How does a "fake news" lesson flow?

First, you ask students to research to see if something is true or not. Second, ask students to recommend what a person should do about the information. These mini-lessons can take from 8-15 minutes and so, they are perfect for short, beginning of class "bellringers."

When students come to class, they get a copy of the bellringer and have a timer (usually 4-5 minutes - there should be some time pressure) set for them to give their recommendations.

I'm including screenshots in this post, but if you fill out the form at the bottom, I'll email you the PDF copy of these three lesson plans.

Example #1: Breaking News Bellringer

In this case, we share a tweet and some "news sources." When selecting topics, I like them to be recent enough as to feel real to students and also so that Google search results aren't "full" of the answer.

TIP: After students examine and discuss their answers, I'll often give them a "clue" if they aren't close and have them go back and look again. I like them to find pieces of the answer before unveiling the answer slide on the board.

Breaking News Bellringer Answer

I like this example because it hits on several current topics:

Fake news websites often use similar names to existing news outlets "Houston Leader" (fake news) instead of "The Leader" (a real newspaper in Houston.)

This example also has some motivation behind it and an emerging scandal that an emerging Fox movie "A Cure for Wellness" is now linked from the original news stories which have been taken down. This sort of redirect happens all the time. The website gets lots of links and then has the original content replaced with something new and totally unrelated. Redirects are why you should always click before resharing.

Finally, point out to your students that many times when something is fake and just comes out, that Snopes may not have the answer. Fake news outlets are good at what they do. Click-baiting is a billion dollar business. So, the best way to figure this out is by determining that these fake news sources are truly false. Learn to find out the legitimate newspapers for cities. The Sacramento newspaper is the "Sacramento Bee, " and you can't find anything about the Sacramento Dispatch. If it were legitimate, you'd see a lot more about it.

See how using examples demonstrates to students how fake news works. No lecture in the world can teach like this sort of virus killing fake-news inoculation method. Onto the next one!

Example #2 Viral Video News Story

This example has a video released just a week ago that has gone viral. Now, don't go sharing this yet. Wait until you verify the source.

The Video

So you can play this video in my blog post, here it is. Again, DO NOT SHARE before you research this one!!

Viral News Video Story Answer

Again, give students just 3-4 minutes to find their answer. (I like shortening the time for each of these until students have to make a call within a minute because that is how quickly they have to make this sort of snap judgment in real life.) Don't "give" them the answer but if they are not on the right track, give them clues before revealing the answer. If you're not careful, some students will share videos like this via social media if you don't warn them to do research.

Bellringer #3: To Share or Not To Share

This post has gone around dozens of times; I have to include this reshare Facebook example.

This example is a difficult one. Also, note that I give this information to students so they have to type it into a search engine.

While you could post these online, somehow having students have to type in the information helps them understand how they research. For example, if this text above was posted, most students will copy all of it and paste into Google. It is easy to mix up the spacing and a few words so that such a search won't turn up and students mistakenly think they are in the clear.

Again, let them discuss and give them hints before unveiling the final answer.

To Share or Not To Share Answer

In Summary

Once I've done these with students, I often mix in true things (that sound a bit crazy just to make it interesting.) I also have students make their bellringers to share with the class. Notice how I include sources of information at the bottom to know where the information was retrieved.

I hope these examples inspire and help you to fight fake news in a way that works. The biggest mistakes many educators make:

the "fake news" lessons are lecture based (doesn't work)

the "fake news" lessons use irrelevant examples that are easy to detect as fake

the "fake news" lessons use old stories that have so many search results that it doesn't represent the real world. They're just easy to spot that they are fake. You want more challenging, current topics. If it was on the news last night, those are the best! I'll often type one of these up and do it the next day!

they DON'T TEACH IT AT ALL!!!

So, I've given you three examples for use in your classroom tomorrow. So, get out there and FIGHT FAKE NEWS!

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3 Fast, Free Lesson Plans to Fight Fake News

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The fake news epidemic is disturbing. How do we fight it? Well, we can take a hint from how the medical community fights the flu or any other virus. We inoculate ourselves. In this post, I'll teach you how I teach about fake news.

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Identify and Challenge Fake News: Fake News

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Identify and Challenge Fake News: Fake News

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😱Real Sources / Fake News

After finding evidence that much of the "fake" and hyper-biased news traffic during 🇺🇸#Election2016 was arriving through direct hyperlinks, search engines, and "old school" sharing tactics such as email newsletters, RSS, and instant messaging, I thought I would do a small "big data" project.

I wrote this piece because I feel the argument about Facebook's role in influencing the outcome of the U.S. election doesn't address the real problem: the sources of the fake/misleading/hyper-biased information. Sure, Google's ad network and Facebook's News Feed/"Related Stories" algorithms amplify the emotional spread of misinformation, and social media naturally turn up the volume of political outrage. At the same time, I think journalists, researchers and data geeks should first look into the factors that are actually 1) producing the content and 2) driving the online traffic.

Rather than analyze "known unknowns" with incomplete metrics and partial analytics (i.e., measuring the famously opaque Facebook engagement metrics), this analysis looks directly at the source.

⚗Welcome to the Micro-Propaganda Machine

There's a vast network of dubious "news" sites. Most are simple in design, and many appear to be made from the same web templates. These sites have created an ecosystem of real-time propaganda: they include viral hoax engines that can instantly shape public opinion through mass "reaction" to serious political topics and news events. This network is triggered on-demand to spread false, hyper-biased, and politically-loaded information.

For this analysis, I'm calling it "fake news."

It's what I term the #MPM: the "micro-propaganda machine" - an influence network that can tailor people's opinions, emotional reactions, and create "viral" sharing (😆LOL/haha/😡RAGE) episodes around what should be serious or contemplative issues. The increasing influence of this type of behavioral micro-targeting and emotional manipulation - data-driven "psyops" - has become more noticable as people begin to reflect on the outcome of the recent #Brexit and U.S. election.

In my previous post, I found that only ~60% of incoming traffic from a sample of leading "fake" and hyper-biased news sites seemed to be coming out of Facebook and Twitter. The remaining ~40% of web traffic was organic - coming from direct website visits, P2P shares, text/instant messaging, subscription e-newsletters, RSS, and search engines. Again: Less than 0.1% of the traffic to the sites I looked at came from display advertising or (known) paid searchcontent.

My guess was that this network - the #MPM - of small "fake" and hyper-biased sites has been pushing traffic through links - and helping to inject this content into platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This effort was likely ramped up around the time the 🇺🇸#Election2016 primaries concluded, as well as any time a new political issue (involving email servers, groin grabbing, immigrants, etc.) takes place.

The data in my last piece showed mail.google.com (📧Gmail) being one of the top "upstream" sources of traffic coming into Infowars.com, an influential player in the right-wing news sphere. For this project, I did a medium-scale data analysis - crawling and indexing 117 websites that are known to be associated with the propagation of fake news content and the spread of what I'm calling "hyper-biased" propaganda.

For the purposes of looking directly at what some have termed the "alt-right" political propaganda machine, I kept the sources in this analysis restricted to sites that have been 🗯⚠️ publicly called out by internet users and listed by editors on the following verification sites: Snopes, Fake News Watch, Real or Satire, and Media Bias Fact Check.

Due to the sensitivity of this type of research, I feel complete transparency is key: Below is my list of the 117 sites I scraped and indexed in my #MCM election data project.

I crawled 🕷 every website on the list and extracted URLs one "level" deep. This scraping effort, given the relatively basic structure of these template-based websites, represents the majority of links on these sites ( 735,263 of them, to be exact).

🔂After a couple of hours, my scraping/indexing effort resulted more than 11,033 webpages, and 735,263 hyperlinks. Out of this data set, there were 80,587 hyperlink connections -aka shared URLS - across the 117 fake news websites.

Where does the #MPM point? What does it look like?

I looked for patterns in the shared links to find what places these fake news websites seem to be linking to, as well as their most common inbound link destinations, and the structure of how the #MCM was embedded across the wider 🇺🇸#Election2016 mediascape.
{After exporting the dataset (.gexf file), I sorted out the news "network" at the widest scale using an open source tool, GEPHI, and the ForceAtlas2 algorithm. Any website with at least two shared URLs (links) to them from the 117 sites on my list above appear in my #MPM network graph. There were just over 2000 sites in the network, and all data obtained was publicly available and appeared on the websites as of 17-Nov-2016}
Legend

The circle, or "node," size on the following graph(s) is proportional (1-100 scale) to the number of shared hyperlinks that link into the site from the 117 website sample. The colors are sorted according to actor type.

Red=🔴right-wing media; Purple=⚛government entities; Yellow=🤔interesting things; Blue=🔵social media; Green=✳️education; and the less prominent nodes were left gray.

#ICYMI

The following website data map, called a network graph, can be used reflect on #Election2016. It can help us discover:

1. The 🔝 influential sites that are central to information flow in the micro-propaganda network. From a social influence perspective, this data helps us find which sites drive conspiracy/misinformation/"fake" and "viral" content/propaganda online, and see how each is positioned on the internet and;

2. 🔎Where and ⚗how this micro-propaganda machine tends to coordinate its resources. By displaying network-level patterns in how these sites are linked to one another, and showing how dense their connections ("edges") are, we can visualize how this propaganda network is positioned "around" other actors, such as the "lamestream media" and "mainstream" social media platforms.

{What this data cannot show - at least, directly - is why these links exist or exactly when they were established. To put it simply, this map can show us the frequency and direction of "fake news" relationships, but can't display the complete nature of the connections.} Can Data Be Richer Than Trump?
This originally small project turned out to be an unexpectedly rich data capture - I could probably write about it for weeks. However, there are several fascinating themes that are displayed in this fringe-right propaganda network (see embed above for high resolution version). I'm publishing this now, since I feel it can help solve the #Election2016 equation.

🏹1. The Targets: Mainstream Media, Social Networks - and Wikipedia

First, as my previous post noted, the sites with the most inbound hyperlinks (the largest circles on the graph) in this fake news propaganda network are Google, YouTube, the NYTimes.com, Wikipedia, and strangely, Amazon.com. The larger the circle, the more links are coming in from the 117 #MCM network sites.

YouTube's dominance was expected, as many sites - "left-wing," "right-wing," or otherwise -post links to videos, creator channels and documentary-style "educational" material. Again, the 🌀LARGEST circles are the domains that are linked to the MOST by the propaganda engine. I'll come back to the separate "webpages" at the end - there's a countdown of the "top ten" individual links.

🛰2. Mainstream Media Are Mostly "Surrounded"

You can see on the "zoomed out" graph (image below) the #MPM - i.e., ID'd right-wing, fake news, conspiracy, anti-science, hoax, pseudoscience, and right-leaning misinformation sites - in 🔴 red.

If you look at the graph closely, you'll see they basically surround most of the mainstream media, including the largest 🎨"liberal" media, on the network. This includes national newspapers like the New York Times, The Washington Post, and even "right-wing" media such as Breitbart.com, the Dailycaller.com, and theNational Review.

The sites in the fake news and hyper-biased #MCM network have a very small "node" size - this means they are linking out heavily to mainstream media, social networks, and informational resources (most of which are in the "center" of the network), but not many sites in their peer group are sending links back.

The most influential sites line the 🌐 periphery of the virtual propaganda network. You can see (image above) that many of the sites have a large flood of red hyperlinks flowing outward - some of these are in the thousands. For the purposes of this analysis, the red lines (each representing a different URL) "matter" most when they are headed towards the large nodes in the center of the network.

🎥3. Content Sharing and Media Hosting

The #MCM network displays a high number of links to content creation and web asset-hosting services (Wordpress.com, Statcounter.com, WP.com, etc.). These likely are shared to help the website users produce content and measure the impact of their audiences. The zoomed-in views (see images below) also suggest that these fake news sites use social platforms to share as well as coordinate through hyperlinks:

I'll explain: If you look around the largest picture of the network (see first image), you can see the 🤖🤖🤖 coordinating effect of individual page hyperlinks. In the next image, you can see how many larger red nodes have smaller "interest clusters" - these appear to consist primarily of Twitter accounts, public Facebook pages, and other miscellaneous issue-based websites:

🎛4. Material and Digital Production Tools and eCommerce

In the next images (see below), there are an interesting number of links pointing to 👕 consumer goods/commerce sites and ✂️ digital production tools. These include CafePress (t-shirts), Feedburner (RSS news), and Addthis.com (social sharing scripts).

This could mean that the propaganda network may be use these resources internally to spread - as well as generate some income  - off of politically-themed news events and political debates. These links might be pushed into other locations on the internet, especially social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Oddly, Amazon.com (see first graph, above) is also a top inbound link destination in the #MCM network. Further analysis is needed to uncover the type of content/resources all of these links point towards.

✅5. Fact Checking and Knowledge Editing

Next, the #MCM network links heavily to a major poll site, Gallup, and crowdsourced fact-checking and reference resources -most notably Wikipedia, Reddit, and Wikimedia. Snopes and other fake news verification sites are in the "liberal" side of the network at the top-middle right (see the first large graph).

The Four Corners of the #MSM

This is a preliminary data analysis, but beyond the specifics - like all network graphs - I feel the the widest picture of the network (again, the first full-size network graph) is intriguing. The network is clearly split into several ideological regions: The ⬅️ far left and ↖️ top left areas have the most "alt right" and "hard right" actors; the ⏫ middle top region shows a strong religious base as well as a strong anti-Islamic component.

The ➡️ far right side seems to be most 🎨"liberal," and this side adds increasing numbers of governmental actors as it joins the harder-right religious conservative actors around the 🔼mid-to- upper center of the network. The ↙️ bottom left region is primarily influential social media accounts, and the ↕️ bottom center involves many international media outlets; similar to the upper half of the network, the lower half starts to pick up more university websites, environmental action and policy sites, and tech-oriented actors (e.g., EFF.com) as you move towards the ↘️ bottom right.

The unofficial top ten #MCM link countdown

To wrap up this post, I'm listing the most-shared non-domain links in the "micro-propaganda machine" network. This means the most commonly shared links (i.e., InDegree) out of the 80,587 URLs that link to individual pages (i.e., not the NYT front page, Facebook.com, Google email/searches).
⚡️The top 10 #MCM #Election2016 URL destinations:
📚Bonus: The large Amazon.com inbound link presence in the network appears to be through the fake news sites' Amazon seller affiliate links. These links are for getting kickbacks on merchandise sold (books, magazines, etc.) from ads on their site, or through Amazon recommendations in original posts or book recommendations.

I translated the top individual Amazon.com link in the network through an affiliate code-matching website. It's a subscription (through Amazon) to a conservative magazine:

This is just a 🔭glimpse of publicly available data related to the election. This post has a fair portion of what I found, but I do hope to look into the data more. I also plan to look at the exact opposite bias  - meaning switching this network graph around and coding the "left-wing" websites to see what sorts of linking patterns play into 🎨liberal micro-propaganda from the recent election.

I hope this glimpse into a set of focused medium data offers another path to move forward, since I see little point in arguing about complex, ever-changing 🔢algorithms.

I also believe that platform-specific social network metrics are often more trouble than they are worth. For one, we don't know how these proprietary measurement systems work for a reason: they involve💰multibillion-dollar business models and 🔐confidential IP. While Facebook's engagement metrics are interesting to think about, they don't really offer us much in the way of pinpointing the propaganda, misinformation, and viral/hoax clickbait that really shaped the election.

What does 📈"engagement" really mean? What does it drive? As Craig Silverman correctly stated at the end of his recent Buzzfeed "fake news" analysis, we don't really know for sure:

I've tried to be 📝 transparent in this analysis. I do expect to take some heat for the selective focus, which involves previously uncharted political data-journalistic waters. But I feel at this point ALL research involving fake news is a move in the right direction.

As I recently argued, turning around and blaming Facebook, Twitter, and Google for our 🌍 widespread social and cultural problems isn't the best place to start. I mean, why look at the result when you can look at the 🎯 problem? That's exactly what I've tried to do here.
🔬💼 Part II of this "fake news" research project ⤵️:

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The #Election2016 Micro-Propaganda Machine - Jonathan Albright - Medium

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😱Real Sources / Fake News After finding evidence that much of the "fake" and hyper-biased news traffic during 🇺🇸#Election2016 was arriving through direct hyperlinks, search engines, and "old school" sharing tactics such as email newsletters, RSS, and instant messaging, I thought I would do a small "big data" project.

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News and America’s Kids: How Young People Perceive and Are Impacted by the News

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News and America’s Kids: How Young People Perceive and Are Impacted by the News

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Commonsensemedia 2017

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News and America's Kids investigates how children get their news, how much they trust different news sources, whether they can spot "fake news," and more. This report captures children's candid feelings via an online survey. The survey was conducted in January 2017 and included 853 children age 10-18 drawn from a nationally representative panel, as well as an oversample of African-American and Hispanic/Latino children drawn from an opt-in web panel. Watch the video and read our blog post for highlights.

Our News- and Media-Literacy Resources

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News and America's Kids: How Young People Perceive and Are Impacted by the News | Common Sense Media

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News and America's Kids investigates how children get their news, how much they trust different news sources, whether they can spot "fake news," and more. This report captures children's candid feelings via an online survey.

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14 News Literacy Lessons by Stony Brook Univ 

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14 News Literacy Lessons by Stony Brook Univ 

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The full News Literacy course, developed at Stony Brook University, organizes the material into 8 concepts that are spread amongst our 14 week course that take students from the first information revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the Digital Age of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. Each lesson stands alone or can easily be integrated into your program.

Below, find a summary of each of those lessons, and a link to the most updated version of the teaching materials for each from our professors at Stony Brook University. Each of the following Course Packs include PowerPoint presentations, associated media, lecture notes, and recitation materials.

Our course structure changed in the Fall 2015 semester. The changes are outlined in our updated syllabus from that semester.

Lesson 1: Why News Literacy Matters

News Literacy Lesson 1 Course Pack - Updated SPRING 2016

In the wake of the latest information revolution, it is up to the consumer to determine whether information is reliable and whether to publish it.

Lesson 2: The Power of Information

Lesson 3: ...But is it True? Part 1

Journalists and scientists have a similar understanding of truth - a statement of probability that's proportional to the amount of available evidence and subject to an informal system of peer review.

The concept of provisional truth: Because journalism is a snapshot in time, journalistic truth evolves as new evidence emerges. The lesson for news consumers: Follow a story over time.

Context and transparency: Key concepts in the journey from fact to truth. Valuable news stories put information in context and are transparent about how reporters know what they know and don't know and why.

Truth is more likely to emerge when you look at a story from different perspectives. Journalists do that by trying to include the voices of all involved.

Lesson 4: But is it true? Part 2: Verification

Journalists pursue the truth by following a ranking of direct evidence that places the greatest value on photographs and videos, documents and records, personal observations and witnesses.

Seeing isn't always believing. News outlets and consumers must also verify the authenticity of visual journalism. How news organizations and consumers evaluate still images and videos.

Assessing the value of polls, surveys and studies. Understanding the science of polling and evaluating reports of scientific breakthroughs.

The battle between journalism's pursuit of the truth and digital-age business models: How the fight for page views, ratings and circulation can put journalistic values in peril.

Lesson 5: What Makes News Different?

Lesson 6: Fairness and Balance

Lesson 7: Who's Biased Now?

- Updated News Literacy Lesson 7 Course Pack Fall 2015

Lesson 8: Who Decides What's Newsworthy?

- Updated N ews Literacy Lesson 8 Course Pack Fall 2015

Lesson 9: The Medium is the Message

- Updated News Literacy Lesson 9 Course Pack Fall 2015

Newspapers and magazines still offer the most comprehensive coverage, but market forces, technological advances and demographic changes have dramatically reduced their resources and reach.

Radio has survived by maintaining an intimacy and immediacy and developing its own style of storytelling.

TV news is still the most powerful tool for following breaking news stories with compelling visuals, but it exists in an entertainment medium.

Lesson 10: The Medium is the Message - Part 2, Digital Media

N ews Literacy Lesson 10 Course Pack - Updated Spring 2015

News websites and search engines have broadened the reach of news consumers while presenting them with new challenges - information overload, questions of authenticity and confirmation bias - in their pursuit of reliable information. A key lesson: Ranking on search engines does not necessarily indicate the reliability of a website or piece of information found online.

The explosion of social media and the evolution of the news consumer from observer to news producer have brought not only a powerful level of engagement but also the proliferation of misinformation. Plus: How social media has been used in modern election campaigns.

Lesson 11: Says Who?

News Literacy Lesson 11 Course Pack - Updated Spring 2015

The decontruction process uses News Literacy concepts to analyze and dispassionately judge a report's reliability.

1. Summarize the main points: Do the headline and lead support them?

2. How close does the reporter come to opening the freezer? Is the evidence direct or indirect?

3. Evaluate the reliability of the sources using IMVAIN.

4. Is the reporter's work transparent? Does the reader learn what the reporter knows and does not know?

5. Does the reporter place the story in context, providing facts that surround an event or elements of a news story and provide meaning or significance?

6. Are the key questions answered? Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

7. Is the story fair?

Lesson 12: Deconstructing The News

News Literacy Lesson 12 Course Pack - Updated Spring 2015

This 7-step deconstruction process uses News Literacy concepts to analyze and dispassionately judge a report's reliability.

1. Summarize the main points and then check if the headline and the lead support the main point(s) of the story?
2. How close does the reporter come to opening the freezer? Is the evidence direct or "arm's-length?"
3. Evaluate the reliability of the sources using IMVAIN.
4. Does the reporter make his or her work transparent?
5. Does the reporter place the story in context?
6. Are the key questions answered?
7. Is the story fair?

Students apply the principles of deconstruction to all forms of traditional media including video and audio news stories.

For video news, we analyze a series of "winners" and "sinners" and how you can tell the difference.

Lesson 13: Deconstructing Social Media

Students learn to recognize the power and gauge the reliability of social media posts and websites

A key lesson: Ranking on search engines does not necessarily indicate the reliability of a website or piece of information found online.

The advent of crowdsourcing and "citizen journalists" has created new opportunities and challenges for both news outlets and news consumers.

Lesson 14: News Literate You -- The Future of News

In the Digital Age, we are all publishers as well as news consumers. And with great power, comes great responsibility.

The advent of crowdsourcing and "citizen journalists" has created new opportunities and challenges for both news outlets and news consumers.

The Internet's disruption of traditional journalism business models has raised a key question: Who will pay for watchdog journalism in the Digital Age?

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From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg in 14 Lessons

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The full News Literacy course, developed at Stony Brook University, organizes the material into 8 concepts that are spread amongst our 14 week course that take students from the first information revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the Digital Age of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook.

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For Kerry Laurito's class

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News Literacy Lesson Plan Template_Lessons

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Fake Viral Images (some content not appropriate for students)

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Fake Viral Images (some content not appropriate for students)

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We debunked dozens of fake photos this year, covering everything from Charles Manson's baby photos to John Lennon's skateboarding skills, and everything in between. It was another busy year for anyone spreading fake images on the internet.

Below, we have 76 photos that you may have seen floating around the internet in 2015. Some are deliberate photoshops created by people who want to deceive. Others are just images that got mixed up in this big, weird game of Telephone we call the internet.

If you get to the bottom of the list and you're hungry for even more fakes, check out last year's round-up.

1) Is this Charles Manson as a baby?

Despite what historical picture accounts on Twitter might insist, this isn't Charles Manson as a baby. I contacted Jeff Guin, author of the definitive biography, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson. He said that it's almost certainly not him.

From Guinn:

While I was researching my book, Manson's sister and first cousin shared family photo albums with me. That photo was not present in either instance, and in no way matches the verified photos I have of Manson as a baby. (The facial features above all.) I have never seen this picture before. Anything's possible, but I very much doubt that this is a photo of Baby Charlie.

My guess? This one likely started as a joke on Facebook or Reddit and spread quickly as a real photo after losing context from the original poster.

2) Is this a behind the scenes photo from National Geographic?

It's an amusing photo. But that image of National Geographic photographers running from a bear has definitely been photoshopped.

As commenters on Reddit point out, there are actually a few clues that this is a fake. But the most damning bit of evidence? The bear appears to be from a stock photo.

Below, a side-by-side of the image with the stock photo. Notice the shape of the bear's head and the green piece of grass in front of the bear's right arm.
The redhead in the photo, Tim Sparks, has confirmed via Twitter that it's a fake that they made back in 2011 during a film location scout in Colorado. He says it was posted to Facebook and it went viral from there. I spoke with him for a follow-up.
3) Is this an old magic trick gone wrong?

With a caption like "magic trick gone wrong," it's easy to imagine the photos above as depicting a magician nearly escaping from drowning. We're left to think a scantily clad performer heroically grabbed an ax and freed a grateful woman. The problem? That's not what these pictures show at all. And in fact, the real story is far more interesting.

The woman with the ax, Kitty West (also known as Evangeline the Oyster Girl), smashed the glass box in rage. West was a burlesque performer on Bourbon Street in New Orleans during the late 1940s. Her act included emerging from an enormous oyster shell, thus the name Oyster Girl. One night in 1949 a rival performer from out of town, Divena the Aqua Tease, got top billing over West, which seemed to really upset her. Divena's act involved an underwater strip tease in a giant glass case filled with water. So you can see where this is going.

"I just wanted to break the tank in a million pieces," West would later recall. Life magazine reported that 400 gallons of water poured onto the stage, causing many in the audience to flee. Once the water had drained, West attacked Divena by pulling her hair. West was promptly arrested, and the whole thing (complete with photos of West at the police station) was published in Life.

4) Is this Princess Diana giving the finger?

No, that's not Princess Di flipping the bird. It's another photo by Alison Jackson, a British photographer known for her staged images of celebrity lookalikes.

Historical photo accounts on Twitter are constantly posting Jackson's images. Twitter is littered with countless Marilyn Monroe and JFK images that are actually Jackson's handiwork using lookalikes. Throw this one on the pile.

5) Is this a photo from NASA of India during Diwali?

As the space debunker FakeAstroPix points out, this "NASA photo" of India during the Hindu festival of Diwali is fake. It's actually quite an old fake as well, dating to at least 2012. But that doesn't stop so many OMGSPACE and OMGSCIENCE Twitter accounts from sharing it here in 2015.

What does it really show? It's a composite of satellite images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2003 that has been shaded different colors. The different colors are supposed to show population growth over time. Cool image? Sure. But not what so many people say it is.

6) Is this an anti-weed ad?

No, this isn't an anti-drug ad. it's actually a photo by Martin Ferko of Anna Guimm, a designer whose method of creating ceramic dolls involves putting them in an oven. Someone has photoshopped anti-weed messaging onto the image.

Normally, this kind of thing would be done in a kiln, but Guimm's DIY oven method seems to work perfectly fine for her. Even if it makes for a terrifying image when taken out of context.

And before you rush down to the comments to let me know that nobody thought this was a real ad, allow me to assure you that there is always someone who thinks it's a real ad.

7) Is this a 1950s car show?

The photo above does come from a car show that took place at a Thrifty Drug store parking lot in Los Angeles on May 15, 1954. But it's not exactly as it would've appeared to people who were actually there.

The photo was colorized by Rik Hoving back in 2006, though the HistoryInPics version crops out mention of his name. Colorized photos aren't necessarily "fake." But as I've said before, we have to ask ourselves what happens to history when a colorized photo supplants the original in web searches.

HistoryInPics often tweets colorized photos without identifying them as such. To be honest, this seems like a rather minor sin compared with all the other misinformation they spread. But it's something that we need to keep in mind with all these historical photo accounts.

Who decides that the green car is actually green and not blue or black or even purple? Photo colorizers are often dedicated people who painstakingly research possibilities before altering historical documents. But when their work is shared without any mention that the photo has been colorized, the people of the future are left with a rather skewed impression of history.

8) Is this a shooting star and its reflection?

As the always excellent Twitter photo sleuth PicPedant points out, the picture above isn't a shooting star. It's actually a 2-minute long exposure of a space shuttle launch in 2010. By leaving the camera's shutter open for 2 minutes, the launch appears to be a long fiery trail. But it's most definitely not a shooting star.

9) Is this a kitchen chair floating in space, referred to as "Escape Vehicle No. 6" by astronauts?

Could there really be a kitchen chair in orbit? No. This image comes from a 2009 ad campaign by Toshiba for LCD TVs. Sadly, there is no chair currently circling the globe.

The title "Escape Vehicle No. 6" comes from a 2004 art piece by Simon Faithfull that was similar in concept. Faithful says that Toshiba's ad agency approached him about a collaboration but he didn't work on the ad.
Fake image via HistoricalPics and SciencePorn
10) Is this an "incredibly rare" black lion?

No, there are no black lions. As the Museum of Hoaxes points out, this is a pure photoshop job. The original photo shows that the lion is actually white.

11) Is this an 1880s female street gang from London called the Clockwork Oranges?

Those are some dapper looking women who might rough you up if you met them in a dark alley. But whoever they were, they weren't an 1880s female street gang called the Clockwork Oranges.

There were indeed female street gangs in 19th century London. But the term Clockwork Orange wasn't used in reference to a street gang until Anthony Burgess's 1962 book. According to Burgess, the book gets its title from an old cockney slang phrase "as queer as a clockwork orange."

As the caption to the obviously cropped photograph reads: "group of women having a smoke, gelatin silver print c. 1896."
Fake image via OldPicsArchive and the Victorian Academy of Magick
12) Is this really Einstein riding a bicycle near a nuclear test?

This photo may seem like one of those that's so absurd, no one could ever believe it deals. But people do. And they keep sharing it far and wide across social media. Like a cockroach scurrying around during Nuclear Winter, the image just won't die. But yes, it's a fake.

13) Is this scientist Marie Curie?

No, that's not the world renowned scientist Marie Curie. As Joe Hanson from PBS points out, the photo on the left actually shows Susan Marie Frontczak, a stage performer who plays Marie Curie in a production called Manya. The real photo of Curie circa 1913 appears on the right.

Embarrassingly it's not just spammy Twitter accounts that have mistaken the actor for the real Curie. The country of Togo even based a postage stamp on the photo of Frontczak. Yikes.

14) Is this Vladimir Putin in 1988 posing as a tourist to spy on Ronald Reagan?

Everybody knows that Vladimir Putin is a former KGB agent. But is that actually Putin in 1988 posing as a tourist behind the boy that's about to shake Ronald Reagan's hand? Nope.

This fake has been around for a few years now. And to be honest, the guy doesn't even look like Putin if you ask me. Now it's entirely possible that the guy is an undercover KGB agent. The photographer who took this shot seems to think so. But Putin was stationed in Dresden when this photo was snapped in Moscow. It's almost certainly not Putin.

15) Is this Heath Ledger as The Joker kick-flipping over Batman?

Notoriously awful Twitter account HistoryInPics posts a lot of fake content. And sadly they don't even tell the truth when their "history" is a recent as 2008.

No, that's not Heath Ledger on the set of The Dark Knight kick-flipping over Christian Bale. The funny part? Ledger was actually known for skating around on location while shooting in Chicago. But the photo above is totally fake.
Fake image via HistoryInPics
16) Is this a group of prohibitionist women?

Ever wonder why everyone in this "prohibitionist photo" has such a cartoonish expression? Because they were actors. This image actually comes from an old Thomas Edison film made sometime between 1893 and 1901.

Edison's early films often parodied suffragists and women of the temperance movement during the late 19th century. This pro-temperance message wouldn't have been out of place in some circles at the turn of the 20th century. But it's an image that was meant to lampoon the anti-alcohol movement. And it appears that it's still working over a century later.
Fake image via OldPicsArchive
17) Is this Salvador Dali drawing a penis on a woman's forehead?

Salvador Dali never painted a cartoon penis on a woman's forehead, signing it Picasso. Or at least if he did, it was never photographed. The woman in the photo is Dali's wife Gala and the painting he's doing is known as Medusa's sleep.

18) Is this a rare photo of an Onna-bugeisha, one of the female warriors of Japan?

No, this photo doesn't show a female warrior from 1870s Japan. As the debunker website Hoax of Fame explains, the image actually shows a kabuki actor. This photo went up for auction back in 2012.
Inaccurate photo description via ThatsHistory
19) Is this a hockey goalie in 1966 before masks became standard equipment?

As the always brilliant PicPedant points out, this photo indeed appeared in the pages of Life magazine in 1966. But the scars and wounds of this hockey goalie were applied by a make-up artist. They were intended to represent all the injuries this hockey player received during his career.

As L ife explained in 1966:

This face belongs to Terry Sawchuk [wrote LIFE], a 36-year-old goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Re-created here, by a professional make-up artist and a doctor, are some of the more than 400 stitches he has earned during 16 years in the National Hockey League. Sawchuk has sustained other injuries not shown here: a slashed eyeball requiring three stitches, a 70% loss of function in his right arm because 60 bone chips were removed from his elbow, and a permanent "sway-back" caused by continual bent-over posture.

So yeah, it's kinda real. But the photo tells a misleading story when you strip out the context from the magazine and add your own caption about safety equipment.

20) Is this an Earthrise from the perspective of the moon on December 24, 1968?

On December 24, 1968 the astronauts of Apollo 8 took a gorgeous shot of the "earth rise" as came from the dark side of the moon. It was the first photo of our planet from the perspective of another planetary body. In 2013 NASA produced a computer-generated re-creation of what those astronauts saw, in full color. But ever since, people have been passing the re-creation around as an authentic photo. The original is the black and white photo on the right.
Fake image via HistoricalPics
21) Is this the bodies of two people in Nevada thought to be buried alive in 1993?

These aren't the bodies of two people horrifically buried alive in the 1990s. They're actually the bones of two people found outside Mantua, Italy back in 2007. And the bones date back as much as 6,000 years.

The two people are thought to have been no more than 20 years old and were deemed the Lovers of Valdaro because they were found locked in an embrace. We don't know how they met their end exactly. But the one thing we know for sure is that they weren't buried alive in the Nevada desert during the Clinton administration.
Fake image via NotExplained
22) Is this a real screenshot from Wheel of Fortune?

You may have seen this Wheel of Fortune screenshot gag going viral recently. Is the answer really "Luck Be In the Air Tonight"? Nope. It's just a photoshop job from start to finish.

The big clue that this one is fake? If the answer is really supposed to be "Luck Be In The Air Tonight," then why is the letter I missing from the word "air"? The only logical explanation? The answer must be the lewd one everybody was thinking.
Fake image via jmoneytooreal
23) Are these real penguins with donated sweaters?

You may have recently seen the heartwarming story of Australia's oldest man (109 years young!) who knits sweaters for penguins. The story is currently making the rounds with an adorable photo purporting to show the grateful penguins of Australia's Phillip Island. The only problem? Those penguins in that particular photo are totally fake.

The photo comes from the Penguin Foundation's Facebook page. As they explained in the comments to the photo when questioned about the fake-looking birds:

We had a little help from some toy penguins, Jenny. Our photographer tells us they're the best models he's ever worked with - no demands for water that's been purified by unicorns in Peru and minimal make-up required because they're all naturally good looking. Plus, we're all about positive body image and welcome toy penguin models of all shapes and sizes!

So there you have it. The other thing that the aggregated and regurgitated stories scraping the original (and true!) story from Nine News don't mention? The penguins don't really need sweaters anymore. Sweaters were originally used on penguins after a 2000 oil spill. They kept the birds from preening themselves and potentially ingesting oil before they could be properly cleaned. Many people jumped at the chance to help, but pretty soon, the clean-up organizations had more penguin-sized sweaters than they would ever need.

There was another call for penguin sweaters in 2014 by the Penguin Foundation to stockpile in case another oil spill ever happened. But, again, they were quickly inundated with more sweaters than they could handle.

As the Penguin Foundation noted after the outpouring of sweaters (known as "jumpers" in Australia), they don't need any more:

** Please note that we have plenty of penguin jumpers at this time donated by generous knitters across the globe for rehabilitation in the event of an oil spill, fundraising and education programs and do not need any further donations at this time. Thank you kindly for your interest in knitting to support the little penguins of Phliip Island! Further information on the program and how penguin jumpers benefit little penguin conservation can be found below. Thank you! **

To be clear, the story of Australia's oldest man and his earlier efforts to make knit sweaters is totally real. But that photo and the impression that this is an ongoing need is simply not true.

24) Are these school lunches from around the world?

They look pretty delicious, but those "typical" school lunches from around the world aren't so typical. They're actually misleading promotional photos from an advertising campaign for a health food store called SweetGreen.

As Mother Jones points out, the photo purporting to show a typical school lunch in Greece should have been a big red flag. Sadly, given the country's financial woes, Greece doesn't have the resources to provide the kind of meal pictured. They point to an article in the New York Times that explains schools in Greece, "do not offer subsidized cafeteria lunches. Students bring their own food or buy items from a canteen."

This isn't to say that American public schools aren't woefully lacking in nutrition compared with much of the industrialized world. But these staged photos are far from an honest depiction. SweetGreen updated their post to admit nearly as much, even if they hedged in the process: "These images are not intended to be exact representations of school lunches, but instead, are meant to portray different types of foods found in cafeterias around the world."

25) Is this a whale swimming through Venice?

No, that's not a whale making its way through the canals of Venice. It's actually a composite image by artist Robert Jahns, who's responsible for another famous viral fake involving Venice freezing over. It's a cool picture, but not a true one.
Fake photo via SundayFundayz
26) Are these the tallest mountains on earth as seen from space?

As Twitter user Janne Ahlberg mentions, the image is actually completely computer generated. It was created by Christoph Hormann back in 2006. And to be honest, the more I look at it the more I want to play Myst.
Fake image via BEAUTIFULPlCS
27) Is this a whisky vending machine in a 1960s office?

Yes, that's a whisky dispenser. But it's not from an office in the 1950s or 60s, as it's so often captioned. According to Getty, it's from a vending machine exhibition in London in 1960. We don't have any evidence that this machine was used in an office, no matter how badly we want to believe that's the case.

Thanks to shows like Mad Men, people here in the 21st century have a tendency to think that everybody in the offices of the 1960s were constantly hammered. And while drinking on the job was more socially acceptable than it is today (at least for white collar workers at the highest ranks of companies), the people of the 1960s weren't constantly drinking.
Inaccurate description via Imgur
28) Is this a creepy passageway in an abandoned church?

Nope. As one Reddit user explains, the image actually comes from a house called the Black Moon Manor in Indiana. The Travel Channel show Ghost Adventures "investigated" the house back in 2011. The image above only gets a passing glance on screen, probably because if you think too hard about how over the top the image is, you'll conclude it's all bullshit. (Which it is.)

The funny part? Even within the paranormal investigation community, Black Moon Manor was known to be a fraud. The man in the episode who claims to be the owner of the house was actually just leasing it to run a haunted house. The backstory they tell in the show (of a shady doctor from the early 20th century who conducted experiments on measles patients) is total bullshit.

The writing on the wall around the hole was clearly done by regular old contemporary humans looking to get a rise out of people. The Black Moon Manor house was destroyed in 2012, the year after the episode aired.

On an unrelated (but hilarious) note, my favorite thing about the episode is when the host of the show steps into a local library and says, "I really don't think I've been in a library since grade school."
Fake image via NotExplained
29) Is this a rare color photo of the attack on Pearl Harbor?

PicPedant sets the record straight, explaining that the photo actually comes from a publicity still from the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor. That's right. The one with Ben Affleck.
Fake photo via KnowFactsDaily
30) Is this an Alaskan Tree Frog?

As Hoax of Fame points out, there's actually no such thing as an Alaskan Tree Frog. The image is quite clearly a cartoonish frog on top of what I'm guessing is a stone heart. Frustratingly, I can't seem to find an example online. But I'm almost certain I've seen this one (in its non-frozen form) before. If you know where this frog comes from please let us know in the comments.
Fake photo via FascinatingPics
31) Is this the full moon as seen from Australia?

Australia is a gorgeous country, filled with cute animals, gorgeous sunsets, and stunning night skies. But this photo purporting to be a full moon in Australia is a bunch of hooey. (Please excuse my strong language.)

Now, I know what you're thinking: Who in their right mind would believe this was real? The answer? The over 1,000 people who retweeted the image. And plenty more, as it has made its way through Pinterest and Facebook.
Fake image via SpacePornx
32) Are these Ewoks in owl form?

These "owls" might be cute, but they're not real. They're adorable toys, made by Russian artist Marina Yamkovskaia. And for what it's worth, they definitely look more Labyrinth to me than Star Wars.

33) Is this Time magazine's definition of a perfect body in 1955?

No, the photos above aren't from 1955. And they weren't Time magazine's definition of a "perfect body." As Snopes points out, the photo actually shows adult film star Aria Giovanni in a photo taken in 2004. The photo is currently going viral in its black and white form, perhaps to make it seem more vintage.

The "perfect body of X year" has actually turned into quite the meme. It's usually meant to be empowering for women and a reminder that the cliched aspiration to achieve the body type of rail-thin models isn't the norm - or at least hasn't been through most of history.

But in this case it's hard to see this as necessarily empowering for women in any real capacity. It's quite literally a porn star, and this particular version of the meme was almost certainly started by trolls.
Fake photo via History_Pics
34) Is this a tree growing through an abandoned piano?

No, a tree didn't grow its way through an abandoned piano. This photo was taken by a Flickr user back in 2010, and as Twitter user Janne Ahlberg points out, the piano was placed there by an artist named Jeff.

Jeff, for what it's worth, sounds a bit unstable. He explains in a video about how he got the free piano and then started "talking" to the trees for permission to place the piano in the woods:

I was gonna do different stuff with the piano. And then I was going around and I started talking to some trees, and basically found that one tree that would fit perfectly - that wanted the piano. So as soon as that tree kinda gave me permission to do that I kinda went ahead and did it.

Um, sure Jeff.

35) Is this Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson posing together as the Joker?

Well, no, that's not Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson. They're action figures. Really well done action figures, I'll grant you. But action figures nonetheless.

36) Is this Martin Luther King Jr. flipping the bird?

No matter how many times this photo of Martin Luther King Jr. is debunked, it always seems to pop up again and again on sites like Imgur, Reddit, and Pinterest. It's a photoshop job.

The real photo (on the right) actually shows King reacting in St. Augustine, Florida, after learning that the Senate had passed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. He's holding up two fingers, not one.
Fake photo via Pinterest; Imgur
37) Is this Shanghai in 1987 and 2015, after "26 years"?

Yes, that top photo does show Shanghai in 1987. But the bottom photo is from 2013, not 2015. It's a relatively minor factual error, but it reveals the sloppiness of these "historical pics" accounts. The vast majority just scrape photos from Reddit and Imgur. And in this case they were savvy enough to know that the current year would garner more shares. But not savvy enough to know that they'd have to change the math to alter it from 26 years to 28 years.
Inaccurate description via HistoricalPics
38) Is this Paris Hilton wearing a shirt that says "Stop Being Poor"?

Recently an Imgur set of wealthy famous people saying terrible things made the front page. The top image shows Paris Hilton (remember her?) wearing a shirt that says "Stop Being Poor." As easy as it might be to believe, it's actually a photoshop job.

The photo was taken in 2005 and her shirt actually says "Stop Being Desperate." Hilton may have spent her entire career trying to instigate a class war, but she didn't do it by wearing a shirt imploring people not to be poor.

39) Is this a supermoon in Dubai?

Close, but the photo on the left is actually photoshopped. As PicPedant points out, the original photo was taken by Mo Aoun and shows the moon off to the side. The moon in the altered photo is also larger than the original. This seems to be a case of people taking something beautiful and making it literally unbelievable.
Fake photo via AstronomyHD
40) Is this a megalodon shark next to a German U-Boat in the 1940s?

Remember that dumb megalodon documentary released by the Discovery Channel for Shark Week back in 2014? It was completely fake. But something tells me that we'll be living with the fake facts peddled by that show for many years to come. If you've seen the image above, don't believe it. The photo is totally fake.
Fake image via ScaryPIct
41) Is this a real cloud that looks like a dragon?

This "cloud dragon" is kinda cool, but don't go thanking Mother Nature. Thank the Photoshop gods. It was created by Deviant Art user StrixCZ.
Fake image via Internet Palace
42) Are these early suffragettes in 1921 eating pizza in large groups to annoy men?

As Tumblr user IronGall explains, there are so many things wrong with the caption to this photo. Like almost everything about it, aside from the year.

First off, these weren't "early suffragettes" in 1921. The Nineteenth Amendment, which gave American women the franchise, was ratified in 1920. Secondly, these women aren't eating pizza. They're eating pie, as you can see from a closer crop of the photo below. In fact, they're having a pie eating contest, according to Shorpy. Sure, they're relatively flat pies. But they're still pies. Pizza didn't become popular in the United States until after the second World War.

Thirdly, it's unclear why women eating pizza in a large group would "annoy men." Whatever the origin of this caption, it probably went through a bizarre and convoluted game of Telephone before it arrived at Twitter's doorstep.
Inaccurate description via Historyepics
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76 Viral Images From 2015 That Were Totally Fake

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We debunked dozens of fake photos this year, covering everything from Charles Manson's baby photos to John Lennon's skateboarding skills, and everything in between. It was another busy year for anyone spreading fake images on the internet. Below, we have 76 photos that you may have seen floating around the internet in 2015.

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In previous decades, most news with global reach came from several major newspapers and networks with the resources to gather information directly. The speed with which information spreads now, however, has created the ideal conditions for something called circular reporting. Noah Tavlin sheds light on this phenomenon.

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5-Minute Film Festival: 9 Videos on News Literacy

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5-Minute Film Festival: 9 Videos on News Literacy

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How can you help your students begin to separate fact from fiction in the news? This collection of videos and resources will get you started.

In our increasingly information-saturated society, it can be challenging for young people (or any of us!) to sort fact from fiction in journalism. We get news from all directions, at all times, on multiple channels; citizen reporting competes with major corporate conglomerates for our attention and our trust. As we get ready to celebrate News Engagement Day on October 6th, what can you do to help your students become more critical consumers of news media? The video playlist below should provide a good entry point to the discussion, and then you'll find some resources for digging deeper.

Video Playlist: Truth and The News

1. How to Choose Your News - Damon Brown (04:49)
This excellent video primer from TED-Ed explains how to find and consume your news thoughtfully and with the least chance of being manipulated. Visit the TED-Ed website for a full lesson that you can customize for your own classroom.

2. News Literacy at NYC's Intermediate School 303 (07:27)
The Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University considers itself the birthplace of the idea of news literacy. In this video, middle school kids in Coney Island learn to consume news responsibly, using curriculum the Center developed.

3. Why the News Isn't Really the News (02:22)
Self-proclaimed "media manipulator" Ryan Holiday, author of Trust Me, I'm Lying, reveals his trade secrets for getting false anonymous stories to the main page of major news outlets in this animated explainer by Epipheo. An excellent bonus video on the same topic is " How False News Can Spread," from TED-Ed.

4. Markham Nolan: How to Separate Fact and Fiction Online (13:30)
In this TED Talk, journalist Markham Nolan, managing editor at digital generation news outlet Vocativ, shares pro tips for how to verify information in real-time and how to sift for authenticity in the deluge.

5. News Literacy Is... (03:51)
A little low-fi, but earnest, this video from the News Literacy Project features teachers and students talking about why news literacy is valuable. The non-profit offers workshops that connect reporters to schools and resources for middle and high school teachers.

6. News Literacy Project Trains Young People to Be Skeptical Media Consumers (06:54)
PBS Newshour takes us inside classrooms where teachers are using curriculum developed by the News Literacy Project, including a high school in Bethesda, Maryland, and a middle school in Washington, DC.

7. Why News Matters (01:54)
This peppy graphic video from the McCormick Foundation makes a pitch for the value of news in our communities and explains why news literacy is a key skill to cultivate for an engaged citizenry. The Foundation offers resources for both students and teachers, and gives grants in Chicago.

8. Churnalism Tutorial (02:24)
Although this useful Web tool by the Sunlight Foundation has sadly been retired, and the website it was inspired by is on hiatus for lack of funding, I think the video is still worth a watch as it reminds us just how much of our news is based on repackaged press releases.

9. Not All Scientific Studies are Created Equal - David H. Schwartz (04:27)
Okay, I got a little TED-crazy in this playlist, but I can't ignore a great resource. This one zeroes in on the different kinds of scientific studies one hears about in the news, and it gives viewers some tools for scoping out their validity. See the full lesson on the TED-Ed website.

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

More Resources on News Literacy

I'm sure you're convinced at this point that our need for news literacy is ever-increasing as the volume of content we consume from all different sources grows. But it can be very difficult to teach and even harder to measure. I've gathered some teaching resources to help you get started. As always, chime in with your own questions, ideas, or favorite resources in the comments below.

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5-Minute Film Festival: 9 Videos on News Literacy

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How can you help your students begin to separate fact from fiction in the news? This collection of videos and resources will get you started. In our increasingly information-saturated society, it can be challenging for young people (or any of us!) to sort fact from fiction in journalism.