Faculty & Staff
Inquiry
Media Bias
According to a recent, year-long study by Stanford School of Education, 70% of students in grades 6-8 could not distinguish between fake news and authentic news on the web. Additionally, according to the Pew Research Center, a majority of adults in this country are getting their news in real time from their social media feeds, uncurated spaces where falsehoods often thrive.
We know that recognizing fake news and it's more subtle sidekick, bias, requires the cultivation of a critical mind set as well as a core set of skills. This is something that we learn in Digital Fluency classes. However, for those of you who would like to familiarize yourself ahead of class or give yourself a refresher, here are some helpful resources.
See the News from All-Sides
All Sides display the day’s top news stories from the Left, Center and Right of the political spectrum side-by-side so that readers can decide the truth for themselves. Read their editorial philosophy. In addition to highlighting the day's top stories, readers can explore the news via topic or issue, such as immigration, LGBT rights, environment, criminal justice and more.
Courtesy of AllSides.com
How to choose your news
Evaluate Websites with NewsGuard
Trained journalists at NewsGuard assess news for credibility and transparency and assign news websites with either a red or green rating to show their trustworthiness. They also create detailed write-ups of each website, telling you who owns it, what kind of content it features and why they gave it a particular rating. Using NewsGuard is a great way to build your understanding of different news sources. You can install NewsGuard's browser extension so that their rating icons appear next to links on search engines and social media feeds.