News Literacy

Post date: Feb 6, 2017 2:23:26 PM

News (Media) Literacy

The clip below explains to students why news literacy is so important especially in this digital age.

“Cheryl Wills, “ If you are watching journalists because they are singing the same song as you do, then what’s the point?”

The most profound communications revolution since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press seems to make it harder, not easier, to determine the truth. The digital revolution is characterized by a flood of information and misinformation that news consumers can access from anywhere at any time.

News aggregators, bloggers, pundits, provocateurs, commentators and “citizen journalists” are competing with traditional journalists for public attention. Uninformed opinion masquerades as news. Lines are blurring between legitimate journalism and the propaganda, entertainment, self-promotion and unmediated information on the Internet.

This superabundance of information has made it imperative that citizens learn to judge the reliability of news reports and other sources of information that is passed along their social networks. The Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University was created to strengthen those skills.

The course that emerged is the foundation of this new discipline dedicated to the post-modern task of sifting the Web for trustworthy information essential to the ancient endeavor of independent decision-making.