Community Matters: Literacy in media key to democracy

The health of our democracy depends on people being reasonably well informed about current events, but that’s not always happening these days.|

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

- Thomas Jefferson

Are you informationally literate?

It’s not so easy being well-informed in 2019 with powerful tech giants like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and countless pseudo digital news platforms and blogs constantly blaring misinformation disguised as real news. Fake news is nothing new, of course, but the internet and social media have made it extraordinarily easier to spread and far more difficult to contain.

And it’s not just on the web. Have you watched Fox News lately, where the evening “news” programs utilize small bits of real news to thinly mask conservative propaganda? CNN often does much the same thing, only with a liberal slant. Viewers often choose one over the other so that the information they consume reinforces their own personal biases and world views. It may be easier, but it’s hardly an effective way to stay well-informed.

As noted in the quote from Jefferson above, the health of our democracy depends on people being reasonably well informed about current events in their community, state, nation and the world. But that’s not always happening these days. Ever since the 2016 presidential election, during which false, hyper-partisan information on hoax websites frequently outperformed legitimate news accounts, the danger of having a poorly informed electorate has become glaringly apparent.

Adults here in Sonoma County are huge newspaper and online news consumers and have access to high quality sources for well-researched world, national and local news reports. Readers in Petaluma are fortunate to have both the award-winning Argus-Courier and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Press Democrat. Both papers employ talented journalists who endeavor to get the facts on the issues that matter to you. With Facebook and Google having gobbled up much of the advertising revenue that traditionally funded such local journalism, many communities across America no longer have a reputable local news source. That’s certainly not the case here in Sonoma County.

Still, not everyone, especially young people, bother to read newspapers or access legitimate news websites. This growing media illiteracy problem grabbed the attention of State Senator Bill Dodd, who represents Petaluma. He subsequently championed a new law which encourages media literacy in California public schools to help students learn to differentiate legitimate information sources from advertising, political propaganda and the ubiquitous falsehoods that abound on the internet.

Inspired by a Stanford University study showing that 82 percent of middle school students struggled to distinguish advertisements from news stories, the new law, which goes into effect July 1, requires the State Department of Education to make resources and instructional material on media literacy available to public schools while also providing development programs for teachers.

Casa Grande High School teacher and school librarian Nathan Libecap, who testified before a state legislature subcommittee in support of Dodd’s bill, is a local pioneer on media literacy in our schools. With credentials to teach media and digital literacy, he both instructs students on how to decipher fake from real news and supports English and social sciences teachers seeking to empower their students to make informed decisions using accurate information.

Libecap told me last week that Petaluma City Schools utilizes Common Sense Media, a leading independent nonprofit providing unbiased information, as well as Newsela, an educational technology company publishing news articles from reputable sources such as the Associated Press and the Washington Post. As a result, Libecap says he and fellow teachers are giving kids the tools needed to locate and use reliable, fact-based information.

Such work is hugely important, especially when you stop to consider that 23-year-old YouTube sensation Logan Paul this week is hyping his new “documentary” on the Flat Earth Society’s convention with an ambiguous trailer that’s already gotten 1.2 million views. By shamelessly legitimizing such zany conspiracy theories, Paul only lessens the chance that his young followers will ever be able to tell fact from fiction.

Then again, last week’s student marches here and around the country demanding meaningful governmental action to stem the devastating effects of climate change show that not all kids are lost is a miasma of fake digital news. Their protests were, after all, based solidly on scientific facts.

(John Burns is former publisher of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. He can be reached at john.burns@arguscourier.com.)

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