LAFAYETTE, La. — KATC and our parent company, The E.W. Scripps Company, have partnered with the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit to help the next generation of news consumers discern credible information from misinformation in today's media.
Dr. William R. Davie, a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette says news literacy has reached a critical moment.
"This is like nothing we've ever seen before in my lifetime," said professor Davie. "We've lost that clear delineation between fact-based reporting and opinionating. The public as an entity by and large is very skeptical of what they’re calling mainstream media."
Professor Davie says there are a number of factors contributing to the problem, including cable news and social media.
"You see on television so much of a seamless sort of transfer from news show to opinion show back to news show," he said. "People are living in a filter bubble, where they tend to believe the sources that resonate with their own opinions. What we need are facts that everyone agrees upon and then can discuss the opinions to be drawn from them.”
His advice for media consumers?
"Take in as many sources as possible. But most people don't do that, and they are particularly disinclined to listen to adversarial viewpoints when in fact we should
And for those in the media?
“I think we need to return to a clearly marked path between fact-based reporting and opining.”
The second National News Literacy Week, presented by The E.W. Scripps Company and the nonprofit News Literacy Project, aims to raise awareness of news literacy as a fundamental life skill through a national public awareness campaign. The goal of the social media campaign is to encourage audiences to visitNewsLiteracyWeek.org, which will provide educators, students and the general public with easy-to-implement tips and tools to help them sort fact from fiction in today's media landscape.
Learn more at NewsLiteracyWeek.org or Test your news literacy fitness with our quiz at NewsLiteracyWeek.org
