Why Some News is Suspect
As we have seen in recent elections in the US and the UK, information with questionable sources doesn't always work in the best interests of the voting public.
Misinformation (which is content that is inadvertently mistaken and just plain wrong) and disinformation (which is a deliberate attempt to convey wrong information) are able to penetrate the public marketplace of ideas. Reliable journalism is needed to help identify what can be trusted. The consequences of information that is “unmediated” – without a journalistic check – have proven to be damaging to society. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s, a lie could be repeated as often as required in order for the public to accept it as true.
As you work through the chapters, we will explore various themes regarding the essential nature of the news and its various expressions. We will see how the news is the basic building block of interpersonal communication at every level of society. We will examine how news and the media are central to our functioning as citizens because they allow us to experience the world in all of its complexities, whether it is through traditional media, mass media, or, perhaps most significantly, social media. The revolution brought on by digital culture and its impact on the news is being felt now more than ever.
Why is this important? Why is reliable and literate news essential? Because of one basic human quality: people like to talk in order to communicate.
We like to exchange everything from ideas, to culture, to arguments. We especially love stories, humor, and jokes. It is who we are as a species, and it has been that way for as long as people have lived in communities. It's what makes us human, and if we are deprived of that connection for too long, like every other living creature deprived of an essential need, we weaken and lose our capacity for being part of something larger than ourselves. It is unnatural to live without that human‐to‐human contact. It is the news, in the broadest sense of the word, which binds us together.
“Surprise” and “Delight”
It's worth exploring these two simple, yet complicated and interconnected notions.
“Surprise” in the news indicates a range of complexities: it includes reading, hearing, viewing, or downloading something that is relatively unknown to you as a news consumer. It can be benign (as in “it may rain later today”) or be more significant or ominous (as in “a tornado is approaching”). It can be a slight delay in your morning commute or a massive 10‐car pile‐up on the freeway.
“Surprise” can also have more immediate consequences. It can be the election of a new political leader. It can be the sudden removal of a highly controversial or famous person from a high‐profile position. The implications of that kind of “surprise” can be life‐changing, and people may need this information so they know how best to respond.
“Surprise” can elicit a simple “I didn't know that” response.
It can also evoke a more powerful “I'm outraged by what I just heard” response.
Should we flee for our lives? Should we stay calm and wait for more clarity? Should we go out and demonstrate in the streets, or should we hide in the basement? The “surprise” response carries with it a greater range of possibilities and excitement, even dangers.
“Delight” is the other side of that informational coin. It connects the news consumer with barely‐known ideas and remote communities that can become recognized and understood thanks to the ability of the news to show how and why there is some degree of resonance. It can be as simple as a community gathering for a street fair to celebrate a local holiday in the neighborhood. It can be a wedding feast in a far‐off village. If reporters do their jobs properly, the foreign can become familiar. And what may have once seemed beyond our reach now enters into our world of understanding. We can share ideas as we see fit. We can take more control of our world, because the unknown has become more familiar. That is what the news is capable of doing at its best and most civic‐minded.
Why the News Has Appeal
Decontextualized information, or information that may be based on references outside of our knowledge or experience, makes no sense to us because the information is too unfamiliar. It is not framed in a way that we can recognize. The absence of cultural signifiers prevents us from understanding why this kind of news is being presented to us. It has little relevance because there is no context. So we click on something else, or turn the page, or switch to another podcast or station. If our imaginations are not engaged, we tend not to care enough to stick with the story.
The “why” of news literacy – and how to achieve it.
We need to know how and why the news came to be an important part of our imaginations and intellect. If the news is to be part of our lives, it needs to be handled carefully, creatively, even skeptically. We need to know where the news comes from, who is creating it, and what their cultural assumptions and motivations are. That way, we, as curious citizens and as news consumers, can make more informed choices about the world around us.
This is where the idea of news literacy comes in.
The concept is not particularly new, but it assumes a sense of urgency in these media‐saturated times. Some examples of institutions working towards promoting news literacy include
the News Literacy Project, designed to help school children assess information on the Internet.
local libraries, such as the state system in North Dakota, which works with readers to guide them on what constitutes reliable information.
the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which has an impressive curriculum that is being taught throughout the university.
various institutions in Europe –the European Centre for News Literacy in Poland, the Reuters Centre for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, and the Media Studies Department at the London School of Economics.
The Appeal of News Literacy
News literacy is the best way to think about and respond to all the media choices that are available. News literacy is a tool we can use to sharpen our instincts about the news and to sort out the important from the merely interesting. Most of all, news literacy is about sustaining our democratic values by questioning what we consume via various media outlets.
This is not to say that we need to be overly suspicious or cynical. But in this digital food court, not everything on offer is worth consuming. We need to choose wisely. That doesn't mean that our news diet will be exclusively of kale, quinoa, and broccoli. We will need some sweets along the way. Just not perhaps as a main course…
“How Do We Know?”
How do we know what we know? Just because it’s in a newspaper or on a website, does that mean it’s true? Where does this information come from? Is it reliable or merely a bit of unsubstantiated gossip? Why should we trust this information? And what might happen if we don’t ask skeptical and tough questions?
This is what journalists and informed citizens need to ask, both of themselves and of the people who are providing the information. We need to demand that our media be more transparent. This means asking news sources to be open with the public about where the stories are originating, who the sources of information are, and, if the sources can't be identified, why.
We need