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Knight study shows hope, raises issues
The 2016 Knight Foundation’s study of student and teacher beliefs, Future of the First Amendment, has some good news about student beliefs but is equally troubling about what teachers think.
The study showed that 91 percent of students agree people “should be able to express unpopular opinions” compared with 83 percent in 2004.
Results also showed students who more frequently consume news and actively engage with news on social media demonstrate stronger support for First Amendment freedoms.
Teacher responses, on the other hand, create some areas of concern.
[pullquote]When asked if high school students should be allowed to report on controversial issues in their student newspapers without the approval of school authorities, 66 percent of students strongly or mildly agreed. Teachers had a 61 percent disapproval rate.[/pullquote]
• When asked if high school students should be allowed to report on controversial issues in their student newspapers without the approval of school authorities, 66 percent of students strongly or mildly agreed. Teachers had a 61 percent disapproval rate.
• When asked whether students should be allowed to express their opinions about teachers and school administrators on Facebook or other social media without worrying about being punished by teachers or school administrators for what they say, 33 percent of teachers strongly or mildly agreed while 54 percent of students did.
• When asked whether schools should be allowed to discipline students who post material on social media outside of school that school officials say is offensive, 28 percent of students strongly or mildly agree while 52 percent of teachers did.
The survey, compiled by Kenneth Dautrich of the Stats Group, polled 11,998 high students and 726 teachers. It is the sixth Knight FoundationFuture of the First Amendment since 2004. Past results can be found here.
Read MoreTeachable moments in journalism
As we discuss fake and alternate news and work them into our classroom and newsroom activities, we should also look at journalists’ social responsibilities to their communities.
Take, for example, this lead sequence from a New York Times article:
Warm welcome for Syrians in a country about to ban them
CHICAGO — On Friday afternoon, a group of suburban synagogue members clustered at O’Hare International Airport, waiting to greet one of the last Syrian refugee families to be accepted in the United States, to give them the warmest possible welcome to a country that no longer wanted their kind.
In Washington, the presidential limousine was already speeding toward the Pentagon, where President Trump would sign a paper officially slamming the door shut on Syrian refugees. But here the volunteers had yellow roses, more warm coats than the newcomers would need and, a few miles away, an apartment ready with a doormat that said “welcome” in 17 languages.
“Welcome to chicag Hope you make your selfs at home” said a sign made by one of the youngest members of the group….
What are the ways we can critique the lead and the accompanying story (some might be great, some not so great)?
- A when lead
- Localization
- Lack of identified sources for the first six graphs
- Good observation of what the reporter saw
- And more in journalistic style.
Because we always look for additional exercises using commercial reporting, we might say, “How do you avoid the when lead and ask students to rewrite the lead (I’ll leave that to you).
We might also ask students to look at the headline: “Warm welcome for Syrians in a country about to ban them”.
What points might we expect students to note:
- The head does not repeat the lead
- Is the head neutral?
- What has been added in the head that the lead does not have?
- And more.
- How might they rewrite the head and why?
We might also ask students to look at the photo and the cutline: “Volunteers from the Am Shalom synagogue in Glencoe, Ill., waited on Friday at Chicago O’Hare International Airport to greet one of the last Syrian families to be accepted in the United States.”
What points might we expect students to note:
- Does the headline contain all the needed information?
- Does it reflect the information and intent of the photo? What might they change or add?
- And more.
As summary questions, we might ask:
- Does the package of head, lead, story photo and cutline present a complete story?
- What, if anything is missing? What might be added?
- And more.
In taking all these steps would we have captured the essence, the social responsibility of the reporting?
To me, all this information lacked something: an approach to capture the reader into the context and essence of the story that came with my New York Times news alert on my phone to tease me to link to the story:
One of the last Syrian families to enter the US found flowers, volunteers and a nation about to bar people like them.
We can still discuss various elements of this teaser:
- Is it objective?
- Does it make sense?
- Does it capture the reader?
- Does it reflect the social responsibility of the media?
- Does it make use of multiple platform approaches to tell a cohensive story?
And so much more.
Read MoreMore resources for
alternative facts, fake news
With the events surrounding Inauguration Day comes a new journalistic concept, alternative facts. As we teach our students to be aware of fake news and now alternate facts, check out some additional resources that might lead to lessons and activities that rebuild trust in journalists – and journalism.
• Kellyanne Conway says Donald Trump’s team has ‘alternative facts.’ Which pretty much says it all
• Student journalists especially vulnerable to Trump’s press-as-enemy rhetoric
• Don’t let Trump get away with ‘alternative facts’
• What does a news organization optimized for trust look like
And, as a lead-in to JEA’s One Book reading for this this spring, 1984:
George Orwell on ‘alternative facts’
The links take you to our other posts to identify and combat varieties of fake news.:
• Censored news is fake news
• Addressing issues involved in fake news
• Our tasks for the future: Building a Tool Kit of Trust, Integrity
Censored news, including that created by prior-review limited outlets and insistence on alternative “facts,” leads to distortion and misinformation.
That is something we must address through leadership, enlightened publication and community education.
Read More
Our tasks for the future:
Building a Tool Kit of Trust, integrity
Trust.
Trust in sources, information, journalists. Trust in audiences. Trust in education.
Ways to help student journalists and their audience fight fake news and bad journalism begin in middle and high school, and especially in journalism programs.
Helping journalism students and their audiences fight fake news and sloppy reporting should include understanding what type of journalism is involved. Bill Kovach and Tom Riosenstiel identified the four types in the book Blur.
Each type provides its own journalistic function and each can play roles in fake news:
• Journalism of Verification: “a traditional model that puts the highest value on accuracy and context.”
• Journalism of Assertion: “a newer model that puts the highest value on immediacy and volume and in so doing tends to become a passive conduit of information.”
• Journalism of Affirmation: “a new political media that builds loyalty less on accuracy, completeness, or verification than on affirming the beliefs of its audiences, and so tends to cherry-pick information that serves that purpose.”
• Interest-Group Journalism: “targeted Web sites or pieces of work, often investigative, that are usually funded by special interests rather than media institutions and designed to look like news.”
In the third deditiion of their book Elements of Journalism, Kovach and Rosestiel changed the last category to Journalism of Aggregation.
Studying the four types can help scholastic journalism prepare for a Tool Kit of Trust, preferably without censorship and prior review.
Our Toolkit of Trust would provide materials and journalism resources in at least these six areas:
• Fighting bad journalism
• Uncovering and educating about, then limiting the spread of fake news
• Preventing charges of fake journalism aimed at our student media
• Limiting impact of censored student media
• Uncovering sponsored news
• Building trust in journalistic values through gatekeeping that stresses journalistic responsibility
We feel these areas can be the focus for the war agains fake news and bad journalism.
Because of new-found attention directed toward critical news thinking and news literacy, including proposed California legislation, we hope to, by next fall, share educational materials that:
• Focus on answering the “why” news question to make the “what” meaningful.
• Help your communities understand the need for communications/sense making responsibilities as they question authorities.
• Once journalists have questioned authorities, question them about the quality, motive and detail of their information. Remain skeptical until all questions are answered.
• Double down and stress what speech is protected and why and its importance to the well-being of a democracy.
• Show diversity in all its meaning as a guiding light for scholastic journalism. Let all people and ideas be represented.
• Remember objectivity as a process remains the core of scholastic journalism. It’s a process rooted in truth, credibility and coherence as essential, even as reporters are skeptical and challenging of sources.
• Strive to focus on solutions (journalism) to the issues and problems coverage raises.
• Protect and empower the whole process of fighting fake and misleading news by supporting and becoming involved in states’ New Voices legislation.
• Stress journalists’ social responsibility in a factionalized media/political environment.
• Fight the spread and use of fake news in all its forms and assist student journalists and their communities understand, respond to and counter it.
If you or your students have other areas you feel would help your program and/or scholastic journalism, please use the comment form and let us know.
In a recent Student Press Law Center Ball of Rights promotion, the words “censorship is deplorable” appear. We would add to that “prior review is insidiously deplorable.” Both lead to misinformation and distortion. Both limit journalistic integrity.
Both are at the core of fake news we need to change.
Resources:
• When it comes to legal issues, journalism schools leave students unprepared, a new study argues
• Six skills every journalist should possess
• Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post truth” world
• Fake news? Bias? How colleges teach students not to be duped
Addressing issues involved in fake news
According to a study in a Pew Research Center report released recently, 88 percent of U.S. adults say they believe fake news is causing either a “great deal of confusion” or at least “some confusion” when it comes to people’s understanding of current events.
Categorically false lies-posing-as-breaking-news-stories often start as reportorial problems. Scholastic journalists can begin to address this issue by addressing the following problems:
- Lack of credibility (sources, information and author)
- Insufficient crap detection skills/no training in truth seeking
- Absence of identified sources
- Incomplete information
- Unclear or unknown author intent (as in satire/low harm fake news)
- Lack of context and explanation (of information and meaning of terms/concepts)
- Confirmation bias/filter bubbles/discrediting of mainstream media
- Inability to recognize native advertising
The Pew report also showed:
• 23 percent of Americans say they shared fake news at some point
• 14 percent reported they shared a story knowing it was false
• 45 percent said they were somewhat confident they could identify (39 percent said very confident) completely made up articles
Based on exercises I did with journalism students, and on a a recent national study, we think they might be overconfident.
Each year I would present journalism students with fake story assignments to see if they would think critically through story information. Students did not catch the questionable information, even though they had obvious opportunities to ask questions that would show the assignment’s flaws – and had been told at the beginning of the year we would do an assignment like this.
For example, the students interviewed the principal and assistant principal about the introduction of drug-sniffing ferrets that would go through student lockers at night because of recent evidence of increased drug use in school.
Ferrets, of course, could work through lockers more easily than dogs.
Administrators gave students detailed information about the need for such searches and how the ferrets would operate. They also shared information about a training center for ferrets in a nearby community and studies that showed why ferrets were better than dogs. They included a phone number so students could follow up with trainers. They shared the name of the police department contact.
The story, of course, was completely fake.
The phone number did not work. No such study existed and the local police contact had no knowledge of such a switch from drug-sniffing dogs to ferrets.
Fake news is not new. What is new is its ability to subvert the critical thinking abilities of even more people, especially students, because of the internet and social media, as a recent study showed.
“Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the Internet can be summed up in one word: ‘bleak,'” the study reported.
From middle school to college students, the study’s authors reported, “we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation.”
And these findings might not reflect the real problem in schools where censored media produce fake news.
The Pew report also asked who its study respondents think should be responsible for stopping fake news. Briefly, respondents listed the public, the government and elected officials, search engines and social media bear responsibility.
Solutions should start in journalism classrooms.
Call it news literacy, crap detection or just critical thinking skills, solutions lie with those students who either produce, evaluate or consume information. They then, as adults, might not make mistakes similar to those see in the Pew study.
We have no magic promise of internet filters to quickly tell us what is true and what is to be avoided. Those filters have not worked and may have contributed to the problems.
What we do have is a journalism foundation of news values and ethical guidelines.
And that is the subject of the next look at fake news.
Resources:
• Ten questions for fake news
• Skills and strategies: Fake news v real news: determining the reliability of sources
• Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post truth” world
• To fix fake news, look yellow journalism
• Fake news? Bias? How colleges teach students not to be duped
• Flawed news is not fake news
Read More