Praxis Journalism (5224)

News literacy is the ability to judge the credibility of news and other information and to recognize the standards of fact- based journalism. It is a subset of media literacy focused on whether information is trustworthy and how it was produced. Teachers of journalism use news literacy lessons so students can evaluate sources as reporters and as consumers. Organizations such as the News Literacy Project, founded in 2008, publish classroom materials built around distinguishing news from opinion, advertising, propaganda and raw information.

Research by Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew of the Stanford History Education Group found that professional fact- checkers judged websites more accurately and more quickly than historians or students because they read laterally: instead of studying the page itself (reading vertically), they opened new tabs to see what other sources said about the site and its sponsors. Vertical reading is easily fooled by professional design, an official-sounding name or an "About" page written by the source itself. Mike Caulfield's SIFT method packages lateral reading into four moves.

Stop and check your Investigate the source reaction

Trace claims to original Find better coverage context

Tracing to the primary source is essential: find the original study, court document, full video, data set or full quotation rather than relying on a summary. Students should also check the date, the author's expertise, the funding behind a site, whether other reputable outlets confirm the claim, and whether images have been reused from earlier events through a reverse image search. Emotional reactions such as outrage or delight are a signal to slow down, because false content is often designed to provoke sharing.

Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan's 2017 report for the Council of Europe distinguished three types of information disorder using two dimensions: whether content is false and whether it is shared with intent to harm. Misinformation is false but shared without intent to harm, such as a person reposting an outdated rumor they believe. Disinformation is false and deliberately created or shared to deceive or harm. Malinformation is genuine information shared to cause harm, such as leaking private details to harass someone.

false, no intent false and to harm meant to harm

Based on the information disorder framework of Wardle and Derakhshan

The two circles represent falseness and intent to harm. Disinformation sits where they overlap. A deepfake made to damage a candidate is disinformation; the same clip reshared by someone who believes it is real becomes misinformation.

News Inform with verified facts

Attribution, multiple sources, neutral language, news section label

Opinion Persuade or argue a position

Labels such as editorial, column, op-ed or review; first person or clear stance

Sponsored content (native Promote a product or brand in news- advertising) like form

Labels such as sponsored, paid post or presented by; brand-friendly framing

Advertising Sell a product, service or idea

Paid placement, brand logos, calls to action

Propaganda Advance an agenda, often by manipulating emotion

One-sided claims, loaded language, hidden or official sponsors

Manipulated Media and Cognitive Bias

Deepfakes are synthetic audio or video, often generated with machine learning, that make people appear to say or do things they never did. Cheapfakes use simple editing, such as slowing a clip, cutting context or mislabeling an old photo. Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept information that fits existing beliefs and reject what does not. Filter bubbles, a term popularized by Eli Pariser's 2011 book, describe how personalization algorithms limit what users see; echo chambers form when people mainly encounter like-minded sources. Both make false content harder to notice.

A student editor wants to report a viral video showing a fight in the school parking lot, captioned as happening "yesterday." The adviser models SIFT: stop before reposting, investigate who posted it, look for better coverage or official statements, and trace the video with a reverse image search of key frames. The search shows the clip was posted two years earlier at another school. The staff learns that the burden of verification falls on the publisher, not

Teaching news literacy works best through practice with real examples. Students can sort a set of headlines into news, opinion, sponsored content and advertising; compare coverage of one event across several outlets; trace a viral claim to its origin; and audit their own news feeds for filter-bubble effects. Asking students to explain how they know a claim is true builds the same habit of verification their own reporting requires.

When an item asks for the BEST first step in evaluating an unfamiliar website, choose leaving the site to see what independent sources say about it (lateral reading), not reading the site's own About page or judging its design. When an item describes genuine but private information shared to embarrass someone, the term is malinformation,