With the election just a few short weeks away, Americans are being deluged with information on candidates, policies and propositions — as well as rumors, deepfakes, memes and lies. Online, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sort fact from fiction amid the noise of disinformation efforts, foreign social media campaigns and algorithms that amplify divisive content.
At Inside Philanthropy, we’ve reported that disinformation poses a major threat to democracy and what interested funders can do to push back against it. In addition to pressing the government for greater oversight over social media platforms — where much, though not all, mis- and disinformation is spread — one of the most effective ways funders can help is by supporting efforts to teach media literacy, and in particular news literacy, the ability to evaluate news and information and decide what is credible and reliable and what is not.
It’s such a hot topic that California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year signed into law a measure requiring K-12 schools in the nation’s most populous state to integrate media literacy instruction into four of the core, required subjects areas: English language arts, science, mathematics and history/social science. In so doing, California joined the small band of states that require students to learn media literacy, including New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware and Texas.
Now, the News Literacy Project is partnering with the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to help students in the nation’s second-largest school district learn news literacy skills before they graduate high school.
Thanks to a three-year, $1.15 million grant from the Broad Foundation, LAUSD will be joining the News Literacy Project’s District Fellowship Program, which offers resources and support to teachers and school leaders so that they may design and implement plans for news and media literacy for their students.
“We feel that students are at a civic disadvantage if they aren’t taught how to be news literate and to engage with the news and information that they come across every day,” said News Literacy Project President and CEO Charles Salter. “And we feel that public education is failing to meet one of its fundamental mandates of preparing its learners to be active participants in a democratic society if they aren’t teaching these types of skills.”
Founded in 2008, the News Literacy Project is dedicated solely to developing and implementing news literacy education for K-12 students. The organization is entirely supported by philanthropy and provides a variety of resources and professional development opportunities for educators, all free of charge.
The News Literacy Project’s partnership with the Broad Foundation and LAUSD came about thanks to leading California philanthropist Melanie Lundquist. An LAUSD graduate, she sits on the board of the News Literacy Project and is the organization’s largest individual donor.
Other News Literacy Project funders include the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Argosy Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Ray and Dagmar Dolby Fund, The Grable Foundation, Annenberg Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The partnership will also create a blueprint for other school districts in California and around the nation.
“We’re all being bombarded with information,” said Broad Chief Strategy Officer Suzy Jack. “And the types [of information] and how we’re receiving that information is changing rapidly. There are so many positives to that, but with that come real challenges. So being able to equip our young people… with the tools to kind of sift through this information and really make informed choices… We really just consider that to be a new basic necessity.”
“Two sides of the same coin”
The Broad Foundation is a major funder in Los Angeles and is largely known for its work across arts, science, biomedical research and education. Recently, however, it’s begun expanding into a new area of focus that it calls civic partnerships. This work prioritizes civic engagement and how to ensure Los Angeles has a strong civic fabric.
“We’ve been really thinking about how to continue to expand our education work, and in the past couple of years, we’ve been building out a civic portfolio,” Jack said.
Some of Broad’s grantees in this space include the Center for the Future of Los Angeles and New Urban Leadership, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, LA Governance Reform Project, and OUR LA Coalition. Broad’s two biggest investments through its civic portfolio are the LA Local News Initiative, which Jack describes as a community-based effort to add trusted, reliable, hyper-local news in Los Angeles, and the News Literacy Project.
“It’s two sides of the same coin,” Jack said. “Through LA Local news, [we’re] hoping there’s an increase in the supply of local journalism, and then for News Literacy Project — this is in perfect synergy with our education work, how we can provide tools to educators so they can equip students to actually be able to make informed choices about the news that they’re just being bombarded with… and hopefully, support their participation in civic life.”
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District Fellowship Program
The News Literacy Project also seeks to address the reasons why news literacy education isn’t more widely accepted and available to students. For one, it’s still not recognized as a subject with enough academic merit to be invested in. Another big issue is that there simply aren’t enough practitioner models for educators and school districts that do want to teach news literacy in their curricula.
To address the latter, the News Literacy Project is working to give districts across the country a model that they can follow. The principal tool for doing so is its District Fellowship Program, which LAUSD is now a part of. School districts commit to work with the News Literacy Project for at least two years, during which NLP will help them design, develop and launch a program that will guarantee all students receive news literacy education before they graduate.
“We feel that in states that don’t already have a requirement, these districts then become proofs of concept to show that… this can happen. It doesn’t cost a lot of money, doesn’t require new teachers, new courses or anything like that. It can be done,” Salter said. In states that do have a mandate, as is the case with California, these districts become successful models other districts can then follow.
The District Fellowship Program is now in its third year and is being used in 17 districts across 13 states, representing more than 1.1 million students who will receive news literacy education. The News Literacy Project is also helping to build coalitions across the U.S. to pass laws that will require news literacy be taught in all 50 states.
The three principal resources the News Literacy Project offers are: Checkology, a virtual online platform that has more than 20 lessons teachers can use and customize; “The Sift,” a weekly newsletter that provides a rundown of news literacy issues and trends, as well as discussion prompts, teaching ideas and classroom guides; and a resource library that has lesson plans, posters and infographics that teachers can use in their classrooms for offline learners.
“Our mantra is we want to meet educators where they are,” Salter said. “And we know that not every educator has access to enough technology or the right kind of technology.
Why news literacy matters
Dealing with outright disinformation is a challenge; additionally, news habits, political ideologies and biases can all contribute to difficulty parsing what’s true and what isn’t. And while everyone at any age should learn news literacy — and media literacy writ large — the best time to teach news literacy is when people are young, Salter explained, particularly in the K-12 education space. This is a time when political ideologies and news and information habits haven’t been fully formed yet. It’s important to learn these skills before they enter adulthood and become first-time voters.
“We live in the most complex information landscape in human history, and it’s been proven that the human brain is not actually wired to receive this much information this quickly,” Salter said. “We simply cannot process it.”
In order for a democratic society to be stable, it is essential for its citizens not only to be well informed, Salter said, but capable of informing themselves so that they can make good decisions for themselves, their families and their communities. This, Salter says, is “an essential 21st-century life skill.” If schools fail to teach this vital skill, they are doing a great disservice to its students and the nation as a whole. For any funders interested in pushing back against disinformation, and for those interested in ensuring that U.S. democracy not only survives but thrives, supporting news literacy education is a key space for investment, one that is sorely needed at the moment.
“News literacy education is possible and necessary for all students, but at this point in time, its position in the education system, it absolutely requires philanthropic support to create these models and take these steps that we’re taking,” Salter said. “It’s not a silver bullet to everything that ails our democratic discourse right now, but it is a foundational, fundamental piece, and it’s something tangible that we can make progress on for future generations.”
