Reporting What Matters

RHCJC
Reporting What Matters

RHCJC
Reporting What Matters

RHCJC

Media Literacy

Explore tips, action steps and resources to help you verify content, think critically and stay informed in today’s media landscape.

Tips and Tricks for Evaluating Information

Check Your Emotions: Is the information worded in such a way as to make you feel something: anger, sadness, jealousy or loneliness? Reliable sources do not seek to inflame but to inform.
Avoid Black & White Thinking: Is the information presented in stark terms of good and bad, where someone was a villain and someone a hero? News, like people, is rarely all good or all bad. Reliable sources want to put issues, events and the actions of individuals into a broader context.
Verify Images & Videos: Is there an accompanying image or video that supposedly supported the information being presented, and does the image or video actually fit the information being presented? Reliable sources will use images to enhance or illustrate reporting that informs. Images that do not reflect what is being reported often are meant to mislead.
Match Headlines to Content: Do the big words (the headline) reflect the small words (what is reported after the headline)? Like images, headlines can be distorted to mislead and misinform.
Use Common Sense: Does the information make common sense? Trust your instincts when something seems too outrageous or convenient to be true.
Think About Your Own Biases And Worldview: This is what we call confirmation bias. As humans, we all gravitate to information that confirms what we already believe. To be truly informed, however, we have to understand and overcome our own biases.
Check the Source: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X are platforms, not sources. Who actually posted the information? Is this an organization or person you should trust?

Action Steps When You Encounter Potential Misinformation

  • Check your own emotions and biases. Am I being manipulated into this reaction?
  • Look beyond the platform to the person or organization providing the information. Who is it, and can you trust the poster to be accurate?
  • Pause before you share. Don’t share or pass along the information, even in conversation, unless you are confident the information comes from a reliable source with a track record of accuracy and completeness.
  • Do a bit more looking. Are other posters or outlets reporting substantially the same thing? If not, pause again and do more looking.
  • Diversify your news sources. Intentionally build out your news sources by following a number of trusted outlets — locally, statewide, and nationally — from a variety of viewpoints. Social media platforms are run by computer algorithms that are designed to feed you more of what you already have seen. Keep in mind that, in order to keep these outlets in your feeds, you will have to occasionally interact with them.

Learn More: Trusted Resources

The Center for News Literacy

The center was founded at Stony Brook University in 2006 and provides a number of resources, including a free news literacy course.

American Library Association

The largest organization of professional information people in the world has been a pioneer in information literacy and has since worked to incorporate media literacy for more than 15 years.

National Association for Media Literacy Education

The organization was founded in 1997 as a vehicle for organizing a national media literacy conference. The impetus behind the gathering was the explosion of streaming and digital sources that were overwhelming the traditional media.

NewseumEd

The Newseum began as a physical building with exhibits, events, and a working television studio in Washington, D.C. The goal is to highlight and educate how reliable news is gathered and produced. Its education arm has a rich catalog of media literacy lesson plans, quizzes, and many other sources of information.