It’s official. That dystopian novel that we all had to read in the 10th grade has become our reality. We’ve officially entered the dark comedy genre on the weirdly specific Netflix genre scale. Just imagine the trailer…
*Deep Announcer Voice*
In a world where the lines between true and false are as smudged as Taylor Momsen’s eyeliner circa 2012, no one knows where to turn for their news. Was there a deadly flu outbreak related to the flu vaccine? Is it all a hoax? No one can be sure…or can they?
Our only hope? The children.
Admit it, you’d watch an eccentric fake news comedy on Netflix. No? Ok, what if I told you Ryan Gosling was in it? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Movie pitches aside, our hope for a News-Literate populous does lie in the children. The News Literacy Project is a nonprofit, focused on targeting middle and high school students to teach “that all information is not created equal.” With the goal of helping students to learn how to identify quality journalism, false and biased news, in order to “foster an understanding of the role of a free press in a democracy.”
The News Literacy Project (NLP), founded by Alan C. Miller has already partnered up with over 30 major news organizations, including the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times and NPR. Using these partnerships, NLP has created an interactive virtual classroom learning experience for students to learn the fundamentals of fact-checking, and other critical thinking skills.
Misinformation is a scary thing. It causes people to act on and believe false, often extreme ideals — something we’re unfortunately witnessing much too often. Programs such as the NLP, are definitely the silver lining of the dark storm cloud that has become fake news on social media. Hopefully, the children will be the ones to save us from all the bullshit news with the lost art of critical thinking.
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