Digital Smarts - Keeping a Focus on Media Literacy

Teachers and parents are taking steps to help kids recognize "fake" news online, but in reality, consumers of all ages can have trouble distinguishing between accurate and biased media. NewsGuard co-founder Steven Brill suggests teachers and parents take steps to educate kids on spotting informative news and reminds everyone that a site’s suffix, such as dot.com versus dot.org, is not a safeguard against bad information. While some of those sites might appear reliable, such as those that are “charity organizations”, others have missions. These days many dot.org sites are funded by political action committees and for example, they write wonderful puff pieces about whoever the local state representative is, or congressman that they’re backing. Then they write negative pieces about their opponent. That can create real issues for kids (and others) doing research and thinking that they are looking at unbiased sources with a dot.org suffix.